Stress(linguistics)

In linguistic, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables.

Understanding Syllables

To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables. Every word is made from syllables. Each word has one,two,three or more syllables.

 

Word                                                                                           Number of syllables

Dog                                               Dog                                                    1
Quiet                                            Qui-et                                                2
Expensive                                    Ex-pen-sive                                      3
Interesting                                  In-ter-est-ing                                   4
Unexceptional                           Un-ex-cep-tion-al                            5

Prominence

It would have been logically possible for every syllable to have exactly the same loudness, pitch and so on. But human languages have ways to make some syllables more prominent than others. A syllable might be more prominent by differing from the surrounding syllables in terms of

•  loudness

•  pitch

•  length

Prominence is relative to the surrounding syllables,not absolute. (A stressed syllable that is nearly whispered will be quieter than an unstressed syllable that is shouted.)

The realization of stress in English

In English, three ways to make a syllable more prominent are to make it:

•  louder

•  longer

•  higher pitched (usually)

In many languages the changing of a syllable which is stressed can change the meaning of a word.

Types of stress

The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent. In some languages stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed syllables. In other languages they may bear either higher or lower pitch than surrounding syllables, depending on the sentence type. There are also dynamic accent (loudness), qualitative accent (full vowels) and quantitative accent (length). Stress may be characterized by more than one of these characteristics. In English stress is more dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For example, consider the dialogue:

Is it brunch tomorrow?

No, it's dinner tomorrow.

 In this the stress related acoustic differences between the syllables of "tomorrow" would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of "dinner", the emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as "din" in "dinner" are louder and longer.

Sentence stress in English

In English speech, some words are stressed and others are not. In normal speech all nouns, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, main verb, adjectives and adverbs are stressed. The pronouns, prepositions, conjunction, helping verbs are not stressed. Look at the following sentence.
1) It's a 'door.
2) 'Take a 'book out of the 'bag.
3) The 'dog is a 'faithful 'animal.
4) 'Where are you 'going.
Sometimes, a word which is normally  unstressed in a sentence, is stressed when we want to lay emphasis on it. That is why the meaning of the whole sentence changes. Look at the following sentence:

He is my 'friend.

In normal speech, the word friend is stressed. But if we stress other words in the sentence, meaning changes as follows:

'He is my friend.
 (He, not the other fellow.)

He 'is my friend.
(Why do you deny it?)

He is 'my friend.
 (None Aslam's)

New Information stress

In a response given to a wh-question, the information supplied, naturally enough, is stressed. That is, it is pronounced with more breath force, since it is more prominent against a background given information in the question. The concept of new information is much clearer to students of English in response to wh-questions than in declarative statements. Therefore, it is best to start with teaching the stressing of the new information supplied to questions with a question word:
a) What's your NAME?
    My name's GEORGE.
b) Where are you FROM?
    I'm from WALES.
c) Where do you LIVE?
    I live in LONDON.
The questions given above could also be answered in short form, such as:
George,
Wales,
In London.

Timing:

English is a stressed timed language, that is stressed syllables appear at a roughly constant rate and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this.

Placement of stress within a word

As is well known, English is not one of those languages where word stress can be decided simply in relation to the syllable of the word.
The nature of stress is simple enough - practically everyone would agree that the first syllable of words like 'father', 'open', 'camera', is stressed, that the middle syllable is stressed in 'potato', 'apartment', 'relation', and that the final syllable is stressed in 'about', 'receive', 'perhaps' and some people feel they have some sort of idea of what the difference is between stressed and unstressed syllables, though they might explain it in many different ways. We will mark a  stressed syllable in transcription by placing a small vertical line ' high up just before the syllable it relates to
the words quoted above will thus be transcribed as follow

Father/ ˈfɑːðə(r)                          potato/ pəˈteɪtəʊ               about/ əˈbaʊt

Open/ ˈəʊpən                              apartment/ əˈpɑːtmənt      receive/ rɪˈsiːv

Two - syllable word

Here the choice is still simple: either the first or the second syllable will be stressed not both.
We will look first at verbs. The basic rule is that if the second syllable of the verb contains a long vowel or diphthong, or if it ends with more than one constant, that second syllable is stressed.

Apply/ əˈplaɪ                               attract/ əˈtrækt                  arrive/ əˈraɪv

If the final syllable contains a short vowel and one (or no) final constant, the first syllable is stressed. Thus

Enter/ ˈentə(r)                              open/ ˈəʊpən                                envy/ ˈenvi


A final syllable is also unstressed if it contains /əʊ /
e.g.                                               follow/ ˈfɒləʊ                                        borrow/  ˈbɒrəʊ

Three-syllable word

Here we find a more complicated picture, In verbs, if the last syllable contains a short vowel and ends with not more than one constant, that syllable will be unstressed, and stress will be placed on the preceding syllable. Thus:

Encourage/  ɪnˈkʌrɪdʒ                  determine/  dɪˈtɜːmɪn

If the final syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong or ends with more than one constant that final syllable will be stressed. Thus:

Entertain/ ˌentəˈteɪn                      resurrect/  ˌrezəˈrekt

Nouns require a different rule. Here, if the final syllable contains a short vowel or /əʊ /, it is unstressed; if the syllable preceding this final syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong , or if it ends with more than one constant, that middle syllable will be stressed. Thus:

Mimosa/  mɪˈməʊzə                      disaster/  dɪˈzɑːstə(r)

If the final syllable contains a short vowel and the middle syllable contains a short vowel and ends with not more than one constant, both final and middle syllables are unstressed and first syllable is stressed.

Quantity/ ˈkwɒntəti                       emperor/ ˈempərə(r)                             

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 some 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 constants.)