06/12/2022

E N G L I S H P H O N E T I C S A N D P H O N O LO G Y
Nguyen Thanh Loan
STRESS AND RHYTHM ED – HANU

REVISION: SYLLABLE STRUCTURE

Onset /ˈɒn.set/
Rhyme /raɪm/:
Ø Nucleus /ˈnjuː.kli.əs/,
plural: Nuclei /ˈnjuːkliaɪ/
Ø Coda /ˈkəʊ.də/

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THE MAXIMAL ONSETS PRINCIPLE (CONT.)

Where two syllables are to be divided, any consonants between them should be
attached to the right-hand syllable, not the left, as far as possible. (Roach, 2009:61)

Where there is a choice, always assign as many consonants as possible to the onset,
and as few as possible to coda (in accordance with the phonotactic constraints of the
language)

Note: Isolated syllables ending with one of the vowels /ɪ, e, æ, ʌ, ɒ, ʊ/ are not
permissible (acceptable) in English.

à The maximal onsets principle must be modified to allow a consonant to be

assigned to the left syllable if that prevents one of the vowels ɪ, e, æ, ʌ , ɒ, ʊ from
occurring at the end of a syllable.

SUPRASEGMENTALS – A REVISIT

Segments: serially ordered individual sounds which are identifiable and

separable from each other, such as vowels, semi-vowels, and consonants.

Suprasegmentals: (also called suprasegmental features or prosodic

features): aspects or features of phonetic structure above the level of
individual sounds, possibly a syllable, a complete word or phrase, whole
sentences, or even more.

Suprasegmentals include intonation, stress, tone, etc.

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READ THESE WORDS OUTLOUD

mother
strawberry
enchantment
deduc7on
refugee
casse:e
entrepreneur

AN OVERVIEW OF STRESS
Stress = a phenomenon when a syllable is pronounced with greater force than
the surrounding syllables or when a word is given more emphasis than the
neighboring words in a phrase or sentence.

Stress is as much a part of our mental representation of a word as the vowels

and consonants it contains.

How can we identify stressed syllables?

The answer can be from 2 points of view: Production & Perception.

ØProduction of stress: the speaker uses more muscular energy than is used for
unstressed syllables.
ØPerception of stress: all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common –
prominence.

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What makes a syllable prominent?

à ̀4 factors: loudness, length, pitch and quality (that work together in
combinaDon).
Consider [bɑ:bɑ:bɑ:bɑ:]
Loudness: if one syllable is made louder than the others, it will be heard as
stressed.
Length: if one syllable is made longer than the others, it has a strong tendency to
be heard as stressed.
Pitch (includes two elements: tone and intona'on): If one syllable is said with a
pitch that is noDceably different from that of the others, it has a strong tendency
to produce the effect of prominence.
Quality: If we change one of the vowels in our “nonsense word” (e.g.
[bɑ:bi:bɑ:bɑ:]) the “odd” syllable bi: will tend to be heard as stressed.

WORD STRESS
A word of more than one syllable is termed a polysyllable, e.g.:
economically
centraliza.on
When a polysyllabic word is said in isolaDon, one strongly stressed syllable
will stand out from the rest (or it is more prominent than any other). The
greater prominence is called word stress.
English stress is unpredictable and can occur on any syllable of the word.
Word (lexical) stress is extremely important in learning the phoneDc
transcripDon of English because some of the IPA symbols indicate which
syllable in a word receives primary stress.

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LEVELS OF STRESS
1. Primary stress:
Stronger or strongest stress in a long word [ ‘ ]
The IPA symbol used for indicaDng the primary stress of a word is a raised
mark (') placed at the iniDaDon of the stressed syllable.
2. Secondary stress:
SDll prominent but weaker than the primary stress [ ˌ ]
e.g.: EDUCATION
/ˌedʒuˈkeɪʃn/
the remaining syllables are treated as unstressed. (normally include ə, ɪ, i, u
and syllabic consonants).

SIMPLE WORD STRESS

Simple words: words that are composed of one grammaDcal unit.

“English word stress is so difficult to predict that it is best to treat stress

placement as a property of the individual words, to be learned when the
word itself is learned.” (Roach, 2009:76)

e.g: pneumonia, leopard, Nepal, guitar, piano

Single syllable words present no problems: if they are pronounced in

isolaDon they are said with primary stress.

How about polysyllabic words?

