Five Patterns of Stress Assignment in the Resulting blends
contribution to the result. According to the data, this pattern occurs only in clipping blends type B, C, and D and overlapping blend type OV2. The examples
of the type B are ‘contrail ,conden’sation x ‘trail, ‘docu,drama ,docu’mentary x
‘drama, and „docusoap ,docu’mentary x ‘soup. In „contrail, the primary stress is assigned in the syllable con, whereas the fact is that the syllable obtains
secondary stress in the original word ,conden’sation. Similarly, in ‘docu,drama
and ‘docu,soap, the primary stressed syllable is in the syllable do which is
originally taken from the word , docu’mentary. The examples of the type C are
‘bi,ome ,bio’logical x ‘dome and e’lectret e,lec’tricity x ‘magnet. The primary stressed syllable of the blend „bi,ome is bi, whereas in the source word the syllable
bi obtains secondary stress. In e’lectret, the syllable lec is assigned a primary
stress, although that syllable gets secondary stress as in e,lec’tricity. The examples
of type D are ‘agit,prop ,agi’tation x ,propa’ganda and ‘av,gas ,avi’ation x
‘gasoline. In both examples, the primary stressed syllables are ag and av, respectively. Both syllables ad and av obtain secondary stress in their source
words. Besides, the type of overlapping blends following this type is blends type
OV2. The examples are ‘magalogue ,maga’zine x ‘catalogue and ‘tange,lo
,tange’rine x ‘pome,lo. The syllable ma in ‘magalogue and tan in ‘tange,lo bear a primary stress, although in the source words they bear a secondary stress.
3 The Equivalence between Primary Stress in the Resulting Blends and Unstressed Syllable in SW 1
The third pattern which can be observed is that the primary stress of resulting blends is equivalent to the unstressed syllables of SW1. It occurs in all
types of clipping and two types of overlapping blends, namely type A, B, C, D, OV0, and OV2. The example of type A are
in’sultment ‘insult x ‘statement, lon’doni,stan ‘London x ,Paki’stan. Both in’sultment and lon’doni,stan assign
their stresses in correspondence with unstressed syllable of SW1. In in’sultment,
the stress is in the syllable sult in which this syllable is unstressed in word insult a noun, The examples of type B are
‘conrail con’solidated x ‘rail, ‘dicta,phone dic’tate x ‘phone, and in’terro,bang ,inte’rrogative x ‘bang. In those examples,
the stress syllables are on con, dic, and ter which they are not stressed in their original words. The example of type C is
ga’lumph ‘gallop x ‘triumph and ‘malware ma’licious x ‘software. As seen in these examples, the primary stress
of both blends corresponds to the unstressed syllables. The examples of type D are ‘bio,pic bi’ography x ‘picture and ‘Intel,sat in’telligent x ‘satellite. In ‘bio,pic
and ‘intel,sat, both the syllables bi and in are assigned primary stress, although in
the original words they are not. Besides, the types of overlapping blends which fit into this category are
OV0, and OV2. The example of type OV0 is ca’meleo,pard ‘camel x ‘leopard,
the syllable me is stressed. The examples of type OV2 are ‘netizen ‘internet x
‘citizen and du’ralumin ‘durable x ,alu’minium assign the stress in the syllable net and ra.
4 The Equivalence between Primary Stress in the Resulting Blends and Primary Stress in SW 2
The fourth pattern is that the primary stress in resulting blends is equivalent to the primary stress in the SW2. All types of clipping and overlapping blends
match with this category. This characteristic mostly happens in type C of clipping blends
The examples of type A of clipping blends are yoga’lates ‘yoga x ,pi’lates
and ,need’cessity ‘need x ne’cessity. In these examples, the stressed syllables la
and ces correspond to the stress of original words pi‟lates and ne‟cessity. The
example of type B are ,alphanu’meric ,alpha’betic x nu’meric and ,bi’curious
bi’sexual x ‘curious. These examples show the correspondence of the stressed syllable me with stress in
nu’meric and cu with the stress in ‘curious. The examples of type C are
,edu’tainment ,edu’cation x enter’tainment and gi’normous ,gi’gantic x e’normous. In ,edu’tainment and gi’normous, the
primary stress is in accordance with SW2 enter’tainment and e’normous.
