Language processing and the evolution of rhythmic patterns: Asymmetries in binary stress systems
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Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna
Abstract
Rhythmic stress is assigned automatically in everyday speech. Usually, it is produced without conscious planning of which syllables have to be stressed. However, the ‘grammaticalisation’ of rhythmic patterns is the result of language processing. It is the outcome of a selective process which is proposed to lead to a preference or dispreference for specific rhythmic structures. In the languages of the world, judging by the typological data available, some rhythmic patterns seem to be completely avoided – even if this means an increase of complexity within a stress system. Focussing on asymmetries in binary stress systems, it is suggested in this paper that processing limitations in speech production motivate stress patterns. It is also demonstrated that the domain of the prosodic word is insufficient for a motivation of these asymmetries. Since one-word sentences are not the rule, but the exception, asymmetries find their motivation on the level of the sentence.
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Subject auxiliary inversion and linguistic generalization: Evidence for functional/cognitive motivation in language
- How linguistic structure influences and helps to predict metaphoric meaning
- Salience and construal in the use of synonymy: A study of two sets of near-synonymous nouns
- Language processing and the evolution of rhythmic patterns: Asymmetries in binary stress systems
- Grammatical aspect, gesture, and conceptualization: Using co-speech gesture to reveal event representations
- You can't cry your way to candy: Motion events and paths in the x's way construction
