L4 Sentence-Stress and Rhythm
•
•
•
•
Presenter:
胡美英 20978L020
Stress in Groups of Words
Which Words Should Be
Stressed?
L4 Sentence-Stress and Rhythm
1. Stress in Groups of Words I
Word-stress
phrase-stress
sentence-stress I am
history
noon
in the after
glad to see you.
1. Stress in Groups of Words II
sentence stress
a polysyllabic word
the syllable that normally receives word stress
I’ll
meet you tomorrow
.
1. Stress in Groups of Words III
There is a great deal more
difference between stressed
and unstressed syllables in
English than other languages
sentence stress as well word stress
1. Stress in Groups of Words IV
• Rhythm of many languages is
mechanically regular, a series of bursts
of sound all of about the same size and
force, like the machine gun fire, such as
Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Pilipino,
Chinese …
English pronounced with such a rhythm
would probably not be understood.
machine-gun fire vs.
a series of family groups
1. Stress in Groups of Words V
• In a language like French or Spanish, a line
of poetry is usually determined by counting
the total number of syllables, stressed and
unstressed alike.
• Lines containing the same number of
syllables are felt to be of the same length..
1. Stress in Groups of Words VI
• Two lines from Tennyson
“
Break, break, break,
On thy
cold gray stones, O sea!”
The unstressed syllables are so
unimportant rhythmically speaking,
that it is not even necessary to count them.
It may take as long to say the first as the second.
1. Stress in Groups of Words VII
• A significant observation regarding
English pronunciation
ACCENTS TEND TO RECUR AT REGULAR INTERVALS.
The more unstressed syllables there are between
accents, the more rapidly (and indistinctly)
those syllables are pronounced.
Pronouncing the following two sentences:
The boy is interested in enlarging his vocabulary.
Great progress is made daily.
1. Crushing together the unstressed syllables of
the first sentence to get them said in time.
2. How the stressed syllables of the second sentence
are somewhat lengthened so as to compensate for
the lack of intervening unstressed syllables.
Figure 7 Examples of English sentence rhythm
Five points to acquire
a good English speech rhythm
1. Giving proper emphasis to stressed syllables, and
making them recur rather regularly within a
thought group.
2. Weakening unstressed words and syllables, and
obscuring the vowels in most of them.
3. Organizing words properly into thought groups
by means of pauses.
4. Blending the final sound of each word and
syllable with the initial sound of the one
following within the same thought group.
5. Fitting the entire sentence into a normal
intonation pattern.
II. Which Words Should Be
Stressed?
• In general, content words are
stressed.
• Function words are left
unstressed.
• Unless the speaker wishes to
call special attention to them.
Content words, usually stressed
1. Nouns.
2. Verbs (with the few exceptions listed under
function words).
3. Adjectives.
4. Adverbs (including not and verbs
contracted with not, such as don’t).
5. Demonstratives: this, that, these, those.
6. Interrogatives: who, when, why, and so on.
Functions words, usually unstressed
1. Articles: a, an, the.
2. Simple prepositions: to, of, in, and so on.
3. Personal pronouns: I, me, he, him, it, and
so on.
4. Possessive adjectives: my, his, your, and
so on.
5. Relative pronouns: who, that, which, and
so on.
Functions words, usually unstressed
6. Common conjunctions: and, but, that,
as, if, and so on.
7. One used as a noun-substitute, as in
the red
dress and the blue one.
8. Verbs may be used as auxiliaries: be,
have, do, will, would, shall, should,
can, could, may, might, and must.
Auxiliaries -examples
• He is resigning. Do you see it?
We must wait.
Principal verb
• Harry is my best friend.
• Barbara has a lovely smile.
At the end of
a sentence
• I thought he was smarter than he is.
• All movies aren’t made in
Hollywood, are they?
Tag
question
Compounds
• Compound nouns with or without a hyphen ,
or written as two separate words– are
accented on the first of the two words and
receive sentence-stress.
bird’s-nest, drugstore,
an apartment house, business of fairs,
a social worker
Nominal Compounds
• With a special meaning, rather than as
a sequence of independent words. a noun
• She’s a social worker – she makes her
living by helping people solve social
an exception
problems.
• She’s a social worker – she is a
worker who enjoys social relationships
with other people.
Differing in Sentence Stress,
Differing in Meaning
1. It’s a gold
gold) .
watch (the watch is made of
2. It’s an apple
apple) .
pie (the pie is made of
1. It’s a metal cutter (it cuts metals) .
2. It’s an Metal Cutter (the cutter is
made of metal) .
Two-word Verbs
• Normally, the adverb receives sentencestress.
E.g. to split up, to put on
• Confusion: to look at him, to listen to
him.
• Distinction:
1. What are you putting on?
2. What are you looking at?
3. At what are you looking?
‘don’t’ stressed?
Venture not stressed?
Majority of Cases
1. I don’t imagine you turn
cannot
suc
ceed in a
stressed?
be not
bustressed?
siness venture.
ready to turn over to you.
3. This red rose is to be planted here.
4. He eats three full meals each day.
‘doesn’t’ stressed?
5. I shall deliver it to you.
6. She says that she likes the apartment,
doesn’t she?
‘this’ stressed?
2. In an hour it will be
Violations – Reason One
1. Calling special attention to a word by
placing contrastive stress on it.
E.g.
I don’t imagine you can succeed in
a business venture.
Wishing to suggesting that you
cannot succeed in a business
venture though perhaps someone
else could.
Violation –Reason Two
2. Giving the sentence a more regular rhythm.
One stressed syllable is usually separated from
the next by one, two, or three unstressed syllables.
4. He eats three full meals each day.
5. I shall deliver it to you.
Function word,
to, is stressed
The original regular stresses contain
six successive stressed syllables.
Violations
• Students of English should not,
however, allow these unusual
stresses they may occasionally
notice to confuse them and
lead them to distribute
stresses randomly.
The Basic Principles
• Content words are stressed.
• Function words are unstressed.
• Auxiliaries verbs, personal pronouns,
and possessive adjectives are function
words and should not be stressed.
• I and my are not as important as we
sometimes think.
L4 Sentence-Stress and Rhythm
• The end of my presentation
• Next presenter
• 黃宜茹 20978L019