: Stress 1 Stress and accent

Abstract

In this article, I will discuss the phenomenon of ( linguistic) stress as it applies to words. Units that are larger than words (such as phrases a nd entences) can be said to have stress too, but I will not touch on these larger units her e. Right away, in section 2, I propose to shift our attention to the notion of accent, which I define as more fundamental than stress. Stress, as we will see, can be seen as a phonetic m anifestation of accent. I will provide a typology of the various ways in which accent is man ifested besides through stress. In section 3, the question as to how accent is formall y represented will be in focus. Section 4 argues that the set of accent-driven phenomena may be a reflection of lexical and postlexical accentual structures that can sometimes be in conflict with each other. In section 5, I briefly discuss the relationship between accen tuation and morphology, and ‘stress shift’ rules.