Remarks on rhythmic stress in Modern Hebrew

Abstract

In Biblical Hebrew, the tendency for rhythmic stress was primarily manifest in stress retraction, which moved word-final stress to the preceding syllable so as to avoid ‘stress clash’ with an immediately following word-initial stress, subject to certain restrictions. It was discussed in detail by the traditional grammarians of Hebrew; recent generative accounts include Prince (1975) and McCarthy (1979). In Modern Hebrew, the tendency for rhythmic stress can be realized in a variety of ways, of which stress retraction is by no means the commonest.