ENGLISH WORD STRESS IN LONG-TERM LANGUAGE CONTACT

Abstract

The paper summarizes the results of recent studies concerned with English accentual patterns dynamics in polysyllabic words, based on English and French language contact. Canadian English reflects the present-day situation of language contact. Intersection of a variety of tendencies is observed which are due to accentual assimilation in lexicon of Romance origin borrowed from French. The recessive and the rhythmical are the major ones in the historical perspective. The data collected in dictionaries are further supplied with sociocultural comments based on corpus and opinion survey cognitive analyses. The presence of rhythmical stress was discovered in British, American and Canadian Englishes with the growing tendency in compound words due to disappearing of the pattern with two equal stresses. The tendency is most vivid in bilingual speakers from the Province of Quebec who accentuate word-final syllable.