The purpose of this paper is to identify an unmarked position of primary stress in English simple words based on the three different sets of phonetic experiments. Traditionally, the penultimate mora has been considered the unmarked position of primary...
The purpose of this paper is to identify an unmarked position of primary stress in English simple words based on the three different sets of phonetic experiments. Traditionally, the penultimate mora has been considered the unmarked position of primary stress in English simple words, which is located by using the various concepts of extrametricality. However, Lee (2004) suggests that the antepenultimate, rather than penultimate, mora be an unmarked position of primary stress in English simple words. In line with Lee (2004), Kim (2015, 2017) shows that the antepenultimate mora is an unmarked position of primary stress in English suffixed words. Hence, we need to determine which is an unmarked or default position in English simple words. By way of conducting three different sets of experiments, this paper is to show that the unmarked position differs depending on the length/weight of words. That is, the antepenultimate, rather than penultimate, mora is unmarked if the weight of words is heavier than or equal to three moras, and that the penultimate mora is default only when the weight of words is shorter or lighter than three moras. The English stress system should be reconsidered by reflecting these experimental results.