Uniformity of Secondary Stress Placement on Two Pretonic Syllables in English

This paper addresses the non-uniformity issue in the English stress system, specifically in the distribution of secondary stress as seen in words such as còndènsátion and ìnformátion. The word còndènsátion preserves the primary stress of a stem as the secondary stress, while ìnformátion attracts no stress on the second syllable. In the previous analysis like Pater (2000), this non-uniformity of secondary stress assignment was accounted for by establishing the separate lexically- specific constraint Id-Stress-S1 for exceptional cases. This paper, however, presents a unified optimality-theoretic account of the non-uniformity observed in còndènsátion and ìnformátion by drawing on the pure phonological factors. This paper proposes that sonorant-final syllable should be subdivided into nasal-final and liquid-final one, and this division be incorporated into the constraint format of Peak hierarchy (*Peak/C). The account proposed here includes one general constraint hierarchy (Ft-Bin≫ WSP≫ *Clash, *P/nas≫ Base-Ident (Stress)≫ *P/liq) without recourse to the lexically specific constraint like Pater(2000)’s Id-Stress-S1.