Accentuation des composés savants en anglais contemporain : identification morphosémantique et enjeu phonologique

Stress assignment in learned compounds in contemporary English raises a number of theoretical problems. The morphological criterion is essential to identify these structures for they result from an interaction between several elements (classical roots and affixes). This morphological analysis is carried along with a semantic perspective which is necessary to determine the roots and to identify the scientific domains. It is difficult to determine the exact limits of learned compounds. Nevertheless, this morphosemantic study turns out to be essential in the assignment of primary stress. Thus, the analysis of a dictionary-based corpus composed of learned compounds suffixed in -ous, enables a quantitative study. An overview of stress patterns gives credit to the hypothesis that there is an interaction between the classical roots preceding the suffix, and this particular suffix, which is the crucial factor in word stress assignment. When using a numerical system of representation which models the influence of roots relative to stress location, some roots appear to be “attractive” because they carry primary stress, while the majority of them are “non-attractive” for they do not prevent primary stress retraction on the antepenultimate syllable