The fallacy of accent (also referred to as ''accentus'', from its Latin denomination, and misleading accent
) is a type of
ambiguity that arises when the meaning of a sentence is changed by placing an unusual
prosodic stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
,
or when, in a written passage, it is left unclear which word the emphasis was supposed to fall on.
Later writers have extended the fallacy to ambiguity caused in sentences due to grammar as well.
History
Among the thirteen types of fallacies in his book ''
Sophistical Refutations
''Sophistical Refutations'' ( el, Σοφιστικοὶ Ἔλεγχοι, Sophistikoi Elenchoi; la, De Sophisticis Elenchis) is a text in Aristotle's ''Organon'' in which he identified thirteen fallacies.Sometimes listed as twelve. According to A ...
'',
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...
lists a fallacy he calls (''prosody''), later translated in Latin as ''
accentus
Accentus (or Accentus Ecclesiasticus; Ecclesiastical accent) is a style of church music that emphasizes spoken word. It is often contrasted with ''concentus'', an alternative style that emphasizes harmony. The terms ''accentus'' and ''concentus'' ...
''.
While the passage is considered obscure, it is commonly interpreted as referring to the ambiguity that emerges when a word can be mistaken for another by changing
suprasegmental phonemes, which in Ancient Greek correspond to
diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
(accents and breathings).
Since words stripped from their diacritics do not exist in the Ancient Greek language, this notion of ''accent'' was troublesome for later commentators.
Whatever the interpretation, in the Aristotelian tradition the fallacy remains roughly confined to issues of
lexical stress. It is only later that the fallacy came to identify shifts in prosodic stress.
Example
''I'' didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)
I ''didn't'' take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)
I didn't ''take'' the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)
I didn't take ''the'' test yesterday. (I took a different one.)
I didn't take the ''test'' yesterday. (I took something else.)
I didn't take the test ''yesterday''. (I took it some other day.)
See also
*
Innuendo
An innuendo is a hint, insinuation or intimation about a person or thing, especially of a denigrating or derogatory nature. It can also be a remark or question, typically disparaging (also called insinuation), that works obliquely by allusion ...
*
Quoting out of context
*
Syntactic ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.
Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of mean ...
References
{{Fallacies
Ambiguity
Syntax
Verbal fallacies