Re: OT: Syllabic Stress in English

[Mark Perakh <perakh@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dennis wrote:

> Mark Perakh wrote:
> >
> > There is no such phenomenon in Russian and Ukrainian where changing
> > the stress, if at all permissible,  would mean changing meaning.
>
>         I was just about to look in Newmayer's book again,
> since he also, IIRC, mentioned Russian.  You mean
> there's nothing like the difference between projИct
> (verb) and prСject (noun)?
>
> Dennis

Right. It can't be compared because in Russian and Ukrainian, unlike in
English, the same word can't serve as both a verb and as a noun. Take
that example with project.  In Russian a word is used which has an
obvious non-Russian origin, proekt. It is a noun whose meaning is rather
close to the English project. The corresponding verb is proektirovat'
whose meaning is though not to project, but either to design, or,
alternatively, to extend into future, and, also, to send an image to a
screen (a proektor is that machine used to demonstrate movies, or
slides).  The word proekt though is only a noun and can't be used as a
verb. In the past there existed in Russian and Ukrainian poetry the
so-called poetic freedom, allowing to shift the stress to accomodate a
word in a line of a poem.  Nowadays it is viewed as a poet's ineptness,
unless it is an imitation of an ancient style. For example, the word
Molodets (meaning a brave man) has the stress on the last syllable.
However in the ancient sagas it was commonly used with the stress on the
first syllable, to fit the rythm. I don't see how it all helps with VMS
but since the point has been subjected to discussion, I join the ranks of
those who "could not resist." Cheers, Mark