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1. CONtroversy or 2. conTROversy ?
Thread poster: Mats Wiman
kenajyssac
kenajyssac
Local time: 19:59
controversy pronunciation Jan 20, 2013

I find it very strange that anyone should advocate stress on the 'con' in this word. For a start, it makes the word very hard to pronounce. But more important, how many other words starting with 'con' or 'com' have this first syllable accented? The stress hardly ever falls on this syllable, e.g. comPETE, comPLETE, conTAIN, conCEIVE, comPARE, conSERVE, comPLY, conFORM, conTROL. The only words I can think of where the stress can be on this first syllable are words which have both forms, e.g. c... See more
I find it very strange that anyone should advocate stress on the 'con' in this word. For a start, it makes the word very hard to pronounce. But more important, how many other words starting with 'con' or 'com' have this first syllable accented? The stress hardly ever falls on this syllable, e.g. comPETE, comPLETE, conTAIN, conCEIVE, comPARE, conSERVE, comPLY, conFORM, conTROL. The only words I can think of where the stress can be on this first syllable are words which have both forms, e.g. conTRACT & CONtract; conVERSE & CONverse; conTEST & CONtest; conTENT & CONtent.

It appears that in these words which have both forms, the form which has the accent on the first syllable is a noun. So is CONtroversy is correct, because it is also a noun? I don't think so, because 'controversy' does not have two forms like these words. 'Competition', 'compulsion', 'compilation', 'container', 'comparison' 'condition' 'conglomerate' are also nouns, but the stress is not on the first syllable in these words.

[Edited at 2013-01-20 12:15 GMT]
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Mats Wiman
Mats Wiman  Identity Verified
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TOPIC STARTER
In memoriam
Con is rareley accented Jan 20, 2013

In my book none of the words you mention has the stress on the CON syllable. Most of them have the stress on the second syllable (compare, converse etc) with the exception of the American controVERSY vs. the British conTROVercy.

Mats


[Edited at 2013-01-20 13:26 GMT]


 
Ty Kendall
Ty Kendall  Identity Verified
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Hebrew to English
May also be generational Jan 20, 2013

The verb/noun divide with stress thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun

...I tend to say CONtroversy while my mom says conTROversy. Although I'd say there's a lot of free variation.


 
Giles Watson
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In memoriam
The child is father to the mother Jan 20, 2013

Ty Kendall wrote:

The verb/noun divide with stress thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun

...I tend to say CONtroversy while my mom says conTROversy. Although I'd say there's a lot of free variation.


The OED only offers CONtroversy while my 1988 edition of Chambers gives CONtroversy with conTROversy as a variant. On the other side of the pond, Webster has CONtroversy with conTROversy as a UK-only variant.

Read section 4 of this World Wide Words newsletter to find out why:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/rjtr.htm


 
Sarah McDowell
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The stress is on the first syllable Jan 20, 2013

In Canada the stress is always on the first syllable. It's CONtroversy.

 
Ambrose Li
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I’ve never heard of conTROversy Jan 20, 2013

kenajyssac wrote:

I find it very strange that anyone should advocate stress on the 'con' in this word. For a start, it makes the word very hard to pronounce. …

It appears that in these words which have both forms, the form which has the accent on the first syllable is a noun. So is CONtroversy is correct, because it is also a noun? I don't think so, because 'controversy' does not have two forms like these words. 'Competition', … are also nouns, but the stress is not on the first syllable in these words.

[Edited at 2013-01-20 12:15 GMT]


So maybe my memory of British accent is really completely gone now.

Whether a certain way to pronounce is hard or not depends on whether you are used to it or not, I suppose. I find conTROversy very hard to pronounce; as Sarah mentioned, CONtroversy is how we pronounce it here.

COMpetition sounds pretty normal to me too.


 
Giles Watson
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In memoriam
Daily Telegraph article Jan 21, 2013

Here's the Daily Telegraph article about stress shift in the UK that the WWW newsletter refers to.

 
Alexander C. Thomson
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This has to to with secondary stresses in polysyllabic nouns Jan 21, 2013

kenajyssac wrote:

I find it very strange that anyone should advocate stress on the 'con' in this word …


— Four-syllable nouns in English, particularly of Latin derivation, have historically been stressed in the pattern xx - x - (where xx is a strongly accented syllable, x a weakly accented syllable and - an unstressed syllable). The length and individual quality of the vowels in question (particularly where the penultimate syllable is a nearly-schwa vowel plus 'r') can serve to augment this secondary stress. We have to do with prosody here, not sheer etymology (which is what press articles and letter-writers to the press on 'correct' and 'incorrect' stress patterns typically refer to, to the exclusion of all other factors).

For a number of reasons, there are historical variants of English that preserve this xx - x - pattern. Scottish English pretty much exclusively has CON - tro - VERS - y even among younger speakers much exposed to the 'modern BBC' pronunciation that stresses the 'tro(v)' syllable: this is because the quality of vowels before 'r' in syllables that do not bear the (primary) stress has remained much more distinct than the schwa value of Received Pronunciation English (i.e., the VERS syllable is pronounced 'vairs', with a long diphthong, which greatly promotes the retention of (secondary) stress on that syllable, which in turn shunts, or keeps if you prefer, the primary stress on the CON).

Irish English has different prosody again, due to the consciously Latinate, even-syllabled approach with which English was spread throughout the country didactically in the C18th (as in the Scottish Highlands), and above all due to the stress patterns of Irish (Gaelic) that is such an influential substrate in Hiberno-English. You will even hear speakers who are 'close to Irish' (e.g. only in their grandparents' day did their family switch to English, or urban Irish people who consciously speak in the grand old Irish declamatory style, such as folk musicians/poets) pronounce words of this type - - XX - (i.e., con-tro-VERS-y).


