Encoding Frequency in OT: Frequency effect on stress preservation

Abstract

Since English stress is involved with various idiosyncratic patterns, it is very difficult to give a complete account despite the volume of studies that have been done so far. The first pioneering work by Chomsky and Halle (1968) explains English stress as a product of interaction between cyclic and non-cyclic rules. This account, however, cannot be applied to all English words; it is not difficult to find apparent exceptions. The rule-based theory like this is destined to fail especially in case of English stress since it has abundant exceptions that cannot be measured by only a set of rules. In this sense, it is not exaggeration that Optimality Theory is more suitable than rule-based approach in explaining English stress pattern. Optimality Theory has succeeded in giving more improved account for, for example, metrical stress by Generalized Alignment (McCarthy and Prince 1993). Nevertheless, English stress is yet far from being fully explained. Since English stress is basically involved with lots of lexical idiosyncrasies, we need a tool to handle these lexical differences.