All types of overlapping blends, namely OV0, OV1, and OV2 are suitable to this pattern. The blend ,a
quae’robics ‘aqua x ae’robics and ,radio’paque ‘radio x o’paque are the examples of OV0. These blends have the correspondence of the
primary stress to the SW2 ae’obics and o’paque. The examples of type OV1,
cla’mato ‘clam x to’mato and ,stalke’razzi ‘stalker x ,papar’azzi, the primary stress is in correspondence with SW2
to’mato and ,papar’azzi . The examples of type OV2 are ,walla
’roo ‘Wallaby x ,kanga’roo and ,afflu’enza ‘affluence x ,influ’enza.
5 The Equivalence between Primary Stress in the Resulting Blends and Primary Stress in SW 1 and SW2
The fifth pattern is that the primary stress in the resulting blends is equivalent to the primary stress in both first and second source word. Based on the
statistic of data, the huge number of blends following this category occurs in the overlapping blends. This is based on the reason that it is the overlapping blend
which has overlapped segments. Moreover, in the case of many overlapping blends, the two segments which are combined bear stress. To sum up, the
occurrence of blends having stress in both source words is greater in the overlapping blends.
All types of overlapping blends, namely OV0, OV1, and OV2 follow this category. The number of blends in the type OV1 suited to this category, however,
is the most numerous. The examples of type OV0 in the overlapping blends are
‘guesstimate ‘guess x ‘estimate and ‘palimony ‘pal x ‘alimony. As seen in
‘guesstimate, the first syllable of each source words bears primary stress and overlaps one another, thus they become one primary stressed syllable. The same
way occurs in ‘palimony in which pal and al are completely overlapped segments
and assigned a primary stress. In the type OV1, the instances are bi’athlete
bi’athlon x ‘athlete and ‘backronym ‘backwards x ‘acronym. In bi’athlete,
the overlapped syllables ath in
bi’athlon and ‘athlete are both assigned a primary
stress. In ‘backronym, the overlapped segments æk are put in the same syllable
and stressed. The examples of type OV2 are ,angio’tensin ,angio’tonin x
,hyper’tension and de’clamatory de’clarative x ex’clama,tory. In ,angio’tensin, the overlapped segment is t. Accordingly, the primary stressed syllable is in the
syllable te which contains the segment t. In de’clamatory, the syllable cla in
de’clarative overlapped with that in ex’clama,tory. Moreover, both syllables are primary stressed syllables.
Nevertheless, this category does not necessarily combine syllables. Blends, however, combine constituents or so called splinters. When the splinters of both
source words carrying stress merge into one syllable and get primary stress on that syllable as a blend, they are also regarded as having stress of both SW1 and 2.
This case frequently happens in the clipping blends. The blend ‘fugly, which
combines ‘fat and ‘ugly, is one of the examples. It is apparent that the primary
stressed syllable occurs in the syllable fug which is the combination of segment fin SW1 and ug in the second source words. In their original syllable, both
segments f and ug bear stress. Hence, it can be said that the blend ‘fugly bears
stress in both SW1 and SW 2. However, this category does not always match into all types of clipping
blends. The clipping blends which correlate to this category are type B and C. The examples of type B are
‘sageism ‘sexism x ‘ageism and ‘wunky ‘weird x ‘funky. In ‘sageism, the segment s in ‘sexism become one syllable with the
segment age to make the stressed syllable sag. In ‘wunky, the first part of SW1
splinter w merge with splinter un to be one syllable and therefore the stress is there. Similarly in
‘sageism, splinter s and age are joined into one syllable. In type C, the examples are
‘wholphin ‘whale x ‘dolphin and ‘chofa ‘chair x ‘sofa. They both bear stress in both of the source words.