STRESS
in
simple
words
The nature of stress
More easily recognized than defined
e.g. ´father´, ´apartment´, ´perhaps´
 The conventions for marking stress are: an
upper vertical bar before the stressed
syllable for primary stress e.g. /'fα:ðә/
and a lower bar for secondary stress e.g.
/‚fәυtә'græfık/
 Q: How do we identify the stressed
syllables?
 A: By choosing the role of either the
speaker or listener as each of them focuses
attention on different characteristics!

Speaker
 What
does the speaker do in
producing the stressed syllable?
 POINT OF VIEW OF PRODUCTION:
the speaker uses more muscular
energy in the production of stressed
than in the production of unstressed
syllables; chest muscles are more
active, subglottal pressure higher,
etc.
Hearer
 What
characteristics of sounds make
a syllable seem to a listener to be
stressed?
 POINT OF VIEW OF PERCEPTION:
stressed syllables are more
prominent than unstressed syllables.
PROMINENCE
 depends
-
-
on 4 factors:
Loudness (*)
Length (***)
Pitch (****)
Quality (*)
Loudness (*)
 Stressed
syllables sound louder
 In a sequence of same syllables the
one that is louder will be heard and
recognised as stressed
 It is, however, difficult to change
only loudness of a syllable without
changing other components of
prominence
Length (***)
 In
a sequence of same syllables the
one that is made longer will be heard
as stressed, e.g.
/dadadα:dada/
Pitch (****)

In speech it is closely related to the
frequency of vibration of the vocal folds,
and to the musical notion of low- and
high- pitched notes. It is a perceptual
characteristic of speech, and syllable
pronounced at a higher pitch than the rest
of them will be perceived as stressed
/da/
da/da/da/
/da/da/da/
Quality (*)
 If
a syllable contains a vowel that is
different in quality from the vowels in
surrounding syllables, it will be
perceived as stressed:
/dα:dα:d¡:dα:dα:/
Note that usually all four factors
combine to give us what is known as
word stress. So much so that it is in
fact difficult to utter the preceding
examples, e.g. that of loudness,
without involving the other three.
We can examine these factors
more objectively
The following screenshots are of the
WASP (Dept. Of Phonetics, University
College London) program for speech
analysis.

i TOLD you to go

i told YOU to go
Stress for learners of ESL
(no pun intended!)
English stress patterns are generally rather
irregular. Let’s make a comparison with a
language like Italian, which is highly
regular.
Any native speaker of Italian will know
where the stress should lie on the
following nonsense words: obbello,
toderno, entedettoli.
Unusual stress patterns are marked
orthographically, e.g.
calamita/calamità
meta/metà
 Native
English speakers cannot be so
sure about placement of stress in
words they have never heard (as
well as phonemic realisation).
Accents (ò,à,ù etc.) are not used in
the writing system.
Stress placement is by no means uniform
all over the English-speaking world.
 Some differences are regional (e.g. G.B.
magaZINE, N.Z. MAgazine) others are
between individual speakers in the same
geographical area (e.g. kiLometer,
KIlometer).
 These examples are present but not
particularly widespread.

Consequences of misplaced stress
Placing stress on the wrong syllable in
a single word usually doesn’t lead to
comprehension problems, although it
does require extra effort by the
listener.
Stress (together with intonation) has
important functions, misplacing, or
not placing enough stress may make
communication ambiguous.
Acquiring stress patterns
English word stress is not totally
haphazard and many authors have
proposed systems to explain its
functioning.
 While some recommend that learners
utilise these rather complicated systems,
others feel that it is better to take words
one-by-one.
 Clearly if words are to be taken
individually the learner must do a lot of
listening and/or dictionary work.

Stress in verbs and nouns

One problematic point is that of words
that have one stress pattern if nouns and
another if verbs e.g.
Noun
Verb
DEsert
deSERT
IMport
imPORT
EScort
eSCORT
REcord
reCORD
PROtest proTEST
Compounds
Compounds usually have main stress on the first,
qualifying item, e.g.
SMART card
CAR park
SWImming pool
AIRbag
NIGHTclub
N.B. many compounds are present in other
languages as loan words. Italian speakers usually
place the stress on the second element, e.g.
airBAG, and do the same when speaking in
English.
Next time:
LEVELS OF STRESS