Defining words phonologically
Words tend to be important units phonologically as well as syntactically. For example, the word is typically the domain of stress assignment. In French, stress always falls on the last syllable of a word. In Cairene Arabic, stress falls on one of the three final syllables, depending on syllable weight. In Polish, main stress falls on the penultimate (next-to-last) or antepenultimate (third-to-last) syllable (Hayes 1995: 67–8). Even this generalization is not absolute. Clitics (from Classical Greek klinein ‘to lean’) are grammatical words that are unable to stand on their own phonologically and must instead ‘lean’ on an adjacent word – be incorporated into its prosodic structure. This means that clitics often have an effect on the position of word stress. In Modern Greek, for example, stress is always on one of the last three syllables of a word. When a genitive clitic such as mas ‘our’ follows or leans on a word that is stressed on the third-to-last syllable, stress readjustment occurs (Nespor and Vogel 1986):
We see in (6) that ánѲropos ‘person’ is stressed on the third-to-last syllable. When followed by mas, a secondary stress is inserted on its final syllable. This readjustment is understandable if we think of the sequence ánѲropòs mas as a single word for stress purposes.
Imagine that no secondary stress were added to the sequence *ánѲropos mas, which we have just called a word. This hypothetical form bears stress only on its fourth-to-last syllable. Greek, however, requires that words be stressed no further back than the third-to-last syllable. The addition of a secondary stress on the syllable –pòs (the second-to-last syllable, the most common position for word stress in Modern Greek) creates a well-formed phonological word. This example demonstrates that the word-plus-clitic sequence functions as a single word as far as stress assignment is concerned in Modern Greek. (See the definition of phonological word.)
