A Noncyclic Analysis of English Word Stress

Most theories of stress have accounted for the basic stress patterns of English by a
combination of stress and destressing rules. As Kiparsky (1979) points out, Liberman and
Prince's (L&P) (1977) stress rules assign metrical structure in the following four main
steps:

1. Assign [+/- stress]
2. Assign "feet:
3. Connect remaining nodes
4. Label right branches  iff they are branaching (at the relevant level)

In the present study,  however, we give some arguments in favour of a noncyclic application of English word stress rules within the framework of a level-ordered morphology.

We deal exclusively with English derivational processes and argue (i) that level I morphology is the domain of word stress and destressing rules and (ii) that these rules apply in a noncyclic fashion, i.e., all level I affixation is done in one step before the stress and destressing rules apply. .