Tendencies in the placement of word stress

They generally distinguish three tendencies which account for the variations of stress patterns in English: recessive, rhythmical and retentive tendencies.

Recessive tendency is the tendency to stress the beginning of the word typical of Germanic languages.

In Germanic languages, where short one or two-syllable words predominated, the stress originally fell on the initial syllable or the second syllable, the root syllable in words with prefixes. Unrestricted recessive tendency is observed in the native English words with no prefix (mother, daughter, brother, swallow, carry) and in assimilated French borrowings (reason, colour). Restricted recessive tendency marks English words with prefixes, some of which no longer exist as such (foresee, withdraw, begin, apart, forget).

The rhythmical tendency reflects the rhythm of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. This tendency caused the appearance of the secondary stress in the multisyllable French borrowings, e.g. revolution, organisation, assimilation, etc. It also explains the placement of primary stress on the third syllable from the end in three- and four-syllable words, e.g. cinema, situate, articulate, significant.

The third tendency is called retentive. A derivative retains the stress of the original (parent) word, e.g. similar – assimilate, recommend – recommendation. Sometimes in the derivative the primary stress of the original word turns into secondary stress, e.g. demonstrate – demonstration.

Functions of word stress

Word stress performs the following functions:

Word stress organizes the syllables into a word. It creates a particular pattern of relationships among syllables, making some syllables more prominent than others and thus shapes the word as a whole. Thus word stress performs the constitutive function.

Word stress makes it possible for the listener to identify a succesion of syllables with a definite recurrent stress pattern as a word. In other words, it helps us to recognise the word in the chain of speech. This function is called identificatory (recognitive).

Word stress is capable of differentiating the meaning of words or their forms, thus performing its distinctive function. Primary stress placement can distinguish:

- the grammatical category (morphological class) of the word in the oppositions import-import, insult-insult, conduct-conduct, in which the stress falls on the first syllable in nouns and on the last syllable in verbs;

- the meaning of the word, e.g. billow-below;

compound nouns from free word combinations, e.g. blackboard- blackboard, greenhouse – green house. In compound nouns primary stress is placed on the first element, while in word combinations adjective+noun there is primary stress on both elements.

The correct selection of a syllable or syllables to stress in an English word causes a lot of difficulties to Russian learners. So in teaching pronunciation special attention should be given to the aspects which present difficulties due to the instability of English stress structure, on the one hand, and the differences in English and Russian word stress:

- stress in multi-syllable words, containing secondary stress;

- stress in complex words containing suffixes;

- stress in compound words;

- word-class pairs with shifting stress (insult-insult).

 

Intonation and its components

Intonation - pitch (or melody) variations used to convey meaning.

Prosody - a complex unity formed by significant variations of pitch, tempo, loudness and timbre.

 

Intonation

• is a language universal

• has a complex nature

• belongs to suprasegmental phonetics

• is indispensable in communication, because it is instrumental in conveying meaning

• no sentence can exist without a particular intonation

• no meaning can be expressed without intonation