國
立立 政 治 大
㈻㊫學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Table 24L2 Learners’ Stress assignment on N[NN] compound nouns
Stress Location Low-achievers High-achieversStructure Stimulus
N[NN]
dog fast food
8.33% 8.33%N[NN] dog fast food 0% 0%
N[NN] dog fast food 5% 1.67%
N[NN]
dog fast food 18.33%
25%N[NN] dog fast food 0% 0%
N[NN]
dog fast food
1.67% 0%N[NN]
dog fast food 66.67%
65%ŃŃ. The second category of compound nouns neglects syntactic structure and
main stress is placed on both compound elements. Compound nouns belonging to this category are those whose modifier is a time term or a the main material of the head noun. As can be seen in Table 25, L2 learners’ performance in this test does not vary much from those in category one. Both high and low achievers tended to assign the main stress to both compound elements. High achievers’ performances in the first and second categories of compound noun stress are not as satisfactory as they are in the simplex and complex stress assignments. As to low achievers, the tendency to stress both elements makes their accuracy higher than the high-achieving group, which should be success by chance.Table 25
L2 Learners’ Stress Assignment on ŃŃ Compound Nouns
Stress Location Low-achievers High-achieversStructure Stimulus
NN
brick wall
8.33% 41.67%NN brick wall 1.67% 0%
NN
brick wall
90% 58.33%•‧
國
立立 政 治 大
㈻㊫學
•‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
In sum, the results show that the L2 learners have not fully constructed the grammar for compound nouns with different structures. Neither high nor low achievers could assign compound stress accurately by referring to the syntactic structure of the tokens. Low achievers seemed to prefer the syntactic head, that is, the rightmost word of a compound noun to bear the primary stress. What is interesting is that in the subjects’ L1(Chinese) and L2(English), compound stress is both assigned to the syntactic nonhead instead of the head. In Mandarin-accented English, L2 learners’ performance in compound stress assignment was dissimilar from their L1 or L2 grammars. The result confirms that interlanguage can have its own grammar that is different from the native or the L2 language.
On the other hand, judging from high-achievers’ performance, the result seems to suggest that compound stress assignment takes longer to acquire than lexical stress;
or, we can say that stress assignment based on syntactic structure is more complicated for L2learners. In compound stress task (except ŃŃ), both high and low achievers reached the lowest average accuracy rates among the three types of stress assignment tasks.
Extended EDCD Analysis
ŃN
Since the proposed algorithm emphasizes that each set of interlanguage grammar is built on the basis of L1 grammar, the prerequisite is to sort out the Chinese
compound stress grammar. In Chinese, lexical compound stress is also closely related to syntactic structure as well. Duanmu (1990) argued that syntactic nonhead is more likely to receive the main stress in Chinese compound, which can be represented by NONHEAD STRESS.
(3) NONHEAD STRESS
Assign one violation mark for every compound word if the syntactic nonhead is not stressed.
Next, to avoid the discrepancy of prosodic and syntactic units, *STRADDING is necessary to ensure the alignment between syntactic and prosodic boundaries.
(4) *STRADDING
Assign one violation mark for every compound word in which two syllables that
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國
立立 政 治 大
㈻㊫學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
are sister constituents in morpho-syntactic structure do not belong to the same foot.
*STRADDING might not be determinant for two-word compound nouns. However, for compound nouns contains syntactic branching, the alignment between syntactic and prosodic boundaries becomes crucial.
Moreover, to preserve the well-formedness of foot structure, Ft-BIN(σ) is indispensable in excluding monosyllabic feet.
(5) FT-BIN(σ)
Assign one violation mark for every foot which does not contain at least two syllables.
These constraints can not be violated in stressing Chinese compound nouns, and thus they should all be placed in the undominated position.
Given a compound noun like zha4 yu2 ('fried fish'), the stress assignment is determined by the evaluation in tableau (6). The syntactic head of the compound is the noun, yu2, which should not receive a stress. Ft-BIN(σ) is violated by candidates (c) and (d) for having a monosyllabic foot. NONHEAD STRESS punishes candidates (a) and (c) for stressing the head. Among all the candidates, candidate (b) is considered optimal.
