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RE: "dark horse"(revised)
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STAHLKE, HERBERT F
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Sep 15, 2009 17:22 PDT
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It's not that "dark horse" cannot be accented. Of course, as a compound noun it will get compound stress rather than nuclear stress. It's rather that in the sentence in question it's not accented. In your sentence, the copula is contracted, an extreme form of deaccenting, because of the contrastive stress on "dark." Or have I missed something? I've been away from email for a couple of days.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark GRAY [mailto:mark-@wanadoo.fr]
Sent: 2009-09-14 09:42
To: phone-@topica.com
Subject: RE: [phonlist] "dark horse"(revised)
Dear All,
Sorry to complicate things further, but I think it is also worth pointing out that the expression 'dark horse' is not always de-accented. Here is my recollection of an example I heard on the BBC soap 'EastEnders' many years ago and which went something like this
FRANK (talking to a collection of various cronies in the pub): You heard about what old Arthur's been up to? He's a DARK horse, isn't he, eh?
Here of course, in contrast to the the examples Tami gives, the speaker is presenting himself as the source of the knowledge of Arthur's dark-horse-like behaviour, rather than offering a reaction to new knowledge provided by the interlocutor. In other words, at the moment of speaking, Frank cannot be said to assume that and so de-accenting that term would sound rather incongruous.
Best
Mark Gray
Université Paris 12 - Val de Marne
| | Message du 14/09/09 12:12
De : "Damien Hall"
A : phone-@topica.com
Copie à :
Objet : RE: [phonlist] "dark horse"(revised)
Dear Tami
You asked:
| | Would you tell me why the be-verb has the nuclear accent whereas 'dark
horse' fails to be accented? Thank you very much in advance.
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I think it's basically to do with contrast. Neither 'dark' nor 'horse' is
accented because neither of those elements is contrasted with anything (in
that they are instances of the idiom _dark horse_ 'someone who, possibly
surreptitiously, has done something / habitually does things which are not
expected but are advantageous to that person, and usually are admired by
the person giving the label') (I'm sure I could have defined it more
succinctly than that!). That is, there is no idiom 'white horse' (etc)
which could have caused 'dark' to receive contrastive stress, and no idiom
'dark cow' (etc) which could have caused 'horse' to receive contrastive
stress. Furthermore, as 'dark horse' is an idiom, it may in any case be
opaque to phonological processes such as division so that only one element
of it can receive contrastive stress.
On the other hand, in my opinion, the be-verb receives stress in these
sentences because it is contrasting the situation in question with the
normal state of affairs, which is that most people (by definition) are not
dark horses.
Hope that helps!
All the best
Damien
--
Damien Hall
University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK
Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
(mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
Fax +44 (0)1904 432673
BORDERS AND IDENTITIES CONFERENCE, JAN 2010:
http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb/bic2010/
http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm
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