No Exception in the English Lexicon: A Reply to Hammond (1999)

This paper aims to review Hammond's (1999) analysis of English word stress and propose an alternative by exploring two questions: Why English words display flexible stress patterns and what are the conditions all English words have to obey. As answers to the questions I propose an invisible suffix after words with final stress, foot structures with two levels, and four constraints, two of them are attained by revision of Hammond's. As long as words satisfy the constraints, more than one foot structures are allowed. That is why the English lexicon displays flexibility.