(6) Chinese compound stress assignment
zha4 yu2 FT-BIN(σ) *STRADDING NONHEAD
STRESS
a.(zha yú) *!
→ b.(zhá yu)
c. zha (yú) * *
d.(zhá)yu *!
English compound stress shares some features and therefore a couple of stress-related constraints are both crucial in Chinese and English. Firstly, English compound stress also requires the alignment of syntactic and prosodic units of compound nouns, which is captured by *STRADDING in (4). Secondly, in English compound nouns, syntactic nonhead receives more stress than the head, which can also be captured by NONHEAD STRESS in (3).
Not only that the syntactic non-head should bear the main stress, another
•‧
國
立立 政 治 大
㈻㊫學
•‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
important feature of English compound nouns is that the syntactic head of the compound should be unstressed. Staffen Chung (2013) stated that in English compound nouns, the syntactic head, regardless of its syllable number, should not be stressed. For example, in a compound noun like work environment, none of four syllables in the syntactic head, environment, should be stressed. The requirement of an unstressed syntactic head can be captured by *Head Stress in (7).
(7) *Head Stress
Assign one violation mark for every compound whose syntactic head bears stress.
Next, regardless of the branching direction of the syntactic structure, the main stress should be assigned to the identical syllable of the head of a stem word. For example, for the compound noun, graduate institute, the main stress should be either the antepenult of graduate or institute, which is the same as the original location where the main stress lies in these two words. To have the output stressed on the same syllable as the input, we need a faithfulness constraint, IDENT-STRESS, as defined in (8).
(8) IDENT-STRESS
Assign one violation for every syllable whose stress is specified in the input that does not have a correspondent in the output.
To maintain the well-formedness of a foot, Ft-BIN(μ) in (9) should also be included as a core constraint.
(9) FT-BIN(μ)
Assign one violation for every foot that does not contain at least two morae.
Among all the constraints mentioned above, IDENT-STRESS should be ranked lower so that the syntactic head which is supposed to be unstressed will not be fatally punished and ruled out. (10) indicates the constraint ranking for English compound stress.
(10) Constraint ranking for English nominal compound stress
NONHEAD STRESS, * STRADDING, Ft-BIN(μ), *HEAD STRESS >> IDENT-STRESS Tableau (11) demonstrates how compound stress is determined in English
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國
立立 政 治 大
㈻㊫學
•‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
compound nouns with the constraint ranking in tableau (14). NONHEAD STRESS
punishes candidates (b) and (c) once. The former has the syntactic head bearing a more prominent stress than the non-head, while the latter has both the syntactic head and nonhead equally prominently stressed. Candidates (a), (b), and (c) are further punished by *Head Stress for the primary and secondarily stressed syntactic head.
Candidate (d), despite the violation of IDENT-STRESS for the unstressed syntactic head, is proved to be the optimal choice.
(11) English compound stress assignment
láw degrée
NONHEAD
STRESS *STRADDING FT-BIN(µ) *HEAD
STRESS IDENT-STRESS
a. (láw) (degrèe) *!
b. (làw) (degrée) *! *
c. (láw) (degrée) *! *
→ d. (láw) degree *
Now that the L1 and L2 compound stress grammars have been sorted out, their interactions in the interlanguage grammar can be exemplified by the Mandarin-accented elicitation data. According to the elicitation data, L2 learners preferred stress on both compound elements. A possible solution is to adopt ALIGN
(WORD, FOOT) in (12).
(12) ALIGN (WORD, FOOT)
Assign one violation mark for every stem whose left/right edge does not coincide with the left/right edge of a foot
To preserve the main stress of both compound elements, STRESS should be promoted to the undominated position in stage one. Tableaux (13) to (15) will illustrate how compound stress grammar is constructed step by step.
According to the Extended EDCD, the initial state of L2 acquisition is the final stage of L1 grammar. Tableau (13) demonstrates the initial state of Chinese-speaking learners’ acquisition of English compound stress. At the initial state, no exposure to L2 data has been made.