1 Frequency of Stress Patterns in English : A Computational Analysis

Word reduction by weak syllable omission is a fairly common phenomenon in several populations, including normally developing children, children with Specific Language Impairment, and adults with aphasia. A recent study (Carter & Clopper, submitted) has shown that normal adults reduce words using strategies similar to those used by the above-mentioned populations and that these strategies vary to some degree with the number of syllables and the location of the primary stress of the target word. A computational analysis of several frequency measures was conducted on the entire set of English words contained in the Hoosier Mental Lexicon (Luce & Pisoni, 1998) that follow nine different patterns of syllable number and primary stress location (syllable-stress patterns). The frequency measures considered were total word count within each syllable-stress pattern, sum frequency of all words within each syllablestress pattern, and mean, median, and mode frequencies of all words within each syllable-stress pattern. Results indicated that words in English are not evenly distributed across syllable-stress patterns. Specifically, shorter words tend to be more frequent in terms of word count, sum frequency, and mean frequency than longer words. Additionally, some syllable-stress patterns, such as three-syllable and four-syllable words with stress on the final syllable are much less frequent than other words with the same number of syllables. The implications of these results include possible explanations for the different strategies found in word reduction studies for different syllable-stress patterns.