DefinePK

Abstract

Pakistani English PE, a nativizedvariety of English, has a differentlexical stress and foot pattern to that ofany native variety of English. Thisdifference in the varieties often resultsin comprehension failure or leads toawkward situations. The present studyfocuses on describing the stress ofdifferent syntactic categories of PE toillustrate its foot patterns. The data wascollected from the English newsbroadcasted from Radio PakistanIslamabad for Pakistani Englishvariety. The results show that PE issignificantly different from nativeEnglish varieties such as BritishStandard English BSE, in respect toplacing primary and secondary levelstress on different syllables in amultisyllabic word. For instance,unlike native English varieties, wherelexical stress on a penultimate syllableis more common in case of nouns andadjectives, Pakistani English prefers toplace the stress on the ultimate syllableirrespective of which syntacticcategory is chosen. Furthermore,differences are also noticed in footpatterns; as foot pattern of PE is‗Iambic‘ unlike BSE which shows‗trochaic‘ foot pattern.