3. Word stress.

A word has a definite phonetic structure. The phonetic structure of a word has a definite stress pattern. The auditory impression of stress is that of prominence. And if a word contains more than one syllable, the prominence of those syllables differs. There may be one prominent syllable, two equally prominent syllables, two unequally prominent syl or more prominent syl. The correlation of degrees of prominence of syllables in a word forms the stress pattern of the word, which is called the accentual structure of a word. Word stress belongs to the word when said in isolation. Whereas utterance stress belongs to the utterance. Utterance stress is conditioned by the situational and linguistic context. The auditory impression of stress is that of prominence. Word stress in languages may be of dif. types: dynamic word stress- achieved by a greater force of articulation; musical word stress- achieved by variations in pitch level ( fundamental frequency); in languages with quantitative word stress the effect of stress is based on the quality of the sound(duration). English word stress was considered to be dynamic. But many scientists think that Eng. word stress is of complex nature. Eng. word stress is concerned, relative prominence, created by an interaction of 4 acoustic parameters: intensity, fundamental frequency, duration, formant structure.

The stress pattern of Eng words may be defined as a correlation of 3 degrees of stress: primary(strong stress), secondary(partial stress), weak(unstressed syl have a weak stress). English word stress is said to be free.

There are certain tendencies in English which to a certain extent regulate the accentuation of words. 2 main tend. :

• the recessive tendency (stress falls on the first syllable which is generally the root syllable or on the 2 syl. In words which have a prefix of no special meaning(become)

• the rhythmic tendency( in English the vocabulary consists of monosyllabic words, some of which are stressed, others not. This created the rhythm. t. to alternate stressed and unstressed syllables. Stress is on the 3^rd syllable from the end.

The stress of the parent word is often retained in the derivatives(retentive tendency.)

The tendency to stress the most important elements in words. Such meaningful prominence is given to negative prefixes “un-, in-, mis-“(semantic factor)

Word stress has a 1) constitutive (as it moulds syllables into a word by forming its stress pattern. without a definite stress pattern a word ceases to be a word and becomes a sequence of syllables)

2) Distinctive (because there exist different words in English with analogous sound structure which are differentiated in speech only by their stress patterns)

3) Indetificatory (because the stress patterns of words enable people to identify definite combinations of sounds as meaningful linguistic units)