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Introduction to phonetics andEnglish phonology:
Sentence stress
What is stress?
Word stress is when a syllable in a wordis pronounced with more force than theother syllables: Eng•lish, pro•nounce,pro•nun•ci•a•tion.
What is stress?
Sentence stress is when one word in asentence is pronounced with more forcethan the other words:
Did he do that?
Did he do that?
Did he do that?
Did he do that?
Which words are stressed?
Rule of thumb: Content words (lexicalwords) are stressed. Function words areunstressed.
In other words: Nouns, adjectives,adverbs, main verbs are stressed.Pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions,conjunctions, articles are unstressed.
(This is a general rule.)
Which words are stressed?
When a content word doesn’t add newinformation, it can be unstressed.
French is a difficult language. Frenchverbs are particularly difficult.
Stress timing
Two types of languages: Syllable timed(e.g. Finnish, French, Spanish) andstress timed (e.g. Swedish, English).
In a stress timed language, the perceivedlength of time between each stressedword is roughly equal.
Stress timing
The beautiful mountain appearedtransfixed in the distance.
He can come on Sundays as long as hedoesn't have to do any homework in theevening.
Stress timing
The beautiful mountain appearedtransfixed in the distance.
He can come on Sundays as long as hedoesn't have to do any homework in theevening.
Stress timing
The beautiful mountain appearedtransfixed in the distance.
He can come on Sundays as long as hedoesn't have to do any homework inthe evening.
Stress timing
ARRIVING BANFORD STATIONSATURDAY NOON. PLEASE MEET.LOVE JANE
I shall be arriving at Banford station onSaturday at noon. Please can you meetme? With love from Jane.
Sentence stress vs. strongand weak forms
Many function words (e.g. some, and,could, the, him) have strong and weakforms. When the word is unstressed,the weak form is used.
Note! All unstressed function words don’thave strong and weak forms.
Thank you for listening!