Metrical Dimorphism: An Onomastic Noun-Verb Hypothesis

by G.R.R. L’Power & Lexi Kahn, Ph.D. Candidates
Department of Onomastic Empowerment
Hervard University

There is a well-known pattern of disyllabic word pairs in English that differ primarily by stress. The table below presents a few examples:^*

In this paradigm, nouns carry initial stress, while verbs shift stress to the ultimate syllable. If we analyze related male and female names of approximately “English” ethnolinguistic origin, we observe an analogous pattern of metrical shift:

Rather than retreating to some namby-pamby claim of parallel convergence, the prosodic evidence demands a bold conclusion: Boys are Nouns, Girls are Verbs.

While more general claims of nominative determinism are likely false (and those who say otherwise should know better), the prosodic evidence is overwhelming.

A boy, it would seem, is a state of being.

A girl, in contrast, is a process, a dynamic event unfolding through time. A girl does not just exist; she occurs.

Determining whether these distinctions somehow inhere to boyhood and girlhood—or are mere morphosyntactic constructs in certain English-speaking societies—requires further multilingual and polysocietal investigation and analysis. As two tenure-seeking processes in action, we believe we are well suited to the task!

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