On the stress pattern of the pónos type

Abstract

The field of Croatian accentual studies is not coherent. Accent confuses both ordinary language users and language experts. This paper offers a contribution to the establishment of a normative stress pattern for noun formations derived through zero suffixation. Its primary objective is to trace the spread of the secondary long rising accent characteristic of the pónos and pródor type, as well as its encroachment upon the original short rising accent of the pònos and pròdor type in Croatian monolingual dictionaries. Furthermore, by comparing codified and attested stress patterns, the study also seeks to identify developmental trends within standard Croatian prosody as manifested in a corpus of relevant derivations– specifically, disyllabic masculine nouns formed by zero suffixation from verbs with originally short prefixes. The analysis reveals that, although the short rising accent remains present in monolingual dictionaries, its retention is not as consistent as in earlier bilingual dictionaries. There is frequent oscillation between the two rising accents, and doublets often emerge under the influence of analogy (e.g., dòpis and dópis, by analogy with zápis). The inconsistencies among dictionaries suggest an ongoing prosodic realignment. Examination of standard pronunciation practices indicates that the long rising accent is increasingly gaining ground and displacing the short rising variant–particularly in derivations with certain prefixes (e.g., do-, po-, pro-), and especially in more recent coinages, many of which are technical or specialised terms (e.g., dópis, pógon, prómet, úred). When choosing between the codified accentuation and the accentuation that has been verified in the Western Neo-Štokavian pronunciation, it is the latter than should be given priority.