34 BROOMALL : 



these cases the motive is grammatical instead of substantive 

 significance. This contrast of accent to express a differentia- 

 tion of grammatical use may become a very efficient appa- 

 ratus in the English of the future. 



The statistics of variation in accent authorized by the 

 lexicographer, 396 words, may be tabulated as follows : — 



NUMBER OF SYLLABLES 



23 4567 



Variation 



1-2 . . . . 114. . . . 102 48 17 281 



1-2-3 I I 2 



1-3 13 7 I 21 



1-4 / I 



2-3 7 20 4 2 / 34 



2-4 5 5 



3-4 32 1 33 



4-5 I H 15 



5-6 4 4 



114 123 76 61 17 5 396 



In this table the number of sjdlables in the words is des- 

 ignated by the numeral at the top of the column. The order 

 in the word of the particular syllables between which the dic- 

 tionary acknowledges vacillation is designated at the left. 

 The respective totals of these elements of the tabulation are 

 at the bottom and to the right. Thus, the number 102 in the 

 third column is the count of words of three syllables each 

 with the accent authorized on either the first or second sylla- 

 bles, and it forms an item of the 123 total of trisyllables of 

 variant accent and of the 281 total of variations between the 

 first and second syllables of all the specimens. 



This table shows that the most frequent variation of accent 

 is in disyllables and trisyllables (respectively 114 and 123 ^^ 

 237 out of 396) and between the first and second syllables 



