Abstract
In this article the claim is made, on the basis of an extensive investigation of the nature and appearance of primary stress, that Afrikaans cannot, contrary to what is often claimed elsewhere, be characterised as a stress-initial language. There is thus a clear move away from typical Germanic, of which English is a good example. In English, primary stress, in words such as minister and general, falls on the first syllable, while this is not the case in Afrikaans: in Afrikaans minister the stress falls on the second syllable, while in generaal it falls on the final syllable. In support of this general claim, and on the basis of extensive speech data and in relation to different kinds of words, a more accurate primary-stress rule for Afrikaans is developed.
The data sets used were collected through recordings of a number of RSG (Radio Sonder Grense, the Afrikaans channel of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, or SABC) broadcasts. In total there were more than 14 hours of news bulletins, read by 33 male and 21 female speakers. These recordings were collected over two time periods: 2000–2006 and 2017. In addition, a smaller set of weather reports was also recorded, in this case consisting of approximately a half-hour of data, read by six male and three female presenters. Afterwards, the collected data was first annotated and segmented in terms of phonetic segments, using a program developed by D.R. van Niekerk (also see Van Niekerk and Barnard 2009). The output was then analysed in Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2017). Using a specially designed search engine, all relevant words were easily isolated and closely examined in terms of those visual and acoustic characteristics relevant to primary stress. These characteristics were basic pitch (F0), intensity (decibel) and duration (the length of the vowel). Less important, but still relevant, was the quality of the relevant vowel (vowel-formant frequencies). Generally, an investigation of a combination of these characteristics provided a reasonable indication of primary stress.
The category of proper nouns – more specifically, here, place names and personal names – forms an interesting focus concerning the determination of stress position. With Afrikaans place names such as Postmasburg we find an increased tendency for stress to occur towards the end of the word. This occurs particularly in those many cases where the relevant word has lost its original status as a compound, as a result of which the final component has lost its original literal meaning and, instead, forms an integral part of a new simplex word. Furthermore, place names and personal names originating from South African African languages provide a unique data set for testing the stress rule of Afrikaans. Proper nouns provide fertile ground for the study of stress placement, regardless of whether they are genuine Afrikaans words or borrowed from indigenous African languages, e.g. names from the Sotho and Nguni languages. The manner in which the pronunciation of personal names is adapted to the stress patterns of the relevant language, especially those names which are multisyllabic, can often serve as a valuable form of support for establishing the correctness of proposed stress rules, as confirmed, for example, by Neijt & Zonneveld (1982) and Kager (1989). These personal names are generally longer than two syllables and therefore serve as a unique sources of simplex words for this purpose. Because the African languages are not characterised by lexical stress (see Cole 1995), it cannot be said that the placement of stress in Afrikaans has been taken over directly from the African languages concerned when the names are used by speakers of Afrikaans. Accordingly, it is clear that in such cases it is the Afrikaans stress pattern that is being applied. The results indicate clearly that in such cases the new stress rule applies, which comes down to the use of a trochaic pattern ([ / ∪ ]). In proper nouns of an African-language origin, such as the personal names Madonséla and Ramaphósa, as well as in place names such as Amanzimtóti, we find a clear preference for the trochaic pattern. Other examples which belong in this category – and many more could easily be provided – are Bophuthatswána, Dikholólo, Ekhuruléni, Thabazímbi and Umbongintwíni – all of which, independently of word length or syllable structure, display penultimate stress.
Thus in many constructed place names we find a strong tendency to place the stress towards the end of the word. In such cases we could make the more general claim that initial position is, in fact, avoided. In normal compounds the initial segment is stressed, as in bádwater, driéhoek and vérekussing. When, on the other hand, we find that in place names the final segment appropriates stress, we can reasonably ascribe this to the fact that the original constituent segments have lost (or have begun to lose) their original meanings and thus also their status as separate constituents, as part of the more general process of the compound’s gaining, or having gained, monomorphemic status. Such examples include Bettiesbaai, Soutpansberg, Postmasburg, Vredendal, Krugersdorp, Ventersdorp, Olifantshoek, Aasvoëlkop, Daniëlskuil, Barberspan, Vanderbylpark, Maselspoort, Witwatersrand, Odendaalsrus, Bronkhorstspruit, Tarkastad and Potchefstroom. A few examples also exist where the final constituent is multisyllabic, such as in Putsonderwater. Here we generally find penultimate stress, mainly because the final syllable -er is in theory unstressable due to the presence of the reduced schwa. An interesting and probably quite recent shift towards word-final position is also found in derived words such as akademikús, medikús and tegnikús. While most reference sources still indicate non-final stress for these words – thus médikus and akadémikus – this pattern is seldom found in the standard speech databases or in contemporary normal, conversational Afrikaans.
Keywords: letter names; morphological extension; nonsense forms; number names; plural forms; primary-stress rule; proper nouns; reduplications; RSG speech data; simplex words; stress-shift; trochaic meter.
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