Unit 1. The Structure and Functions of Utterance-Stress. Peculiarities of English Utterance-Stress

Utterance-stress (sentence-stress) is a prosodic phenomenon of speech. Its function is to indicate the relative importance of various elements in an utterance. This function is realized through phonetic contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables in an utterance, that shows their different phonetic prominence.

The effect of phonetic prominence can be described as an increase of the force of articulation (intensity), length (duration) and pitch level (fundamental frequency of the voice). Besides, the articulation of a vowel (formant structure) also plays a role in the perception of utterance-stress: a prominent syllable always has a full quality vowel. The reason for it lies in the close relationship between utterance-stress and word-stress: it is the stressed syllable of a word that carries prominence when this word is important in an utterance. However, not all the syllables that are stressed when the word is pronounced in isolation retain prominence in connected speech. Compare, e.g.:

'well-'read

He's a'mazingly well- ^\ read.

He is an a'mazingly 'well -read ^\ person.

On the other hand, a syllable which is unstressed in an isolated word may become stressed in an utterance. Compare, e.g.:

un'pleasant

I ^\ Didn't say it was / plea sant. Quite on the contrary, I said it was ^\ un pleasant.

 

A word carrying Utterance­'s stress is at the same time the carrier of a tone which is defined as a combination of a pitch change (or pitch contrast) with the force of articulation, and the number of stresses in an utterance coincides with the number of tones.

When we deal with utterance-stress we speak about the prominence of words carrying greater semantic weight. So, in other words, the English utterance-stress is realized through phonetic contrast between prominent and non-prominent words.

The occurrence and the distribution of utterance-stress in an English utterance are determined by factors of two kinds: semantic and rhythmic.

The influence of the rhythmic facto r is realized mainly in the placement of prenuclear stresses, the number and the distribution of which depend on: 1) the semantic weight of the words; 2) the ten­dency towards alternating prominent and non-prominent words.

In English, as in other languages, words have different potential “accentability” and are subdivided into “stressable”, and 'unstressable”.

This classification of English words according to their accentability is based on the following general principle: stress on notional words and absence of stress on function words.

A peculiarity of English is a great number of form-words, or function words, and their extremely high frequency in speech.

Another peculiarity is that monosyllabic function words, when unstressed, have in many cases a weakened vowel in English. In other words, the use of a vowel of full quality, i.e. the use of a strong form, in this position leads to a considerable foreign accent and can even cause misunderstandings. The list of function words includes: articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions, some pronouns, auxiliary and modal verbs.

According to their pronunciation in an unstressed position function words can be divided into several groups. The first group consist of words that are never used in their strong form in an unstressed position in an utterance. The second group

includes auxiliary and modal verbs as well as prepositions which are reduced when unstressed at the beginning or in the middle of an utterance, but retain their strong form when unstressed at the end of an utterance (or for some of the function words at the beginning of it). The t h i r d g r o u p is for words that retain their strong form regardless of stress or utterance position (p. 82-85).

 

Unit 2. Types and Degrees of Utterance-Stress

The actual semantic weight of the individual words acquiring prominence (stress) in an utterance is different. This difference depends 1) on the novelty of information and 2) on the importance of information.

It is necessary to discriminate between types and degrees of utterance-stress.

First of all, there is the opposition of n u c 1 e a r and non-nuclear (pre-nuclear or post-nuclear) types of stress.

From a functional point of view nuclear stress is the only obligatory stress in an intonation-group and signals the central point of information. The specific structural features of nuclear stress are connected with its location in an intonation-group:

a) it is normally associated with final pitch change, which means that there are no other significant (i.e. perceptible) pitch changes following it;

b) it occupies a relatively fixed position in an intonation-group: in the absence of any disturbing contextual factors it falls on the last semantic item.

In principle, any word in any utterance position can be made nucleus, provided it carries the most important information.

It should be noted in this connection that the location of the nuclear stress itself is not entirely semantic by nature, since the rhythmic tendency towards similarity of the accentual patterns of intonation-groups often appears to override the semantic factor in importance, particularly, when the last notional word is not the final word in an utterance and is followed by some function words. In such cases there is a high probability for the last of the function words (or the last but one) to acquire nuclear prominence and thus to maintain the typical structure of an intonation-group. Compare, e.g.:

'What are you ^\ laughing at? or 'What are you 'laughing ^\ at ?

The word carrying the most important information may sometimes be situated in the middle or even at the beginning of an utterance. In such cases the notional words occurring in the post-nuclear part (tail) will have, as a rule, some kind of prominence and the last of them will become a secondary nucleus, bearing a Low Fall or a Low Rise (the latter forming the second element of a Fall-Rise Divided):

- 'Why not 'go to some ^\ more places next /week?

- But I 'really ^. ought to 'think about the ^\ business _|side of my / visit.

Non-nuclear stresses are subdivided into f u 11 and partial. This gradation reflects variations in the degree of prosodic prominence.

The peculiarity of full stress is that it occurs only in the head of an intonation-group while partial stress occurs also in the prehead and tail.

Partial stresses can be high (indicated ^. m) and low (indicated _|m).

High partial stress normally occurs in the head of an intonation-group and in the
tail of a rising or falling-rising tune.

'Shall we ^. say /Saturday ^. night?

 

Low partial stress is used in the tail after a falling or rising-falling nuclear tone and in the prehead.

I _|heard you were 'thinking of ^. going a ^\ broad this _|summer.

It must be noted here that syllables carrying a low static tone in the head of an intonation-group should be regarded as fully stressed, although their prominence is weaker than that of a syllable with a high or mid static tone:

'Nobody ^. seems to have _|come to 'any con ^\ clusion.

Partial stress is generally given to notional words whose informative value is reduced, either because they are repeated from a previous context or because they denote ideas of smaller importance in comparison with the other words in the same utterance.

 

Section III ENGLISH RHYTHM