STRESS

Welcome to this lecture headed “STRESS”. We will be discussing all about stress. Enjoy your lecture.

A syllable is a unit of sound. It can be a vowel , a diphthong, or one or more vowels joined with one or more consonants .

Single-syllable words can be created with the use of one letter or a lot of letters.

a

be

six

look

bought

In the majorities of English dictionaries, words that are more than one syllable are divided by a dot or space between the syllables.See the example below:

1	2	3	4
through	ex·it	po·ta·to	in·cred·i·ble

Syllable Stress

English words that are polysyllabic (have more than one syllable) at all times have one syllable that is stressed.

In majority of English dictionaries, the stressed syllable is shown by a stress mark, a symbol that resembles an apostrophe. The stress mark follows the syllable that is stressed.

For instance, in the word incredible, the second syllable (-cred-) is stressed. Here are some examples.

2	3	4
ex’it	op’po·site	Feb’ru·ar·y
hu’mid	ex·am’ine	in·cred’i·ble

In English, most two-syllable nouns are stressed on the first syllable.

A’pril	car’rot	hon’or	fa’ther
Mon’day	le’mon	e’vil	Mar’y

Placing stress on the proper syllable is particularly significant for words that are both nouns and verbs.

Typically, if the stress is placed on the first syllable it is a noun. If the stress is placed on the second syllable it is a verb.

con’test	con·test’
de’fect	de·fect’
in’sert	in·sert’
ob’ject	ob·ject’

Word Stress Rules

There are two very straightforward rules about word stress:One word has only one stress

(One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear two stresses, you hear two words. Two stresses cannot be one word.

It is true that there can be a “secondary” stress in a few words. But a secondary stress is much smaller than the main [primary] stress, and is only used in long words.)We can only stress vowels, not consonants.

Here are a few more, rather complex, rules that can assist you to comprehend where to put the stress. But do not depend on them too much, due to the fact that there are a lot of exceptions.

It is better to try to “feel” the music of the language and to add the stress logically.

A. Stress on first syllable

Rule	Example
Most 2-syllable nouns	PRESent, EXport, CHIna, TAble
Most 2-syllable adjectives	PRESent, SLENder, CLEVer, HAPpy

B. Stress on last syllable

Rule	Example
Most 2-syllable verbs	preSENT, exPORT, deCIDE, beGIN

There are a lot of two-syllable words in English whose meaning and class alter with an alteration in stress.

The word present, for instance is a two-syllable word. If we stress the first syllable, it is a noun (gift) or an adjective (opposite of absent).

But if we stress the second syllable, it becomes a verb (to offer). More instances: the words export, import, contract and object can all be nouns or verbs depending on whether the stress is on the first or second syllable.

C. Stress on penultimate syllable (penultimate = second from end)

Rule	Example
Words ending in -ic	GRAPHic, geoGRAPHic, geoLOGic
Words ending in -sion and -tion	teleVIsion, reveLAtion

For a few words, native English speakers don’t always “agree” on where to put the stress. For instance, a few people say teleVIsion and others say TELevision. Another instance is: CONtroversy and conTROversy.

D. Stress on ante-penultimate syllable (ante-penultimate = third from end)

Rule	Example
Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy	deMOcracy, dependaBIlity, phoTOgraphy, geOLogy
Words ending in -al	CRItical, geoLOGical

E. Compound words (words with two parts)

Rule	Example
For compound nouns, the stress is on the first part	BLACKbird, GREENhouse
For compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part	bad-TEMpered, old-FASHioned
For compound verbs, the stress is on the second position	underSTAND, overFLOW

Definition: In phonetics, the degree of emphasis given to a sound or syllable in speech. It is also known as lexical stress or word stress.

Unlike a number of other languages, English has variable (or flexible) stress. This means that stress patterns can be instrumental in differentiating the meanings of two words or phrases that otherwise look the same.

For instance, in the phrase “every white house,” the words white and house receive approximately equal stress.

But when we mean the official home of the U.S. president, “the White House,” the word White is typically stressed more heavily than House. 

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be offered to specific syllables in a word, or to definite words in a phrase or sentence.

Stress is usually signaled by properties like increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in pitch.

The terms stress and accent are frequently utilized synonymously, but they are oftentimes distinguished, with definite particular kinds of reputation like a pitch accent, variously defined) being taken to fall under accent but not under stress.

In this instance, stress particularly may be known as stress accent or dynamic accent.

The stress placed on syllables within words is known as word stress or lexical stress.

A few languages have fixed stress, meaning that the stress on virtually any multi-syllable word falls on a specific syllable, like the first or the penultimate.

Other languages, such as English, have variable stress, where the position of stress in a word is not knowable in that way.

