Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/376

 372 Lotspeich ABLAUT AND SENTENCE-ACCENT In the JEGPh, vol. XVI, pp. 173 ff., I tried to show that the ablaut stages e, o, and 9 or represent three different degrees of stress, depending upon whether the syllable in question occupied the focus of attention or was more or less removed toward the margin. I should like to offer here a bit of additional evidence in support of that theory namely, that these three degrees of ablaut correspond exactly to the three degrees of stress which are distinguishable in the accent of an ordinary prose sentence in modern English. A sentence is a judgment, a predicating of some fact about a subject, a focussing of the attention upon some element of a total concept. The concept, which is always more or less complex, arises first as a whole in the mind; and from this whole we single out a certain element, on which we center the attention. In the sentence, FATHER is A LAWYER, the word FATHER stands for the original total concept, and LAWYER represents the single element which is drawn from it into the focus of attention. This thought-process is a movement from a general basis to a specific goal, the creating of tension in which the subject and predicate are set off against each other; but the tension is greater at the goal than at the starting point, that is, LAWYER is more strongly stressed than FATHER (see Lipps, Asthetik, I, 325). The reverse of this may also occur. If the concept is concerned with LAWYERS, and we wish to call attention to the fact that FATHER is one possible element in that concept, then we say, FATHER is A LAWYER, stressing the former more strongly than the latter. This merely means that we have a different general concept as a basis. Again, either the subject or the predicate, or both, may be qualified as to time, place, manner, degree, etc., in which case the qualifying word receives the chief stress (unless it is merely an inseparable part of the qualified word), e.g., FATHER is A GREAT LAWYER. Thus we distinguish either two or three degrees of stress above the so-called unaccented elements of a sentence: for example, FATHER is A LAWYER, and FATHER is A GREAT LAWYER (cf. Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Bd. 1, 2. Teil, 391-392). Or, let us take a sentence containing a verb. THE MAN SEES; THE MAN SEES REPEATEDLY; THE