ABSTRACT
Gimson (1980) confined himself to a relatively simple exposition of word stress and rhythm, and referred the reader to Arnold (1957). We would, therefore, probably be justified in concluding that the ideas put forward there by Arnold were known and acceptable to Gimson. The approach in Stress in English Words is to categorise isolate words on the basis of their rhythmic structures before and after the tonic (main stress), and to relate the categories thus established to vowel qualities. These fall into two groups: weak (or lenis) /ıəʊ (updating Arnold's symbols) together with [o] as the short unstressed variant of /əʊ/, and strong (or fortis) which includes the remaining vowels and diphthongs. Whilst from some points of view being non-dynamic, for example, not explaining rhythm/vowel alternations such as devote /dı `vəʊt/ (the intonation is marked according to the conventions of O'Connor and Arnold (1973)) devotee/ˈdevəʊˋti:/, Arnold's work does contain some very significant insights.
