ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the question of why in the case of some English disyllabic combining forms, the stressed penult contains either a long or short vowel; e.g., the combining form zygo- can be pronounced either /ˈzʌɪɡəʊ/ or /ˈzɪɡəʊ/, with the nucleus of the stressed penult being interchangeably the diphthong /ʌɪ/ and the short monophthong /ɪ/. It is argued that long pronunciations such as /ˈzʌɪɡəʊ/ are mainly due to occurrences in pen-initially stressed formations such as zyˈgoma, zyˈgosis, zyˈgotic, etc., in which pre-tonic y has the potential of being phonetically realized as /ʌɪ/. Short pronunciations such as /ˈzɪɡəʊ/ are, by contrast, mainly due to formations such as ˈzygospore and ˈzygotene, in which the stressed syllable is separated from the right word boundary by at least two unstressed syllables (which, given the oft-mentioned stress-timing of the English language, may count for an English speaker as rhythmically unfortunate).

中文翻译：

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双音节组合形式及其重读元音

摘要 本文关注的是为什么在某些英语双音节组合形式的情况下，重读倒数第二个包含长元音或短元音？例如，组合形式 zygo- 可以发音为 /ˈzʌɪɡəʊ/ 或 /ˈzɪɡəʊ/，重读倒数第二个的核心是双元音 /ʌɪ/ 和短的单元音 /ɪ/。有人认为，像 /ˈzʌɪɡəʊ/ 这样的长读音主要是由于出现在以笔开头的重读形式中，例如 zyˈgoma、zyˈgosis、zyˈgotic 等，其中前主调 y 有可能在语音上被实现为 /ʌɪ/ . 相比之下，诸如 /ˈzɪɡəʊ/ 之类的短发音主要是由于诸如 ˈzygospore 和 ˈzygotene 之类的构成，其中重读音节与右词边界之间至少有两个非重读音节（其中，