5.1 Utterance stress and its distribution in an utterance

Words grouped in an utterance are not equally important. Those that are semantically significant are made prominent through contrasts in loudness, duration, and higher pitch. Prominence given to a syllable in a word is called word stress. But prominence given to one or more words in an utterance is called utterance stress. The linguistic function of utterance stress is indicating the relative importance of words in an utterance.

Utterance stress is closely related to word stress. It is the stressed syllable of a word that carries prominence when the word is important in an utterance. Yet not all the syllables that are stressed when the word is pronounced in isolation become stressed in the speech flow. One of two stresses in polysyllabic words, such as absolutely, justifiable, motorcycle, misinterpret, irreproachable, diplomatic, independent, afternoon, etc., is often lost in the speech flow.

e.g.: ,week’end but Then she’s got the week‵end to settle `down.

In compound adjectives, such as bright-eyed, light-minded, good-looking, middle-aged, etc. the stress shifts with regards to the rhythm and the lexical environment. The main stress is on the first word when a compound adjective is followed by a noun. In other cases the main stress is on the second word.

Compare: ‘Have a ‘piece of ‘home-made `cake. – This ‘cake is home-`made.

Or: He was a ‘silver-haired `doctor. - He was ‘silver-`haired.

The distribution of stress in an utterance is determined by two factors: semantic and rhythmic.

Semantic factor

Stressing words in an utterance depends very much on the context. It is nevertheless possible to predict for most utterances a “normal stressing”. Some words carry higher information content in the utterance and are usually stressed while those carrying lower input (information) are left unstressed. The important words are ‘content’ (notional) words as opposed to ‘function’ words. Most content words are polysyllabic while function words are not.

Table 2 - Stressed and Unstressed Words

Content/Stressed Words	Function/Unstressed Words
verbs	modal verbs
nouns	auxiliaries
adjectives	articles
adverbs	particles
question words	conjunctions
prepositional adverbs	prepositions
negatives	pronouns

Rhythmic factor

Stress creates the rhythmic structure of an utterance, but rhythm, in its turn, can influence utterance stress. For example, there is a general tendency to place the nuclear stress in a content word in utterance final position, and this is an important feature of the rhythmic organization of English speech. Consider the following:

1) I’m `going. 2) I'm ‘going to `London. 3) I'm ‘going to ‘London for a `holiday.

But when a content word is separated from the end of the utterance by some function words, there is a high probability for the last of them (or the penultimate one) to acquire some degree of prominence and thus maintain rhythm. For example:

His `friends might be .with him. Or His ‘friends might be `with him.

The most important word may sometimes be placed in the middle or even at the beginning of an utterance. In such case the notional words occurring in the post-nuclear part (the tail) will have, as a rule, some kind of prominence and the last of them often becomes a second nucleus bearing a Low Fall or a Low Rise,

e.g.: ^|This is the `other bedroom. Or We’ve ‘got a ‘non-`smoking rule in the ‘rooms we _\share. Or We can ‘take her to the `sports centre on ,Sunday.

Speech Exercises