On the comparability of prosodic categories: why ‘stress’ is difficult

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that the prosodic category stress in West Germanic languages, which implicitly underlies practically all work on stress, is a complex cluster concept consisting of at least six dimensions which in turn involve a number of subdimensions. Because of its complexity, this concept is not useful for cross-linguistic comparison. A promising starting point for further typological inquiry is one of the six dimensions, i.e. acoustic and auditory prominence. However, identifying acoustic and auditory prominence distinctions cross-linguistically is also not straightforward and requires considerable empirical effort. Nevertheless, cross-linguistic comparison is still possible in the case of ‘difficult’ cluster concepts such as stress and does not require the use of arbitrary comparative concepts.