Lecture 1 Introduction

Word Stress/Accent

Indo-European (Non-Germanic)	Proto-Germanic
1. free stress (movable, i.e. can appear in any part of a word (root, prefix, suffix));	1. fixed stress (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);
2. pitch stress (musical)	2. dynamic stress (force, breath stress)
E.g.: русский	E.g.: German	English
б`елый	`Liebe	`white
белизн`а	`lieben	`whiteness
белов`атый	`lieberhaft	`whitish
бел`ить	ge`liebt	`whitewash

The Proto-Germanic type of stress led to the formation of the following peculiarities of the Germanic languages as compared to non-Germanic Indo-European languages:

• 
  phonetic – as a result of the fixed position of the stress the unstressed syllables were becoming weaker and weaker, they got less distinct and neutral sounds (such as “schwa”) appeared;
  
• 
  morphological – as a result of the fact that the stress was fixed on the root and the syllables following the root were always unstressed and weak, many Germanic languages began to lose suffixes and grammatical endings and became ANALYTICAL LANGUAGES.
  

E.g.: Old English (OE) [`sunu]

Middle English (ME) [`sunə]
New English (NE) [`sun]
Modern English (ModE) [`sΛn] (the word “son”)