 
Alexander C. Thomson
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con-/com- is not contra-/contro- Jan 21, 2013

kenajyssac wrote:

… For a start, it makes the word very hard to pronounce. But more important, how many other words starting with 'con' or 'com' have this first syllable accented? The stress hardly ever falls on this syllable, e.g. comPETE, comPLETE, conTAIN, conCEIVE, comPARE, conSERVE, comPLY, conFORM, conTROL. The only words I can think of where the stress can be on this first syllable are words which have both forms, e.g. conTRACT & CONtract; conVERSE & CONverse; conTEST & CONtest; conTENT & CONtent.





— But even to the extent that we do take etymology as our guide rather than prosody, the examples you give here are all monosyllabic prefix con-/com- [as in Latin cum, 'with, together'], whereas 'controversy' has a disyllabic prefix [root: contra, 'against']. Traditions of English where the awareness of this is higher (Scottish, Irish, North American in general), due to the fact that education in English reached its peak in those traditions in the Latin-conscious C18th, reflect it in their pronunciation of 'controversy'.

[Edited at 2013-01-21 08:43 GMT]


 
Giles Watson
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Stress timing Jan 21, 2013

Alexander C. Thomson wrote:

— But even to the extent that we do take etymology as our guide rather than prosody,



Alexander is right to put the emphasis here on prosody rather than etymology.

English speakers tend to stress-time their spoken language and it is obviously more effective for the purposes of communication if a single tonic accent (stress) can highlight a single word and a single notion.

The trouble with the more conservative pronunciation of CONtroversy is that it actually has two tonic accents, a primary one on the first syllable and a secondary one on the third. By its very nature, "controversy" is a word that tends to attract stress-focus but the original pronunciation doesn't fit terribly well with the one-stress, one-notion mechanics of stress-timing, hence the shift of the tonic accent to a position where the word can be pronounced as if it were a monosyllable (conTROversy).

Or something like that


 
Rachel Fell
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Dispute Jan 21, 2013

Am I mistaken in thinking that this word only started to be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable at the time of the miners' strike by Arthur Scargill, and that its use has been spreading ever since (unfortunately, in my view!), including to the BBC?

By the way -
Noel Castelino wrote:

...they always say conTROVersy on the BBC.
they don't always.


 
Giles Watson
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In memoriam
Yes Jan 21, 2013

Rachel Fell wrote:

Am I mistaken in thinking that this word only started to be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable at the time of the miners' strike by Arthur Scargill, and that its use has been spreading ever since (unfortunately, in my view!), including to the BBC?



I'm afraid you are, Rachel. It's the other way around because the second-syllable stress is the newer form.

From Michael Quinion's WWW newsletter (link in earlier post):
>
The data so far is unsurprising. The pronunciation of controversy with the stress on the second syllable is said to be used by 75% of respondents. That continues a trend that has been noted for decades: in a survey of pronunciation in 1988, Professor John Wells of University College London found that it and the older form with the stress on the first syllable were even then roughly equal in number of users; by 1998 60% of speakers used the conTROversy stress.
>

It's a similar story with "advertisement". The older first and third-syllable double stress, still flagged as the main pronunciation in Webster, has given way to a single second-syllable stress that enables the whole word to marked in speech by a single tonic accent.


 
Rachel Fell
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Re: dispute Jan 22, 2013

Giles Watson wrote:

Rachel Fell wrote:

Am I mistaken in thinking that this word only started to be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable at the time of the miners' strike by Arthur Scargill, and that its use has been spreading ever since (unfortunately, in my view!), including to the BBC?



I'm afraid you are, Rachel. It's the other way around because the second-syllable stress is the newer form.


I was referring to the word "dispute" though, albeit veering somewhat off topic and not making my subject obvious enough

[Edited at 2013-01-22 17:41 GMT]


 
Giles Watson
Giles Watson  Identity Verified
Italy
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In memoriam
Controversial disputes Jan 23, 2013

Hi again Rachel,

Sorry about the misunderstanding.

First-syllable stress (dìspute) when the word is used as a noun is just another example of the mechanism Ty mentioned. To be honest, it's actually quite useful, provided people use it consistently.


 
Oliver Walter
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Fashionable errors Jan 23, 2013

I remember hearing in the 1960s, an episode of the radio comedy programme "Beyond our Ken" (hosted by Kenneth Horne) in which he announced in his opening words that the programme would discuss the conTROversy about the pronunciation of CONtroversy. (There was no such discussion - he was just humorously making the point that there were 2 valid pronunciations.)

As for "ee-ther" and "eye-ther" (and some others): it seems there are some people who always make what I consider to be the l
... See more
I remember hearing in the 1960s, an episode of the radio comedy programme "Beyond our Ken" (hosted by Kenneth Horne) in which he announced in his opening words that the programme would discuss the conTROversy about the pronunciation of CONtroversy. (There was no such discussion - he was just humorously making the point that there were 2 valid pronunciations.)

As for "ee-ther" and "eye-ther" (and some others): it seems there are some people who always make what I consider to be the latest fashionable errors of pronunciation and vocabulary, and I ensure that I am not one of them. Therefore, for me:

the sun "eye-ther" does or does not go round the earth;
my pen is lying on the table (some would, incorrectly, say it is laying on the table; when they do, I immediatlely think "Oh yes, what is it laying on the table?")
and, of course, the Americans (at least for the past few years) practice their language skills; most of the British practise them, some think they practice them.

Oliver

[Edited at 2013-01-23 17:16 GMT]
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1. CONtroversy or 2. conTROversy ?






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