This 17th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test question

In certain varieties of English, the words colleague and calendar are pronounced as follows:

colleague   [koˈliɡ]           calendar   [kaˈlendə]

Explain whether these pronunciations follow the ESR (English Stress Rule).

Answers

• An extrametrical word implies that it is not counted for purposes of assigning stress, not that it is not pronounced.

• To say that the final consonant of a word is extrametrical is to ignore the stress assignment rules.

• If we were to remove Consonant Extrametricality, the disadvantage of this solution is that the rule may not be applicable to all verbs and adjectives. But the disadvantage of this consonant extrametricality is that this doesn’t occur in nouns.

• In this variety, a stress occurs before the vowel shuwa but the stress has to be in the first syllable.

• There are two syllables in the colleague, so it follows the rule. The rule says stress the first syllable if heavy, otherwise the second. The stress pattern of ‘calendar’ is such that the last sound of the word is a light syllable.

• The English Stress Rule can shield a little light on why words are stressed on the anti-penultimate syllable. Although it has to be admitted that to a certain extent, this rule might be plausible in some cases, however, by defining the rule in this manner, the regular stresses of all forms will be affected.

• Applying Syllabification Extrametricality (SE) we shall ignore the stress on the final syllable.

• A syllable can be extrametrical: if a last syllable can be extrametricalated, then, it can explain the stress pattern of the words.

• The final syllable of the words is extrametrilised.

• Calendar is a noun and therefore [ə], the last syllable, is light and has a heavy stress falling on the second syllable. For colleague, the extrametriculated syllable rule does not agree with [liɡ].

• The ESR for verbs applies. Colleague and calendar follow the ESR, as they are verbs.

• Perhaps it is also an unofficial rule in these Englishes to observe the first syllable as the extrametric syllable and the second syllable is pronounced without much questioning.

• We need to syllabify according to the Maximal Onset Principle. This has to do with the innate human tendency to maximise a syllable.

• These varieties of English focus the stress on the heavy syllable to the point of flouting the stress rules set by experts.

More to come...

	Everything Linguists Ever Wanted To Know About Prime Numbers—but really shouldn’t have asked—A. Nonymous, Linguist
	How to Speak to Foreigners—An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the ʔɪɯnkʈlɳɪɞʃt—Claude Searsplainpockets & Helga von Helganschtein y Searsplainpockets
	SpecGram Vol CLXII, No 1 Contents