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SYLLABLE WEIGHT REVISITED

Light syllable

A light syllable contains only a short vowel in the rhyme, with no coda, as in
the first syllable of potato, report, about.

A syllable that contains only a syllabic consonant is also light, e.g.: the
second syllable of bo6le /ˈbɒtl/.

A syllable is light if its nucleus consists of one of the vowels /ə, i, u/ and no
coda except when the vowel is /ə/, e.g.: vy of envy /ˈenvi/.

The vowel /ɪ/ may also be the nucleus of a weak syllable if it occurs before a
consonant that is iniDal in the syllable that follows it, e.g.: bi in herbicide
/ˈhɜːbɪsaɪd/, e in event /ɪˈvent/.

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Heavy syllable

If a syllable has a complex rhyme, then it is heavy; and complexity can be

achieved in two different ways:

ØA heavy syllable may have a short vowel, but with one or more coda
consonants, as in bet, best.

ØA heavy syllable may have a branching nucleus - consisDng of a long vowel or

diphthong, as in beast /bi:st/, bee /bi:/, bite /baɪt/, by /baɪ/.

Onsets are enDrely irrelevant to the calculaDon of syllable weight.

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English is neither a wholly fixed-stress, nor a wholly free-stress language.

Why?

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PREDICTING WORD STRESS

a. Noun rule: for nouns with more than one syllable, stress the penulFmate
(second-to-last) syllable if heavy.
E.g.:

In nouns that are longer than two syllables, we generally find stress on the
penulDmate syllable if that syllable is heavy; otherwise, the stress falls on the
antepenulFmate (third-to-last) syllable.
E.g:

Note:
There will always be excepDons, as seen in words like spaghe<, machine, police,
report, balloon, etc.

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b. Verb rule: stress the final syllable if heavy.

E.g.:

If the final syllable is light, stress the penultimate syllable.

E.g.:

Notes:
- Exceptions include edit /ˈedɪt/, promise /ˈprɒmɪs/, astonish /əˈstɒnɪʃ/, and
embarrass /ɪmˈbærəs/, all with stress on the second-to-last syllable despite
the presence of an apparently strong final syllable.

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COMPLEX WORD STRESS

What are complex words? Words that are composed of more than one
grammaDcal unit. Two major types of complex words:

Øderived words : word stem + affix (prefix, suffix, etc.), e.g.:

un- & happy = unhappy

Vietnam & -ese = Vietnamese

Øcompound words: two (or more) independent words, e.g.:

typewriter

ice cream

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COMPLEX WORD STRESS:

DERIVED WORDS
Stress location may also be affected by the affixes that we add to
words.
a. Stress-bearing affix (Affix receives the primary stress), e.g.: semi-,
-ality, -ese, -ee, -ette, -ade, -esque
b. Stress-neutral affix (Affixes don’t change the original primary
stress)
e.g.: -ness, un-, -able, -al, -en, -less, -ment, -ous, -wise, -ant, -ism
c. Stress-shifting affix (The stress remains on the stem, but shifts to
a different syllable).
e.g.: -ic, -eous, -graphy, -ty, -ive, -ion, -ial, -ual

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COMPLEX WORD STRESS:

COMPOUND WORDS
Compound words have several stress patterns.
a. Compound made with two nouns à stress normally falls on the first element
e.g.:
b. Compounds with an adjectival first element and the –ed morpheme at the
end à stress often falls on the 2nd element
e.g.:
c. Compounds with number as first element à stress tends to fall on the final
syllable
e.g.:
d. Compounds functioning as verbs à stress tends to fall on final syllable
e.g.:

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PRACTICE
Predict the stress of the following words
abacus (n) /æbəkəs/
deconstruct (v) /diːkənstrʌkt/
graduate (n) /ɡrædʒuət/
cyclamen (n) /sɪkləmən/
inscribe (v) /ɪnskraɪb/
levy (n) /levi/

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FUNCTIONS OF STRESS

1. Giving special emphasis to a word (to contrast one word with another)

“I’ve heard that Jack and Jane spent their holidays in Jamaica”.

“I’ve heard that Jack and Jane spent their holidays in Jamaica”.

While most travelers flock to the cities of Tokyo and Kyoto for a taste of
Japan, there are several other cities that are worth visiting too.

