I. The Nature of Word Stress. Word Stress Theories

Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

Dragomanov National Pedagogical University

Institute of foreign philology

English philology department

Word-Stress

Report of Theoretical phonetics

Olexandra Shevchuk

405 En group

Kiev 2010

Contents

Introduction...................................................................................................3

I. The Nature of Word Stress. Word Stress Theories.............................5

II. Types of English Word Stress.............................................................8

III. Word Stress Functions.......................................................................10

IV. Connects between word-stress and the pitch level............................13

Conclusion..................................................................................................... 15

Reference........................................................................................................16

Introduction

Word Stress (WS), the stress pattern or patterns associated with the words of a particular language when they are considered in isolation. Also called word accent [1].

Word stress is a feature used to give prominence to one or more syllables within a word. All words of more than one syllable have what is called word stress. This means that at least one of the syllables is longer and louder than the other syllables.

English words have certain patterns of stress which you should observe strictly if you want to be understood. The best way to learn English stress is to listen to audio materials and to repeat them after the speaker.

Word stress is definitely the key to understanding spoken English and it is used so naturally by native speakers of the English language that they are not even aware they are doing it. When non native speakers talk to English natives without the use of word stress they are likely encounter two problems:

1. The listener will find it difficult to understand the fast speaking native.

2. The native speakers may find it difficult to understand the non native speakers.

That's why the aim of my work is to show the importance of English accent.

Also I have put such tasks, as:

1. to investigate how an accent changes sense of a word;

2. to consider the theories of the word-stress;

3. to study types and functions of English word-stress.

English stress placement is a highly complicated matter. There is an opinion that- it is best to treat stress placement as a property of an individual word, to be learned when the word itself is learned. However, it is also recognized that in most cases when English speakers come across an unfamiliar word, they can pronounce it with the correct stress. Thus in principle, it should be possible to summarize rules of lexical stress placement in English, and practically all the rules will have exceptions.

I. The Nature of Word Stress. Word Stress Theories

Not all the syllables in a word are pronounced with the same degree of force. Usually, one syllable is made more prominent than the others. This phenomenon was observed by linguisticians long ago and a number of theories arose to explain it.

The phenomenon itself has never been disputed by anyone; its causes, however, have been explained in different ways. One of the most widespread theories is the expiratory- stress theory. According to this theory, it is supposed that the strongest syllable in a word (the stressed syllable), is made-more prominent than the others by means of a stronger current of air, by a stronger expiration [3, р.118].

Other linguists have pointed out that not only is the force of exhalation greater in a stressed syllable, but that the articulation of the syllable is more energetic. Consequently, the term "expiratory" has often been replaced by the term "dynamic".

D. Jones gives a similar explanation of stress and its nature. "Stress may be described as the degree of force with which a sound or syllable is uttered. It is essentially a subjective action. A strong force of utterance means energetic action of all the articulating organs; it is usually accompanied by a gesture with the hand or other parts of the body; it involves a strong 'push' from the diaphragm and consequently strong force of exhalation; this generally gives the objective impression of loudness" [3 p.119].

Word stress in language is based, as a rule, upon a number of principles, namely, the principles of:

1. Intensity. Stress produced by this means is termed dynamic.

2. Lengthening of the vowels and sometimes even the consonants of the stressed syllable. Stress produced by this means is termed quantitative.

3. Changes, in the distinctness of pronunciation and quality of the sounds.

Stress produced by this means is termed qualitative.

4. Changes in the pitch of the voice. Stress produced by this means is termed musical [4, p.134].

The factor of musical stress has not been sufficiently investigated. Moreover, no definite line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between word stress and sentence stress. G. P. Torsuyev is evidently the first to make an attempt at distinguishing between the features which characterize word-stress and those which characterize sentence-stress. He makes, the supposition that the musical factor belongs to the sphere of sentence-stress. In his recent book on English stress he says: "The musical component is evidently a feature of sentence-stress, not of word-stress, since it is not inherent in the structure of an English word."

The Quantitative Principle of stress in its, pure form manifests itself by a longer pronunciation of vowels in stressed syllables; unstressed vowels are short.

This principle, in its classical form, does not appear in languages in which vowel length is a phonemically distinctive, feature. It can be observed in languages like Russian, where vowel duration is not phonemic. Russian vowels may have a long

pronunciation in a stressed syllable only. In unstressed syllables the vowels are always short and weak. The quantitative principle is used in some languages as an auxiliary aid in making stressed syllables more prominent. This is the case in German and evidently also in English.

The Qualitative Principle, in its extreme form, is based on the fact that vowels of full formation are a feature of stressed syllables only, and cannot occur in unstressed positions. Vowels in unstressed syllables are weakened and reduced to a greater or lesser degree. The qualitative principle in its pure form can be found in Russian where the vowels in unstressed syllables are all subject to reduction. If the stressed syllable is near, the reduction is less; the further it is from stress, the more the vowel is obscured [3, р.120].

In Scandinavian languages lexical stress is considered to be both dynamic and musical; in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and other oriental languages musical or tonic word stress is observed: it is effected by the variations of voice pitch in relation to the neighboring syllables [5, p.172].

Some languages have no word-stress, as French, for e sample. It had long been considered that French words had the stress on the last syllable. And that is really the case when a word is pronounced by itself. Yet when a group of words is pronounced, all the words in this group are unstressed, and only the final syllable is stressed. This led L. V. Scerba to the conclusion that French has no word-stress. This can be illustrated by the following example: Vous' allez [vuza'le], Ой allez-vous [uale'vu], Allez vous i [alevu'za] [3, p. 123].

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