Canadian stress: from specificity to the whole lexicon

A complex combination of British and American features in Canadian English, as well as long-lasting contact with French and other languages was the reason why Canadian stress was first studied by tracing British and American patterns in its stock. The search for its national identity resulted in finding a certain share of both major English sources and a few others which are not to be found in either of them. The goal of the present study is to test the lexicon included into the British and Canadian dictionaries for the frequency of the accentual models in English, previously found on the basis of British-American differences in word stress. In particular, we were interested in the occurrence of Canadian nationally specific features of pre-tonic and especially post-tonic rhythmical stresses. The results of the research in the lexicographic sources verified the basic findings of the previous works by giving evidence of post-tonic pattern prevalence in Canadian English as opposed to the British pre-tonic one. Alongside with it, new data on the frequencies of syllabic word structures which facilitate the use of certain accentual patterns throw new light on the constraints and their actual spread in the Canadian English lexicon.