ABSTRACT
Generative descriptions of phrase stress in English have traditionally been concerned only with the levels of stress on the lexical category items, i.e., nouns, verbs, and adjectives, appearing within larger syntactic units. But recent papers (by King (1970), Baker (1971), Lakoff (1970), Zwicky (1970), Bresnan (1971b), Fiengo (1971), and Brame and Baker (1972)) have discussed phenomena which are related to the stress of non-lexical items They have brought to light many facts which have long lain dormant in dusty volumes by phoneticians, as well as new facts which only a generative approach to language could reveal as important. These extremely interesting discussions have made clear the need for a comprehensive understanding of the processes of stress reduction in non-lexical category items in English. Below I will propose an analysis of this stress reduction and the vowel reductions stemming from it.
