3. Practical vs. Theoretical Considerations.

It should be stressed that, for purely pedagogical reasons, neither the too complex and technical Nuclear Stress Rule formulated in Chomsky and Halle (1968: 17ff.) and its classes of exceptions nor the ad hoc classroom treatment of isolated stress placement will be of any benefit to students of beginning or even intermediate level. Furthermore, it is of little help to them to know whether stress is explicable by reference to syntax or to semantics or to the lexicon or to a mixture of these.

The Trager-Smith stress levels of English (Trager and Smith, 1951), together with the mass of practical and pedagogical rules and data expounded in such works as Arnold (1957), Kingdon (1950), Wijk (1966) and a host of other authorities in the field offer a fairly solid basis for a workable framework for the teaching of English stress and stress patterns. One such framework, helped and supported by an extended computer analysis of English word stress, is satisfactorily exhibited in Guierre (1968). It provides a systematic training and practice in English stress patterns by introducing only the most important word classes.

In fact, the main purpose of this paper is to emphasize this systematic approach to English stress pattern, especially with reference to the classification of some English word-endings. In this sense, I take the view that stress and stress patterns should be approached from a purely practical angle, and that any tight or esoteric theoretical framework at this level of classroom activity should be simply ignored.

4. Implementation/ Integration of Stress Patterns

For illustrative purposes, only a few stress patterns are dealt with here. In a first stage, only the main stress is accounted for. Because of the general linguistic level of our students and the wrong accentual habits that they might have acquired in high school, and the possible interference from the mother tongue, the stress patterns and rules should be proposed to them in a simple form to facilitate their learning and automatic drilling. The exceptions to the rules should be rote-learnt to avoid confusion.

4.1. Words in -ic(s), -ical and their derivatives.

Rule A : Words ending in -ic or -ics have their main stress on the first syllable before the last ( or penultimate syllable ).

Examples : spe'cific - diplo'matic - idio'matic - demo'cratic - au'thentic - fan'tastic - pho'netics - re'public - scien'tific - pessi'mistic - sta'tistics - ritua'listic - mathe'matics - sympto'matic

It is worth mentioning that the Daniel Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary has more than 1,500 words in -ic .The number of irregular words (i.e. exceptions to this rule) is less than 20.

The most common exceptions are:

'Arabic - a'rithmetic - 'arsenic - 'catholic - 'heretic - 'lunatic - 'politic(s) - 'impolitic - 'rhetoric.

Rule B: Words ending in -ical have their main stress on the second syllable before the last.

Examples : e'lectrical - me'chanical - eco'nomical - paren'thetical - psycho'logical

Both rules A and B above can be merged and taught together in one or two sessions so that their related drills (reading and repeating words) are mixed, including the exceptions.

Rule C : When a word in -ic generates a word in -icist, -icize or -icism, then the main stress remains on the same syllable. This means that these words behave accentually like words in -ical .

Examples : ro'mantic > ro'manticism

'Critic > 'criticism

'Classic > 'classicist

Fa'natic > fa'naticize

I'talic > I'talicize

But : 'politic > po'liticize

'Catholic > ca'tholicism)

The above examples show some variation in pronunciation and, for the last two, a change in stress allocation. The following remarks should be noted:

a) The letter -c in the generated words is pronounced [s] instead of [k]

b) The irregular words in -ic are regularized when they take the endings -ical, -icist, -icize and -icism