The degrees of word-stress

Strictly speaking, a polysyllabic word has as many degrees of stress as there are syllables in it.

Professor Gimson gives the following pattern of stress distribution in the word “examination”:

[ Ig 1zxmI 0 neISqn]

3 2 4 1 5, but not all the degrees of prominence are linguistically relevant.

The majority of British phoneticians distinguish three degrees of word stress in English: primary (or strong stress), secondary (or partial stress) and weak. The strongest stress is called primary stress, the second strongest secondary, while all the other degrees of stress are grouped together under the cover term of weak stress. The syllables bearing either primary or secondary stress are termed stressed, while syllables with weak stress are called unstressed. In the phonetic transcription used in textbooks and works on phonetics, as well as in pronouncing dictionaries, the position of the accent is indicated by placing the stress mark before the symbol of the first sound of the accented syllable, primary stress being marked by a raised short vertical stroke (tick), secondary stress by a lowered one, e.g.

[ Ig 1zxmI 0 neISqn]

The stress marks placed before the stressed syllable isndicate simultaneously their places and the point of syllable division

The American descriptivists (B. Bloch, G Trager) distinguish the following degrees of word stress:

loud [ ' ], reduced loud [ ^], medial [ ` ], weak, which is not indicated.

H. A. Gleason defines the degrees of word stress as

primary stress [ ' ],

secondary stress [ ^ ],

tertiary stress [ ` ],

weak stress [ - ].

H. Sweet distinguishes weak [ - ], medium, or half-strong [: ], strong [ < ], and extrastrong, or emphatic stress [; ].

3) Word accentuation tendencies in English:

There are languages in which stress always falls on the first syllable (as in Czech and Finnish), or on the last syllable (as in French and Turkish). Word stress in such languages is said to be fixed. English word stress is said to be free. It is free in the sense that stress is not fixed to any particular syllable in all the words of the language.

Though word stress in English is called free, there are certain tendencies in English which to a certain extent regulate the accentuation of words. The linguists who have made a thorough analysis of English stress patterns have agreed upon the existence of two main accentuationtendencies in English: the recessive tendency and the rhythmic tendency.

1) The recessive tendency results in placing the word-stress on the initial syllable. It can be of two sub-types: a) unrestricted recessive accent, which falls on the first syllable: father, mother; b) restricted recessive accent, which is charactererized by placing the word accent on the root of the word if this word has a prefix, which has lost its meaning: become, begin.

2)The rhythmic tendency remains a strong one and it affects the stress patterns of a large number of words in modern English. Thus, in some polysyllabic words there is a tendency nowadays to avoid a succession of weak syllables, so the rhythmic tendency results in alternating stressed and unstressed syllables, e.g. pronunciation. The tendency is stronger in American English, where trisyllabic words like ' terri ¿ tory, ' diction ¿nary have the primary stress on the first syllable and the tertiary stress on the third one Nowadays we witness a great number of variations in the accentual structure of English polysyllabic words as a result of the interrelation of the tendencies. The stress on the initial is caused by the diachronical recessive tendency or the stress on the second syllable under the strong rhythmical tendency of the present day, e.g. 'hospitable – hospi'table, 'distribute - dis'tribute, 'aristocrat - a'ristocrat, 'laryngoscope - la'ryngoscope.

3) It has also been noticed that the stress of the parent word is often retained in the derivatives. This regularity is sometimes called the retentive tendency in English.

4) A peculiar feature of English is the existence in it of certain categories of words in whose accentuation the crucial determining factor is the semantic one. These are words with the so-called separable prefixes, i.e. those which have a distinct referential meaning of their own, and compound words. The majority of these classes of words have two equally strong stresses, the so-called double-stress, or even (level) stress. Both stressed parts of such words are considered to be of equal semantic importance, and this semantic factor even cancels the rhythmic tendency in word accentuation, with the result that two stressed syllables may occur in succession in such words.The classes of double stressed English words are:

1) words with meaningful prefixes: unknown, overestimate;

2) compound adjectives like dark-green, hard-working;

3) compound verbs with preposition-like adverbs of the type sit down, take off;

4) numerals from 13 to 19;

5) compound numerals like twenty-one, thirty-two;

6) a small number of compound nouns consisting of two elements, of which the second element is felt to be of special importance: indiarubber, eye-witness, gas-stove.

The numerous variations of English word stress are systemized in the typology of accentual structure of English words worked out by G.P. Torsuev.

4) Functions of word-stress:

Word stress has a constitutive function, as it moulds syllables into a word by forming its stress pattern. Without a definite stress pattern a word ceases to be a word and becomes a sequence of syllables.

Word stress has a distinctive function in English, because there exist different words in English with analogous sound structure which are differentiated in speech only by their stress patterns.

Word stress has an identificatory function as well, because the stress patterns of words enable people to identify definite combinations of sounds as meaningful linguistic units. A distortion of the stress patterns may hamper understanding or produce a strange accent.