Lexical stress

The status and even the existence of stress in Hindi are controversial. Many authors claim that Hindi does not have stress, while most of those who argue that it does agree that stress is not phonemic and that it is phonetically weaker than in English. Most of these claims are based on impressions rather than empirical data, but Ohala’s acoustic study (1986) shows that stress, though not phonemic, does have phonetic correlates (essentially pitch). Since lexical stress in Hindi normally seems to fall on the penultimate syllable, placement of lexical stress in English polysyllabic words is one of the most conspicuous characteristics of Indo-Fijian English (and also Indian English). Lexical stress patterns include:

1. The assignment of primary stress to the initial syllable of words such as develop > [^'dεvələp] , constrict > [^'kɔn,strik], event > ['i,vεnt] , etc., is extremely common.

2. Other polysyllabic words that receive irregular stress assignment may in some cases be due to a failure to realize the variation in stress of related words, e.g. necessary > [nə'sεs(ə)ri] , perhaps following the stress pattern of the noun necéssity.

3. As seen above, the unstressed vowels of Standard English happY, lettER and commA are usually given more stress than in Standard English, but still less stress than the first syllable.