Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

Dragomanov National Pedagogical University

Institute of foreign philology

English philology department

Word- Stress

Report of Theoretical phonetic

Lyubchich Ira

405 En group

Kiev 2009

Contents

Introduction

I.  The nature of English Word Stress

II.  Types of English Word Stress

III.  Word Stress tendencies

IV.  Word Stress functions

V.  Variation in word stress

VI.  English Word Stress - Does It Really Matter?

Conclusion

References

Introduction

 

Word stress is not used in all languages. Some languages, Japanese or French for example, pronounce each syllable with eq-ual em-pha-sis. Other languages, English for example, use word stress.

Word stress is your magic key to understanding spoken English. Native speakers of English use word stress naturally. Word stress is so natural for them that they don't even know they use it. Non-native speakers who speak English to native speakers without using word stress, encounter two problems:

1.  They find it difficult to understand native speakers, especially those speaking fast.

2.  The native speakers may find it difficult to understand them.

So, in this report we will focus our attention on the accentual patterns of English words. The sequence of syllables in the word is not pronounced identically. The syllable or syllables which are uttered with more prominence than the other syllables of the word are said to be stressed or accented. The correlation of varying prominences of syllables in a word is understood as the accentual structure of the word or its stress pattern.

I. The nature of English Word Stress

 

Any word spoken in isolation has at least one prominent syllable. We perceive it as stressed. Stress in the isolated word is termed ws, stress in connected speech is termed sentence stress. Stress indicated by placing a stress mark before the stressed syllable: Stress is defined differently by different authors. B. A. Bogortsky, for instance, defined stress as an increase of energy, accompan by an increase of expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones fined stress as the degree of force, which is accompanied by a stress force of exhalation and gives an impression of loudness. H. Sweet stated that stress is connected with the force of breath. Later, however P. Jones wrote, that “stress or prominence is effected by inherent sonority, vowel and consonant length and by intonation.”’ A. C. Gison also admits that a more prominent syllable is accompanied pitch changes in the voice, quality and quantity of the accented sounds.[2;179]

In disyllabic and polysyllabic words different syllables possess different degrees of special prominence in different positions in relation to the beginning, middle and end of words.

Word stress (WS) can be defined as the singling out of one or more syllables in a word, which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound which is usually a vowel. The analysis of WS can be carried out according to the following parameters:

(i) the nature of English word-stress;

(ii) its degree and syllabic location;

(iii) its functions;

(iv) basic stress patterns of the English words.[3;171]

If we compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the two contract, we may note that in the stressed syllable:

(a) the force of utterance is greater, which is connected with more energetic articulation;

(b) the pitch of the voice is higher, which is connected with stronger tenseness of the vocal cords and the walls of the resonance chamber

(c) the quantity of the vowel is greater, a vowel becomes longer;

(d) the quality of the vowel !& in the stressed syllable is different from the quality of this vowel in the unstressed position, in why it is more narrow than.

On the auditory level a stressed syllable is the part of the word which has a special prominence. It is produced by a greater loud and length, modifications in the pitch and quality. Their physic correlates are: intensity, duration, frequency and the formant structure. All these features can be analyzed on the acoustic level.

Word stress can be defined as the singling out of one or more s tables in a word, which is accompanied by the change of the force utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound, which is usually a vowel.

In different languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more significant than the others. According to the mo important feature different types of word stress are distinguished different languages.

If special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables achieved mainly through the intensity of articulation, such type stress is called dynamic, or force stress.[2;179]

Stress can be studied from the point of view of production and of perception. While producing stressed syllables, speakers use more muscular energy than they do for unstressed syllables. From the perceptual point of view, stressed syllables are recognized as stressed because they are more prominent than unstressed syllables. Phoneticians claim that at least four different factors are important in making a syllable prominent:

1)  listeners seem to feel stressed syllables louder than unstressed; thus loudness is a component of WS (Peter Roach explains that if one syllable in a sequence of identical syllables, e.g. ba:ba:ba:ba:, is made louder than the others, it will be heard as stressed);

2)  2) if one of the syllables in the above-given “nonsense” word is made longer, that syllable is heard stressed, so the length of the syllables is another important factor in making prominence;

3) every syllable is said on some pitch (related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords which is an essential perceptual characteristic of speech) . ............