3. English word stress functions

Word stress in a language performs the following functions:

1. The CONSTITUTIVE function: it organizes the syllables of a word into a language unit having a definite accentual structure, i.e. a pattern of relationship among the syllables. The word does not exist as a lexical unit without word stress.

2. The IDENTIFICATORY function: correct lexical stress enables the listener to decode the information in verbal communication adequately, while misplaced word stresses prevent understanding.

3 The DISTINCTIVE/CONTRASTIVE function: word stress alone is capable of differentiating the meanings of words or their forms. There are about 135 pairs of words of identical orthography in English which could occur either as nouns (with stress on the penultimate syllable) or as verbs (with stress on the final syllable), with a very small number of cases the location of lexical stress alone being the differentiating factor: 'import (noun) -im'port (verb), 'insult (noun) –in'sult (verb).

Orthographically identical word-pairs in English differentiated by wогd-stress as nouns (penultimate stress) or verbs (ultimate stress) are:

abstract	commune	detail	extract	object	recess
accent	compound	digest	fragment	outrage	record

4. Word accentual paterns. Guidelines to english word stress placement

English stress placement is a highly complicated matter. There is an opinion that it is best to treat stress placement as a property of an individual word, to be learned when the word itself is learned. However, it is also recognized that in most cases when English speakers come across an unfamiliar word, they can pronounce it with the correct stress. Thus in principle, it should be possible to summarize rules of lexical stress placement in English, and practically all the rules will have exceptions.

In order to decide on stress placement, it is necessary to make use of some or all of the following information:

1) whether the word is morphologically simple, or whether it is complex containing one or more affixes (prefixes or suffixes) or a compound word; 2) the grammatical category to which the word belongs (noun, verb, adjective, etc.); 3) the number of syllables in a word; 4) the phonological structure of the syllables; 5) the historical origin of a word.

The following guidelines to lexical stress placement in English should be taken a tendencies rather than absolute rules due to exceptions to almost any rule.

LEXICAL STRESS OF MONOSYLLABIC WORDS presents no problem – pronounced in isolation they are said with primary stress.

BASIC RULES OF STRESSSING TWO-SYLLABLE SIMPLE WORDS comprise rules of stressing verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. The basic rule of stressing two-syllable VERBS runs that:

1) if the second syllable of the verb contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or if it ends with more than one consonant, that second syllable is stressed: apply, attract, arrive.

2) if the final syllable contains a short vowel and one final consonant, the first syllable is stressed: open, enter.

3) a final syllable is also unstressed if it contains /əυ/: follow, borrow.

4) any two-syllable verbs with prefixes of Germanic and Latin origin have the root syllable stressed (see a more detailed explanation in words with prefixes).

Two-syllable simple ADJECTIVES are stressed according to the same rule as two-syllable verbs: 'lovely, 'even, 'hollow; cf.: di'vine, co'rrect, a'live .There are exceptions to this rule: 'honest, 'perfect.

Two-syllable NOUNS have the first syllable stressed if the second syllable contains a short vowel: dinner, money, colour. Otherwise it will be on the second syllable: de'sign, ba'loon.

Other two-syllable words such as adverbs seem to behave like verbs and adjectives.