Lecture 1 Phonetics as a Linguistic Science Plan

Lecture 11

Word Stress in English

Plan:

1. Stress as a Suprasegmental Unit

2. Types of Stress in Languages

3. Approaches to Explain Nature of Stress

4. Degrees of Stress

5. Accentual Structure of English Words

6. The Place of Word Stress in English

7. Functions of Word Stress

8. Accentual Tendencies in English
1. Stress as a Suprasegmental Unit

Stress is a prosodic (suprasegmental) phenomenon, which characterizes phonetic units higher than segmental phonemes. It can characterize syllables, rhythmic groups, intonation groups and utterances.

Linguists generally distinguish between two types of stress: word stress and sentence stress.

Word stress is a feature of the phonetic structure of a word as a vocabulary unit, i.e. of a word pronounced in isolation. Word stress, as all other phonetic phenomena, can be described and analyzed on three different levels: the auditory level, the acoustic level and the linguistic level.

The auditory impression of word stress is that of prominence. Therefore, on the auditory level, word stress is generally defined as the greater degree of special prominence given to one or more syllables in one and the same word.

But it should be emphasized that word stress refers to the relative prominence of all the syllables of a word. One or more syllables of the word may be marked by different degrees of prominence as compared to the rest of the syllables of the same word. There may be one prominent syllable in a word (as in “mother’), two equally prominent syllables (as in “ˈmisbeˈhave”), two unequally prominent syllables (as in “eˌxamiˈnation”) or more prominient syllables (as in “ˈunreˌliaˈbility”). And this correlation of degrees of prominence in the syllables of a word forms the accentual structure of the word.

Monosyllabic words, therefore, have no accentual structure, and they cannot be said to have, by themselves, one degree of stress rather than another. But it is generally agreed that in isolation a monosyllabic word is stressed.

The accentual structure of a word is generally perceived without difficulty. People easily distinguish between “ˈsubject” and “subˈject”.

Auditory analysis shows that the effect of prominence may be produced by a greater degree of loudness, greater length of the stressed syllabic, some modifications in its pitch and quality.

Investigations of the acoustic nature of word stress show that the perception of prominence may be due to definite variations or the following acoustic parameters: intensity, duration, frequency, formant structure. All these parameters generally interact to produce the effect of prominence.

2. Types of Stress in Languages

In different languages stress may be achieved by various combinations of these parameters. Depending upon which parameter is the principal one in producing the effect of stress, word stress in languages may be of different types.

There are languages with dynamic word stress. Stress in such languages is mainly achieved by a greater force of articulation which results in greater loudness, on the auditory level, and greater intensity, on the acoustic level. The stressed syllables in such languages are louder than the unstressed ones. All the other parameters play a less important role in producing the effect of stress in such languages.

In languages with musical word stress prominence is mainly achieved by variations in pitch level, the main acoustic parameter being fundamental frequency. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese are languages with musical word stress (or tonic word stress). The meaning of the words in those languages depends on the pitch levels of their syllables.

Swedish word stress is characterized as dynamic and musical, because both loudness and pitch variations are relevant factors in producing prominence.

In languages with quantitative word stress the effect of stress is mainly based on the quantity of the sound, i.e. its duration. In such languages the vowel in the stressed syllable is always longer than the same vowel in an unstressed syllable. Russian word stress is considered to be quantitative by a number of linguists. But Russian phoneticiants have proved that duration is not the only parameter that produces the effect of stress in Russian.

Besides those types of word stress, some linguists (e.g. G. Torsuyev) distinguish qualitative word stress, as in many languages (including English) the quality of the vowel in a stressed syllable is unobscured and consequently differs greatly from the quality of the same vowel in unstressed syllables where it is reduced and obscured. Cf. the vowels in “subject” /ˈsʌbʤIkt/ and “subject” /səbˈʤekt/. On the acoustic level the physical correlate of quality is the formant structure. The spectrum of a vowel is unobscured when stressed and obscured when unstressed.

What type of word stress is English word stress? What i its acoustic nature?

Until recently, English word stress was considered to be dynamic, as the role of loudness in rendering a syllable more prominent than the neighbouring syllables is indisputable in English. But numerous investigations of the acoustic nature of English word stress have it clear that the effect of word stress in English does not depend on intensity alone, and that English word stress is of a complex nature.