Syntactic stress

The most conspicuous characteristic of Fijian Fiji English sentence rhythm is that each syllable tends to receive an equal amount of stress (i.e. syllable-timed), with the last syllable (or stress group) being indicated by a fall in pitch. Without having conducted empirical research on Fijian English or Fijian syntactic stress patterns, our observations seem to indicate that sentence rhythm in both languages is very similar if not the same, that is, there tends to be equal stress on each stress group, with just a fall of pitch at the end of the sentence. In addition to this, it is our impression that the main verb in unmarked sentences is often given more stress than any of the other sentence elements. Some examples from Tent’s recordings include:

This seems to be characteristic of not only Pure Fiji English but often also Modified Fiji English. It is not uncommon to hear newsreaders on Fiji television or radio news use this syntactic stress pattern.