ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: Stress, Stress rules, Intonation and Rhythm

Submitted To, Submitted By,

Roselin Maria Toji
Nisa Miss 1st MA English
Department of English Roll no. 41
BK College Amalagiri BK College Amalagiri

Submitted On: 29th May 2020

 STRESS
All the syllables in a polysyllabic word in English are not articulated with the same force. Some
are uttered with greater force than the others. Stress may be described as the degree of force with
which a sound or syllable is pronounced. Every syllable is uttered with a certain degree of force
and the one uttered with the greatest degree of force is called the stressed or accented syllable.
The stressed syllable is said to receive primary or tonic stress or accent and the syllable next to
that in degree of force of utterance is said to receive secondary stress or accent. We mark the
stressed syllable or primary accent with a short vertical stroke on top at the beginning of the
syllable. Secondary stress is marked with a short vertical bar below and at the beginning of the
syllable. It is difficult for a non-native speaker to place the accent on the correct syllable because
in English the accent is both free and fixed. It is ‘free’ in the sense that it is not associated with a
particular syllable in all the words of English, as it is in some other languages. There are a
number of English disyllabic and trisyllabic words with accent on the first and second syllables.
Thus, the accent is not on the same syllable. The accent in English words is ‘fixed’ also in the
sense that the main accent always falls on a particular syllable of any given word.

Another difficulty about English word accent is due to shift in accent, quite common in
derivatives and that shift can cause a slight change in the pronunciation. There are a number of
disyllabic words in which the accentual pattern depends n whether the words are used as
nouns/adjectives, or as verbs. When these words are used as nouns/adjectives the accent is on the
first syllable and when they are used as verbs the accent is on the second syllable. There are also
words which are accented on the same syllable whether they are used as nouns or verbs.

⮚ Sentence Stress

In connected speech in English all the words are not uttered with the same stress. Some words
are stressed and some are not. It is generally the relative importance of the words that decides
the stress. The most important words are usually content words, such as nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, demonstratives and question words, and they are usually stressed. Function
class words such as, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, personal pronoun, auxiliaries, relative
pronouns, etc., are semantically insignificant and are not usually stressed. In connected speech,
the choice of the word receiving primary accent depends on the meaning the speaker wants to
convey.

STRESS RULES
Though there are no rules as such for determining word-accent in English, the following hints
will be useful.
 1. Words with weak prefixes have the primary accent on the root.
2. The inflectional suffixes –ed, -es and –ing do not affect the accent.
3. The derivational suffixes –age, -ance, -en, -ess, -ful, -hood, -ice, -ish, -ive, -less, -ly, -ment,
-ness, -or, -ship, -ter, -ure, and –zen do not normally affect the accent.
4. Words ending in –ion take the primary stress on the penultimate syllable, ie., the syllable
preceding the last one.
5. Words ending in –ic, -ical, -ically, -ial, -ially, -ity, -ious, and –ian have the primary accent
on the syllable immediately preceding the suffix.

INTONATION
Intonation refers to significant changes of pitch and stress in relation to utterances, in other
words, utterance bound pitch is called intonation. The term intonation is used to cover both the
pattern of changes in the pitch of the voice [frequency of the vibration of the vocal cords] and
terminal contour [most utterances in normal speech begin at pitch level and the voice normally
rises to level just before the end of an utterance and the end is characterised by a terminal
contour (TC)]. Falling and rising are the two basic intonation types.

Rising Intonation: Pitch movement from a low to a high pitch, taking place within a single
syllable.

Falling Intonation: Pitch movement from a high to a low pitch.

Fall-rise Intonation: The two (rising intonation and falling intonation) can be combined and the
word uttered, bringing the pitch down and letting it go up again.

TERMS RELATED WITH INTONATION

Tonic/tone: It is the term used to refer to fall, rise, or fall-rise, that is, the type of pitch
movement within a single syllable.

Tone group boundary: These boundaries divide an utterance into tone group. Each tone group
is a stretch of utterance between two pauses and the tone group boundary is indicated with a
double bar //.

We have to decide three things about an utterance before we mark its intonation

1. How many tone groups can it be divided into (choice of tonality).

2. Where shall the tonic be (the choice of tonicity).
3. What kind of tonic is to be used (the choice of tonic/tone).

Falling tone may be used in;

1. Ordinary statements without any implications,

2. Wh-questions asked neutrally,
 3. Commands
4. Exclamations

Rising tone may be used in;

1. Incomplete utterances, often the first of the two clauses in a complex sentence.
2. Yes/no questions,
3. Wh-questions asked in a warm friendly way, and
4. Polite requests.

The fall-rise tone may be used to convey,

1. Special implications not explicitly expressed.

FUNCTIONS OF INTONATION
Intonation serves a grammatical function and an attitudinal function.

Grammatical function: Intonation helps the hearer to make out whether a particular utterance is
a statement or a question, a command, or a request. Thus, the same sentence, can be uttered as a
statement (when pronounced in a falling tone) or as a question (when pronounced in rising tone).
Again, the same sentence can be uttered as a command with a falling tone and as a request with a
rising tone. Thus intonation serves an important grammatical function.

Attitudinal function: With the help of intonation one can find the mood of the speaker. The
falling tone indicates authority, unfriendliness, disrespect, indifference, matter-of-fact, attitude
etc. The rising tone indicates politeness, respect, warmth, friendliness, interest etc. The fall-rise
tone is typically used for special implications such as insinuations, veiled insult, sarcasm and
unpleasant news. The attitude conveyed by intonation, however, will have to be interpreted
within a given context.

RHYTHM
One of the most important characteristics of stress in English is that it is a language with a
stress-timed rhythm. This means that in English stressed syllable tend to occur at regular
intervals of time. Irrespective of the number of unaccented syllables between two accented
syllables, the time interval between them will be roughly the same. It is this phenomenon that
gives English its characteristic rhythm. The phenomenon of certain features occurring at regular
intervals of time is called isochrony. Stress in English is isochronous. Accent or stress in
connected speech depends on the rhythmic balance of the sentence and the relative importance
ascribed by the speaker to its different parts.