Skip to main content

ETHNOS_APP

Home • Search • Journals • List 0

Stress placement in Tswana English

The Makings of a Coherent System

Bibliographic Data

ID2254883
AuthorsBertus Van Rooy (0000-0002-3301-4914, North-West University, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume21
Issue1
Pages145-160
Publication date2002-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWorld Englishes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0883-2919 • E-ISSN: 1467-971X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-971x.00237
OpenAlexW2051707896
LanguageEN
Citations received6

This paper investigates stress placement in one variety of Black South African English (BSAE), namely Tswana English. Current research points to two possible hypotheses about stress in BSAE. The penult-hypothesis holds that the penult syllable is stressed in BSAE, while the random-hypothesis suggests that a variety of stress assignment strategies are employed by BSAE speakers, without the possibility of predicting stress placement. A data corpus of 333 polysyllabic words was analysed in detail to determine the properties of the Tswana English stress system. These properties were subsequently interpreted by means of Optimality Theory. The major conclusion is that stress is stored lexically in function words, but a coherent system of ranked constraints exists for content words. These constraints account for a very high percentage of the observed data. Both the penult- and random-hypotheses are rejected. It is shown that stress is attracted by the penult, but superheavy final syllables may attract stress to the final syllable, while the presence of certain suffixes may attract stress to the antepenult

Function (biology · Linguistics · Optimality theory · Phonology · Statistics · Stress (linguistics · Syllable · Tswana · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

  • South African Englishes

    Open Access•Werner Botha, Bertus Van Rooy et al.•World Englishes•2020

  • A Regional and Social Dialectology of the Bath Vowel in South African English

    Open Access•Rajend Mesthrie, Alida Chevalier et al.•Language Variation and Change•2015

  • Patterns of segment sequence simplification in some African Englishes 1

    Open Access•Augustin Simo Bobda•World Englishes•2007

  • English as a naturalized African language

    Open Access•Nkonko Mudipanu Kamwangamalu•World Englishes•2019

  • Black South African English on the radio

    Open Access•Leketi Makalela•World Englishes•2013

  • Making sense of BSAE for linguistic democracy in South Africa

    Open Access•Leketi Makalela•World Englishes•2004

Unique citing works6
Citations per year0,27
Citation span2004 - 2020 (17)
Citation velocityhistorical
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 6

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub
Ethnos_APP • Open Source Project • MIT License • Frontend v2.0.0 • Privacy and Cookies • API Documentation: api.ethnos.app/docs • API Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17049435 • Frontend Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17050053 • cruz.rio.br • Expectantes Misericordiae