A few times more than one level of stress, like primary stress and secondary stress, may be identified. Nevertheless, few languages are considered to lack lexical stress completely.

The stress placed on words within sentences is known as sentence stress or prosodic stress.

This is one of the three mechanisms of prosody, in addition to rhythm and intonation.

It is made up of phrasal stress (the default emphasis of definite words within phrases or clauses), and contrastive stress (used to highlight an item − a word, or infrequently just part of a word − that is given particular focus).

Phonetic realization

There are a lot of ways in which stress shows itself in the speech stream, and these depend to a few extent on which language is being spoken.

Stressed syllables are often louder than non-stressed syllables, and may have a higher or lower pitch.

They may as well occasionally be pronounced longer. There are at times variations in place or manner of articulation – especially, vowels in unstressed syllables may have a more central (or “neutral”) articulation, while those in stressed syllables have a more nonessential verbalization.

Stress may be realized to unreliable degrees on diverse words in a sentence; often times the variation between the acoustic signals of stressed and unstressed syllables are negligible.

These specific distinguishing features of stress, or types of prominence in which particular features are dominant, are occasionally known as particular types of accent – dynamic accent in the case of loudness, pitch accent in the case of pitch (although this term usually has more specialized meanings), quantitative accent in the case of length, and qualitative accent in the case of variations in articulation.

These can be compared to the different types of accent in music theory. In a few contexts, the term stress or stress accent is used to mean particularly dynamic accent (or as an antonym to pitch accent in its different meanings).

Stressed syllables are frequently understood to be more forceful than non-stressed syllables.

Research has shown, though, that even though dynamic accent is followed by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract.

A lot of literature emphasizes the significance of pitch alterations and pitch motions on stressed syllables, but experimental back-up for this idea is weak.

Nonetheless, most experiments do not directly address the pitch of speech, which is a prejudiced supposed quantity.

Experiments typically measure the speech fundamental frequency, which is independently measurable, and strongly connected with pitch, but not pretty the same thing.

Lexical stress

Lexical stress, or word stress, is the stress placed on a given syllable in a word.

The position of lexical stress in a word may depend on certain general rules applicable in the language or dialect in question, although in some languages it is largely unpredictable, needing to be “learned” for each individual word.

Languages in which the position of the stress can normally be predicted by a simple rule are said to have fixed stress.

Other languages have stress placed on dissimilar syllables but in a predictable way, as in Classical Arabic and Latin (where stress is conditioned by the structure of the penultimate syllable). They are said to have a regular stress rule.

Statements about the position of stress are from time to time affected by the fact that when a word is spoken in isolation, prosodic factors come into play, which do not pertain when the word is spoken generally within a sentence.

Languages in which the position of stress in a word is less predictable are said to have variable stress. This applies to English, Russian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Here stress is normally truly lexical: it ought to be memorized as part of the pronunciation of an individual word.

In those languages with variable stress, stress may be phonemic, in that it can serve to differentiate otherwise identical words; for instance, the English words insight and incite are differentiated in pronunciation only by the fact that the stress falls on the first syllable in the former and on the second syllable in the latter.

Other instances include: umschreiben (“rewrite”) vs. umschreiben (“paraphrase, outline”) in German. English compound nouns can alter their meaning based on stress, as with paper bág (a bag made of paper) and páper bag (a bag for carrying newspapers).

Dialects of the same language may have dissimilar stress placement. For instance, the English word laboratory is stressed on the second syllable in British English (labóratory), but the first syllable in American English (láboratory).

Levels of stress

Some languages are described as having both primary stress and secondary stress. A syllable with secondary stress is stressed in relation to unstressed syllables, but not as powerfully as a syllable with primary stress.

Prosodic stress

Prosodic stress, or sentence stress, means stress patterns that apply at a higher level than the individual word – namely within a prosodic unit.

It may engross a definite natural stress pattern characteristic of a given language, but may as well involve the placing of emphasis on fastidious words due to their relative importance (contrastive stress).

An instance of a natural prosodic stress pattern is that described for French above; stress is placed on the final syllable of a string of words

Prosodic stress is as well frequently often used sensibly to emphasize (focus attention on) specific words or the ideas connected with them. Doing this can alter or clarify the meaning of a sentence; for instance:

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 took the test you are thinking of, but there was more than 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.)

In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue

“Is it brunch tomorrow?”

“No, it’s dinner tomorrow.”

In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the syllables of “tomorrow” would be minute compared to the differences between the syllables of “dinner”, the emphasized word.

Thanks for reaching to this point marking the end of this lecture.

Your Lecture Master:

Mst. Ugonwanne Joshua