- •16. Normal Stress
- •17, 18. Phrasal Stress
- •The cases when unstressed words are stressed
- •19. The neutral vowel in different positions
- •20. Syllable formation
- •21. Syllable division
- •22. Difficulties in pronunciation of nouns, adj., etc
- •23. Difficulties in pronunciation of verbs
- •24. Articulation of plosives
- •27. Organs of speech
- •25. Intonational styles
- •1. The roles of a phoneme and allophones in the English language
- •2. Classification of consonants according to the degree of noise
- •4. Classification of consonants according to the manner of production
- •3. Classification of consonants according to the place of obstruction
- •8. Monophtongs, diphthongs & diphtongoids
- •6. Classification of vowels according to the tongue position
- •7. Classification of vowels according to the lip position
- •12. Nuclear tones
- •11. English intonation
- •15. Graphic method of indicating sounds and intonation
- •13. Rhythm
- •14. Assimilation
- •26. Welsh English
- •28. Scottish English
- •29. Irish English
16. Normal Stress
If a syllable is pronounced with a greater degree of prominence than the neighbouring ones, it’s said to be stressed. This kind of stress is called word stress (lexical). Sometimes, English words of more than 2 syllables contain 2nd stress, which is weaker than the primary one, and is called secondary stress (communication, possibility). In longer English words it’s possible to distinguish 3rd and even 4th degree of stress (extraterritoriality). A word which has 1 syllable has word stress.
In different languages the place of stress is different. In English it’s mobile: dinner, ability, university…
Word stress has its linguistic function, it determines the literary pronunciation of words (laboratory), helps us to distinguish words, differing only be stress (a present – to present, an export – to export). There’re many words which have 2 strong stresses: numerals (13, 14, 15…), compound adjectives (fair-haired), words with negative prefixes (non-final, disapprove), phrasal verbs (take off, put on).
17, 18. Phrasal Stress
Sentence stress. The meaning of a sentence in oral speech is determined by those words which are more or less important semantically. Such words are pronounced with a certain degree of prominence which is called sentence stress (syntactical, logical). Such parts of speech as nouns, adjectives, notional verbs, adverbs are, as a rule, stressed. Such parts of speech as link, modal, auxiliary words, conj., prep., particles, and articles are usually unstressed.
The cases when unstressed words are stressed
Unstressed words usually stressed at the beginning of a sentence, in negative forms, in short affirmative answers.
The word which constitutes the nuclear centre of the utterance is called logical stress. The word made prominent by logical stress is usually the last stressed word, and it’s pronounced either with the rise or with the fall. The function of sentence stress is usually semantic. E.g.: Do you want to stay here? (different words are stressed depending on what a person means).
19. The neutral vowel in different positions
The phonological analysis marks the opposition of the neutral sound /ə/ to other unstressed vowels, the most common among them is /ı/. The neutral sound /ə/ is phonologically opposed to the phoneme /ı/ with its own distinctive features capable of differentiating the meaning of lexical units. E.g.: officers /ə/ – offices /ı/; accept /ə/ – except /ı/.
The problem of the phonemic status of the neutral sound /ə/ has a morphological aspect. In English there’re numerous alliterations of vowels in stressed & unstressed syllables between the derivatives of the same root or different grammatical forms of the same word. Cf.:
/ж/ – /ə/ man – sportsman;
/∆/ – /ə/ some – wholesome;
/ס/ – /ə/ combine n – combine v;
/eı/ – /ə/ operation – operative;
/зυ/ – /ə/ post – postpone.
20. Syllable formation
Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel – consonant. Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not, with the exceptions of /l/, /m/, /ŋ/, which become syllabic if they occur in an unstressed final position preceded by a noise consonant, e.g. /`lıtl/ little, blossom, garden.
4 types of syllables:
- open (no) CV
- closed (odd) VC
- covered (note) CV(C)
- uncovered (oh, oak) V(C)
The number of syllables in English word can vary from one to eight.