14. Словесное ударение.

A word, as a meaningful language unit, has a definite phonetic structure:

• sounds that a word is composed of;

• syllabic structure that these sounds form;

• a definite stress pattern.

Word stress - the stress accent on the syllables of individual words either in a sentence or in isolation.

The auditory impression of stress is the effect of prominence. If a word is polysyllabic, the relative prominence of its syllables differs.

(e.g. [`plei], [,konsti`tju:∫n])

The correlation of degrees of prominence of syllables in a word forms the stress pattern of the word, which is often called the accentual structure of a word.

The stress patterns of different words may coincide (e.g. “`mother”, “`sister”‑ `__-__ ) or differ (“`prominent”, “`syllable”‑ `__-__-__).

Word Stress (word accent) - is a constituent feature of the phonetic structure of a word as a vocabulary item, which exists as such when it is pronounced in isolation (here we deal with a phonological word) (e. g. 'well-`known).

Utterance Stress (sentence accent) - a constituent part of the phonetic structure of a spoken sentence and one of the components of intonation in the broad sense of the term, source of creating phonetic words (e.g. He is well-`known. He is a 'well-known `writer).

British phoneticians (D. Jones, R. Kingdon, etc.) consider that there are three degrees of W-S in English:

• primary (or strong stress);

• secondary (or partial stress);

• weak (the so-called "unstressed" s-les have weak stress) e.g. ‑e¸xami`nation, `hair-,dresser.

All these degrees of stress are linguistically relevant as there are words in English the meanings of which depend upon the occurrence of either of the three degrees in their stress patterns (e.g. "`import —im`port"; ,certifi`cation—cer,tifi`cation).

According to the nature of word stress:

• dynamic (force) - greater force of articulation of a stressed s-le (e.g. European languages).

• tonic (musical) - uttering a stressed s-le on a different pitch level or with a different pitch direction than the other s-le or s-les of a word (e.g. Oriental l-ges, African l-ges).

• qualitative- preserving the full quality of a V phoneme in the stressed s-le.

• quantitative - uttering a V of the stressed s-le longer than another V or other V-s.

• !!! English W-S is of a complex nature. It is created by an interaction of four acoustic parameters: intensity (responsible for loudness), fundamental frequency (pitch), duration (length) and formant structure (quality).

According to the stability of its position:

• Free(the main accent may fall in different words on a s-le in any position in relation to the beginning or end of a word):

(1)a constant accent is one which remains on the

same morpheme in different grammatical forms of a word or in different derivatives from one and the same root (e.g. wonder, wonderful, wonderfully);

(2) a shifting accent is one which falls on different

morphemes in different grammatical forms of a word or in different derivatives from one and the same root (e. g. active – activity);

• Fixed (the main accent invariably falls on a syllable which occupies in all the words of a language one and the same position in relation to the beginning or end of a word (e.g. French, Check, Finnish, Polish).

English = free + fixed

Stress performs three basic functions:

1) constitutive, because it organizes a word as a complicated sound unit;

2) recognitive, as it helps to recognize words;

3) distinctive for it helps to distinguish words and their grammar forms

(import – import; produce – produce; perfect – perfect)