Russian Linguistic Bulletin (Sep 2021)
WORD STRESS MOSAIC OF GLOBAL ENGLISH: PLACEMENT AND PERCEPTION VARIANCE
Abstract
The study presents an overview of word stress variation in global English, arranged according to Kachruvian circles. The “inner circle” description is based on dictionaries and corpora data. The main distinctions between American English and British English in stress placement (2.5% of polysyllabic words) are also reflected in Canadian, Australian and New Zealand varieties, supplemented in each case by identifying national features (around 24% of the lexicon). American English is noted for an iambic pattern in disyllables of French origin. Canadian English demonstrated a slightly higher percentage of American patterns than British (41.7 vs. 36.1%) and a number of original Canadian ones (22.2%), predominantly with secondary stresses. In Australian data British patterns are more common than American (46.6% vs. 29.7%), while specific Australian ones account for 23.7%. New Zealand variety developed a greater number of secondary stresses, whereas Australian English ignored most of them. In the “outer circle” indigenized varieties of South-Asian region, like India and Singapore, are distinct from African varieties in Cameroon and Nigeria. In educated Indian English patterns common with the British standard account for 70% of stresses, while 30% bear the traces of the substrata, being particularly quantity-sensitive. Cameroonian and Nigerian Englishes shift stress either following the recessive tendency without exceptions or the “forward” one. Apart from differences in stress placement speakers of New Englishes are characterized by their choice of prominence cues. The “expanding circle” is still more diverse, as is manifested by Mandarin Chinese English with tone replacing stress, and “Russian Englishes”, defined as possessing a quantitative-qualitative stress. Implications for intercultural communication are suggested.
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