El atravesado

1. Meters with three-syllable feet are ANAPESTIC (x x /): And the sound of a voice that is still DACTYLIC (/ x x): This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a trochee replaces the final dactyl) Each line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and soon--trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and o ctameter (8). The number of syllables in a line varies therefore according to the meter. A good example of trochaic monometer, for example, is this poem entitled quot;Fleasquot;: Adam Had'em. Here are some more serious examples of the various meters. iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables) That time | of year | thoumayst | in me | behold trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables) Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers anapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables) And the sound | of a voice | that is still dactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables; a trochee replaces the last dactyl) This is the | forest pri | meval, the | murmuring | pine and the | hemlocks 16
2. English Stress English stress isdependant on origin of words and the rhythmic factors ( heavy-light syllables). Words borrowed from Latin and other donor languages are stressed differently. In the case of Anglo-Saxon words the first syllable of the root is stressed. For example, in the following words the stress is in the first syllable, “blossom, body, holy, never, unpack.” What are the ways in Determining the main stress inEnglish? The steps to be taken in this process are, first: 1) remove inflectional suffixes and stress neutral suffixes, then 2) if the word has two syllables, stress the first one. The following words are examples for this two step process: “donkey, exit,finger, bonus.” 3) If the words are of three syllables or more, determine whether the penult (the next to last syllable in a word ) is heavy or light.Following are examples of heavy and light syllables. “Recruitment, entailment, detergent, escapist (heavy) Average, bungalow, regiment, resolute (light)” 4) If the penult is heavy, stress it. A, E, I,O,U and diphtong are long vowels. Spacious, spicy, ocean, rejoice are examples for this process. 5) If the penult is light, stress the antepenult. As seen in “ACtivate, MULtiply, reVItalize,VACcinate.” 17
3. (English Words, 2001) Main stress falls on the penultimate syllable if it has a long vowel or is closed by a consonant; otherwise, main stress falls on the antepenultimate (the 3rd syllable of a word counting back from the end ) syllable. The location of the stress depends on the distribution of heavy syllables, as well as location in the word. So, English makes distinction betweenheavy (long vowels, more prominent) and light (short vowels) syllables. Foot with one heavy syllable is stressed, however a foot with one light syllable is not stressed. (Dresher, B. E. 1999) The affixes which change the word stress are various, some examples are -ain (entertain), -ee(refugee,trainee), -ese(Portugese, Japanese), -ique(unique), -ette (cigarette,laundrette), -esque(picturesque),-ial(proverbial), -ic(climatic), -ion (perfection), -ive(reflexive), -cal (political), -ity(complexity), -aire(millionaire), -eer (mountaineer), -ian(Italian), -et(ballet) On the other hand, there are some other affixes which don’t effect the distribution of stress, they are -able, -age, -al, -ful, -en, -ish, -ish, -like, -less, -ment, -wise, -y, -hood, -ship, -ness, -ing, -our etc. Role of Weak andStrong Syllables in Communication Strong–weak syllable distinction may play an important role in word segmentation. Cutler and Norris (1988) asked subjects to identify words at the beginnings of two syllable nonwords. Subjects were faster to identify a word when the second syl able was weak than l when it was strong. The present study included lax vowels in addition to the tense and neutral...