weight (n.)

In PHONOLOGY, a concept used to distinguish levels of syllabic PROMINENCE, based on the segmental constituency of SYLLABLES. Syllables can be metrically heavy (H) or light (L): a light (or ‘weak’) syllable is one whose RHYME comprises a short-vowel NUCLEUS alone or followed by a CODA of no more than one short consonant (in terms of phonological LENGTH, a MORA); a heavy (or ‘strong’) syllable is any other type (its phonological length being greater than one mora). Syllables of structure CVVC or CVCC are sometimes referred to as ‘superheavy’. The weight-to-stress principle is the tendency for heavy syllables to receive STRESS. The notion of weight has also come to be important in several models of NON-LINEAR PHONOLOGY.

In SYNTAX, a concept which relates the relative length/COMPLEXITY of different elements of SENTENCE STRUCTURE. For example, a CLAUSE as SUBJECT or OBJECT would be considered heavier than a LEXICAL NOUN PHRASE, which would be heavier than a pronoun. Such variations in length and complexity seem to influence the ORDER of elements in languages: for example, there is a preference for short > long linearization in right-branching (VO) languages, and for long > short in left-branching (OV) languages.