The stress pattern of English words

1. The stress pattern of English words.

The nature of English words stress.
The functions of word stress.

2. The nature of English words stress.

A word, as a meaningful language
unit, has a definite phonetic
structure.
The phonetic structure of a word
comprises not only the sounds that
the word is composed of and not
only the syllabic structure that these
sounds form, it also has a definite
stress pattern.

3. The nature of English words stress.

There may be one prominent syllable in a word as compared to
the rest of the syllables of the same word (as in "important"),
there may be two equally prominent syllables (as in
"misbehave"), two unequally prominent syllables (as in
"e,xami’nation") or more prominent syllables (as in '
unre,lia’bility").

4. The nature of English words stress

• And this correlation of
degrees of prominence of
the syllables in a word
forms the stress pattern of
the word, which is often
called the accentual
structure of a word.
Monosyllabic words
have no stress pattern,
because there can be
established no
correlation of
prominence within it.
Yet as lexical units
monosyllables are
regarded as stressed

5. The nature of English words stress

The stress patterns of
words are generally
perceived without
difficulty.
Actual speech does
not consist of isolated
words. And the stress
pattern of a word is
deduced from how
the word is accented
in connected speech.

6. The nature of English words stress

On the other hand, the stress pattern of a word is only its potential
pattern in an utterance. Though English words generally retain their
stress patterns in connected speech, there occur numerous
instances when the stress pattern, of a word is altered

7. The nature of English words stress

Cf. 'un̍happy - He was ̍so unˋhappy.
Thus, word stress may be said to be a word—level concept,
which should not be confused with utterance stress. Word
stress be tangs to the word when said in isolation.
Whereas utterance stress belongs to the utterance.
He ̍remembered those ˋunhappy ̍days.

8. The nature of English words stress

The placement of
utterance stress is
primarily
conditioned by the
situational and
linguistic context.
It is also conditioned
by subjective factors:
by the speaker's
intention to bring out
words which are
considered by him to
be semantically
important in the
situational context.

9. The nature of English words stress

• As for the stress pattern of a word, it is
conditioned only by objective
factors: pronunciation tendencies and the
orthoepic norm.

10. The nature of English words stress

In different languages stress may
be achieved by various
combinations of these
parameters. Depending upon
which parameter is the principal
one in producing the effect of
stress, word stress in languages
may be of different types.

11. Different types of word stress

There are languages with dynamic word
stress. Stress in such languages is mainly
achieved by a greater force of articulation
which results in greater loudness, on the
auditory level, and greater intensity on the
acoustic level. The stressed syllables are
louder than the unstressed ones.
In languages with musical word stress
prominence is mainly achieved by variations
in pitch level, the main acoustic parameter
being fundamental frequency. Chinese,
Japanese, Vietnamese are languages with
musical word stress (or tonic word stress).

12. Different types of word stress

In languages with quantitative word stress the effect of
stress is mainly based on the quantity of the sound, i.e. its
duration. In such languages vowels in the stressed syllables
are always longer than vowels in unstressed syllables.

13. THE FUNCTIONS OF WORD STRESS.     

THE FUNCTIONS OF WORD
STRESS.
Word stress has a
constitutive function, as
it moulds syllables into a
word by forming its
stress pattern. Without
a definite stress pattern
a word ceases to be a
word and becomes a
sequence of syllables.
Word stress has a
distinctive function in
English, because there
exist different words in
English with analogous
sound structure which
are differentiated in
speech only by their
stress patterns

14. THE FUNCTIONS OF WORD STRESS.     

THE FUNCTIONS OF WORD
STRESS.
Noun
Adjective
'accent
̗̗
or
‘accent
Verb
'insult
'ab̗stract
ac’cent
or
acʹcent
in’sult ,
̗ ab’stract
or ab’stract

15. Is it the different degrees of stress or rather the stress patterns that distinguish one word from another? 

Is it the different degrees of stress or rather
the stress patterns that distinguish one word
from another?
There exist different views of the problem. Some linguists (G. Trager,
A. Hill) regard degrees of word stress as phonological units, which
can distinguish words. They consider degrees of word stress to be
separate phonemes.

16.

Alongside the generally accepted
phonemes they have introduced into
the phonemic' inventory 4 stress
phonemes: primary (or loud),
secondary (or reduced loud), tertiary
{or medial) and weak stress
phonemes.

17.

Another view is expressed by G. Torsuyev, H. Kurath, A. Gimson and others. They think
that it is the stress patterns of words that contrast with each other rather than
degrees of stress. Moreover, in one stress pattern secondary stress may be stronger
than primary stress in another stress pattern.

18. Questions

1) What types of word stress do you know?
2) What functions of word stress?