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A Re-Examination of ‘Normal Stress‘

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Susan F. Schmerling
Susan F. Schmerling*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
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Abstract

'Normal stress'—a notion frequently encountered in phonology and, especially, syntax—has never been adequately defined. Linguists have apparently made a tacit assumption that the stress in citations elicited from an informant is the same as the stress used by a speaker making a minimum of special assumptions; but this is shown to be false. It is argued that ‘normal stress’, a notion inherited from structuralist linguistics, was required by assumptions inconsistent with those of the generative framework; and that this notion, even if it can be defined so as to be consistent with generative assumptions, is not a particularly useful one.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 66 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Linguistic Society of America

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