K-theory: Towards a Better Understanding of the Process of Stress Change in the Base of Derived English Words

One focal issue in phonology is explaining the process of stress taking place in the bases of English words when certain suffixes attach to those bases to form a derived word. To date, most literature on stress has described the stress position of English words using rules or constraints related to syllable structure and environment, not describing how the suffixes cause the stress change in the base in the derived word. This paper proposes a theory, referred to as K-theory, to help describe and explain the process of stress change. To find out a way to describe the process of stress change caused by the suffixes, it is assumed that stress information exists at vowels and syllabic consonants in the morphemes of the lexicon. The stress information in the suffixes provides understanding of the stress change by the hypothesis that a stress in the suffixes influences the stress change during suffixation. The stress of the suffixes helps explain these questions: how does new stress appears on the unstressed syllable, how does stress disappear from the syllable, and how do the stress rankings change? Principles such as stress movement, Exclusion Constraint,κ-Stress Deletion and stress absorption are used to describe how stress change takes place.