Must "big" syllables carry stress in English?

Abstract

Two types of syllables with ambiguous stress-status are identified:  open syllables with a full vowel adjacent to the primary stress (e.g. no.tá.tion) and closed syllables with a full vowel that occur non-adjacent to, but to the right of the primary stress syllable (e.g. cá.ra.van}). Both syllable types have a full vowel but need not be heavy; the latter type also has a coda consonant. These two segmental properties of syllables were separated into two "big" syllable shapes, [Cæ] and [Cəs]. Two perception studies were run in which these syllables were given the prosodic characteristics of unstressed syllables and placed in syllable strings where a listener would expect a stressed syllable given the otherwise alternating pattern of the string. Listeners also heard truly alternating strings, and strings with initial or final stress lapse without a big syllable as part of the stress lapse. It was found that unstressed open syllables with full vowels were highly confusable with a truly alternating pattern, whereas unstressed closed syllables were not. As both ambiguously-stressed syllable shapes under consideration involve a full vowel, our full vowel study gives support for the hypothesis that such syllables may not be stressed, and are confusable with stressed syllables because of their vowel quality.