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HOW DOES THE MEANING CHANGE IN

EACH UTTERANCE?
“I never said she stole my money
I never said she stole my money
I never said she stole my money
I never said she stole my money
I never said she stole my money
I never said she stole my money
I never said she stole my money”

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PRACTICE

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as

a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of
your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a
moveable feast.”

(Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast)

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2. Indicating the syntactic category of a word

a. showing the difference between a noun and a verb in case of identical

spelling (esp. homographs)

record (v) – record (n) increase (v) – increase (n);

produce (n) – produce (n); object (v) – object (n)

Verbs tend to be stressed nearer at the end, while nouns nearer to the
beginning.

Other examples?

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b. showing the difference between a two-word phrase and a compound

noun
E.g.:
blue house – Blue House
green house – greenhouse
hot dog – hotdog
A crow is a black bird, but is bigger than a blackbird.

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3. Showing the grammaFcal structures of words

e.g: Word family in English
Photograph – photographer – photographic
Diplomat – diplomacy – diploma.c
Social – socialist - socialism

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RECAP
Suprasegmentals?
4 factors that determine the prominence of a syllable?
Primary and Secondary stress?
Example of a stress-shiqing affix? Illustrate with an example.
What is the general rule for predicDng noun stress?

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RHYTHM
In an untterance, content words are
often stressed, while function words
are often unstressed.

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THE RHYTHM OF ENGLISH

So far we have only discussed the stress parern of words when they are
produced in isolaDon.
However, we can also think about the stress parern of syllables in
sentences, and this is called rhythmic stress.
Human beings speak rhythmically: they engage in the act of speaking by
pusng regular beats in the speech signal.
The man went to the bar.
Here, the beats are on man, went and bar.
In English – a stress-Dmed language, the rhythmic beats fall only on stressed
syllables.

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Foot is the basic rhythmic unit. It is the next biggest phonological unit above
the syllable.
A metrical foot (or foot) typically starts with a stressed syllable and ends
before the next stressed syllable. The number of words within a foot can
vary.
•cat nap à two feet: (1) cat – (2) nap
•cat in a hat à two feet: (1) cat in a – (2) hat
•beautiful trees in the garden à three feet: (1) beautiful – (2) trees in the –
(3) garden
•Jimmy’s bought a house near Glasgow à four feet: (1) Jimmy’s – (2)
bought a – (3) house near – (4) Glasgow

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•Thank you for giving me such a wonderful .me.

•Italian coffee has probably had the largest influence on coffee culture
worldwide.

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ENGLISH RHYTHM

English is a stress-timed language, which means the length of time between any
two neighboring stressed syllables is roughly the same, no matter how many
unstressed syllables occur in between.

à In other words, the time the speaker spends on each of the feet should be
roughly the same.

Thank you for | giving me such a | wonderful | time.

Contrary to English, languages like Vietnamese or Thai are syllable-stressed

languages, where the timing of all syllables tends to be the same, regardless of
their stress.

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SYLLABLE-TIMED VS. STRESS-TIMED

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CONTENT WORDS & FUNCTION WORDS

1. Content words: words that have dictionary meanings (e.g: nouns,

adjectives, verbs, adverbs, number) à receive the stress in a sentence

2. Function words: “words that do not have dictionary meanings in a way

that we expect nouns, verbs or adj to have” (Roach, 2009:89) (e.g:
prepositions, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions) à do not receive the stress in a
sentence, except for some special circumstances.

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FUNCTION WORDS – WEAK FORM

FuncFons words: frequently pronounced in their weak forms. Most common
weak-form words include:
o ArDcles/ Determiner (a, an, the);
o ConjuncDon (and, but, that, than);
o Pronouns;
o Possessive adjecDves;
o Object (him, her, them, us, it, you);
o PreposiDons (at, for, from, of, to, in, on);
o to be;
o Modal verbs
o Etc.

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*Note: in certain contexts, strong forms of function words are still

acceptable.
e.g.:
He’s not just another guy, he’s THE one!
You ate both hamburger AND spaghetti?
The letter’s FROM him, not TO him.
I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to HER!

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EXERCISE
Mark the (primary) stresses for each of the following words:

myriad recognize
gateaux semifinal
dehydrate simultaneous
fermenta<on educa<onal
poli<cian
extraordinary
retro

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How many feet are there in each sentence?

I spent the whole .me that day talking and consoling her.

Alastair claimed he was selling the company.

One morning I walked up the road to another farm to watch him work for an
hour.

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