Historical Effects of Stress
It is common for stressed and unstressed syllables to behave differently as a language evolves. For example, in the Romance languages, the original Latin short vowels /e/ and /o/ have generally become diphthongs when stressed. Since stress takes part in verb conjugation, this has produced verbs with vowel alternation in the Romance languages. For example, the Spanish verb volver has the form volví in the past tense but vuelvo in the present tense (see Spanish irregular verbs). Italian shows the same phenomenon but with /o/ alternating with /uo/ instead. This behaviour is not confined to verbs; for example, Spanish viento "wind", from Latin ventum; or Italian fuoco from Latin focum'.
Read more about this topic: Stress (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the words historical, effects and/or stress:
“What is the historical function of Parliament in this country? It is to prevent the Government from governing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“If I had any doubts at all about the justice of my dislike for Shakespeare, that doubt vanished completely. What a crude, immoral, vulgar, and senseless work Hamlet is. The whole thing is based on pagan vengeance; the only aim is to gather together as many effects as possible; there is no rhyme or reason about it.”
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
“A society which is clamoring for choice, which is filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice. The stress is in our civilization.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)