6. Speak on the accentual structure of words, types of word-stress and tendencies of word-stress.

Inseparable from the syllabic structure of words is their accentual structure of words is their accentual structure. The greater degree of special prominence given to one or more syllables as compared with that of the other syllable or syllables in on and the same word is known as word accent.

The majority of British phoneticians distinguish 3 degrees of word-stress. The strongest stress is called primary stress, the second strongest secondary stress, while all the other degrees of stress are grouped together under the cover term of weak stress. The syllables bearing either primary or secondary stress termed stressed, while syllables with weak stress are called, somewhat inaccurately, unstressed.

H.A.Gleason and most other American descriptivist’s distinguish also 4 degrees of word-stress in English, calling and indicating them as follows: 1) primary stress, 2) secondary stress, 3) tertiary stress, and 4) weak stress.

a ) Divide the following words into two parts of speech (noun and verb) according to the position of word-stress: record-record; export-export; record-record; present-present; insult-insult; increase-increase. All words have word-stress on the 1 position.

b) Define the placement of word-stress in the following word derivations: music-musician,

exam-examination- examiner, hospitable-hospitality, organize-organization.

Word-derivation

Word derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happiness and unhappy from the root word happy, or determination from determine. It often involves the addition of a morpheme in the form of an affix, such as -ness, un-, and -ation in the preceding examples.

Derivation stands in contrast to the process of inflection, which means the formation of grammatical variants of the same word, as with determine/determines/determining/determined.