Gallicisms and the Dutch Final Stress: An Etymological Approach

In the light of the discussions regarding the Dutch word stress, syllable weight theories and generalisations were formulated and discussed in Metrical Phonology literature. Despite the minor differences in the postulations among different scholars, the main generalisations of the Dutch syllable weight theory seem to be overall in accordance. However, the very existence of a few exceptions in the lexicon reveals some of the inconsistencies to the main rules which Kager (1989) tried to soothe by adding minor rules. Since the realisation of final stress according to the main generalisations of the syllable weight theory in place is restricted, the aim of this text is to analyse final stress in the Dutch lexicon through an etymological and historical insight. The corpus analysed are words extracted from Kager (1989). The results of the analysis lead to a strong connection between final stress and Gallicisms and that phonological changes in French and Dutch are responsible for the high occurrence of oxytones in the Dutch lexicon.