Provide the following words with necessary stress marks.
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 640.
Stress
Word stress is a greater prominence given to a syllable or syllables of a word in speech by phonetic means. In English stress is dynamic, qualitative, quantitative and musical (English stressed and unstressed syllables differ in intensity, quantity, quality and pitch). Word stress in English may fall on any syllable, e.g. “ ¢language”, “ dictation”, “demonstration”, “ pronunciation”. This type of stress is called free stress.
In word of two or more syllables one syllable is pronounced more distinctly and is said to be stressed. The other syllables in the word are pronounced less distinctly, they are unstressed. As a rule, in such syllables vowels change their quality, they become reduced. Stressed syllable is marked by means of the sign, which is placed before and above the stressed syllable
busy [¢bizi] again [ə¢geın]
In word of two or more syllables there are two degrees of stress. The stronger is called the primary (main) stress. The weaker is called the secondary stress.
e.g. “examination” “conversation”
[ıgֽzæmı¢neıòn] [ֽkonvə¢seıòn]
Some words have the equally strong stresses. They are:
1. the cardinal and ordinal numerals from 13 to 19;
2. compound adjectives: “¢old - ¢fashioned”, “¢fair - ¢haired”;
3. words with some prefixes:
a) negative prefixes un-, in-, ir-, il-, im-,non-, dis-, under-,anti-,
e.g. ¢unable, ¢non - ¢final, ¢incomplete;
b) prefixes with different meaning vice-, mis-,
e.g. vice –“assistance”, mis – “wrong”, ex – “former”, re – “repetition”, pre – “before”, over – “too much”, half – “almost”, inter – “among”, ultra – “almost”.
e.g. ¢vice - ¢chairman, ¢misunderstand, ¢ex - ¢president, ¢retell, ¢pre-¢war, ¢overdo, ¢half - ¢starved, ¢international, ¢ultramodern;
c)in composite verbs: ¢put ¢on, ¢take ¢off.
The role of stress is extremely great as it can change the meaning of the word or its grammatical form.
e.g. a ¢black ¢bird – a ¢blackbird
a ¢green ¢house – a ¢greenhouse
Word stress can differentiate various parts of speech:
Noun: Verb: Adjective: Verb:
¢object object ¢frequent frequent
In English, as a rule, all semantically important words are stressed. They are: nouns, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns and absolute possessive pronouns.
Link, modal, auxiliary verbs, articles, possessive and reflexive pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions are unstressed.
There are special cases when usually unstressed words receive stress in a sentence under certain conditions.
1.Link, modal and auxiliary verbs are stressed:
a) At the beginning of a general or alternative questions
e.g. ¢Is she a &teacher? ¢Must I ¢read it &now çor ¢shall I ¢do it to(morrow?
b) when they are followed by the contracted negative “n't”
e.g. He ¢isn't a ( teacher?
c) in short answers to general and disjunctive questions
e.g. ¢Yes, he ( is.
2.Personal and possessive pronouns are stressed in short answers to questions beginning with “who”, “which”, “whose”
e.g. ¢Who ¢speaks ( English? ç We (do. ç ¢Whose ( book is there? ç
( Mine is ç.
3.Reflexive pronouns used appositionally are stressed
e.g. I ¢myself shall ( do it ç.
4.Conjunctions are usually stressed at the beginning of a sense-group when they are followed by an unstressed word
e.g. ¢As it was ¢very& far çwe ¢took a ( taxi ç.
5.Many prepositions of two or more syllables standing before an unstressed pronoun at the end of a sense-group are stressed.
e.g. He ¢went ( after them ç.
Preposition of one syllable standing before an unstressed pronoun at the end of a sense-group are usually unstressed but have their full form,
e.g. ¢Why are you ( looking at them? ç
Stress has important semantic functions. The word which is the most important in the sentence is marked by logical stress while the words following it remain unstressed or half-stressed as they refer to something known.
e.g. (I know it çnot ¢he or ¢anybody ( elseç. The ¢book is ( in the bag çnot ¢on or ( under it. ç
STRESS (exercises):
1. Transcribe the words:
a) old-fashioned, hard-working, good-looking, blue-eyed, bad-tempered, absent-minded, bare-headed, home-made;
b) disconnect, antireligious, postwar, overestimate;
c) bookcase, dining-room, note-book, writing-table;
d) a blackboard – a black board; a bluebottle – a blue bottle; a dog's-ear – a dog's ear; a faintheart – a faint heart, a strongbox – a strong box, an overwork – the over work, a yellow cup – a yellow cup, a tallboy – a tall boy, a redbreast – a red breast, a bluebell – a blue bell, a blackshirt – a black shirt.
2. Translate into Ukrainian:
a ¢missing ¢list – a ¢missing-list; a ¢dancing ¢girl – a ¢dancing-girl.
3. Translate and pronounce the words:
to export, the export; to increase, the increase; to conduct, the conduct; to extract, the extract, to import, the import; to progress, the progress; to record, the record; to transport, the transport; to insult, the insult; to refuse, the refuse; to lead, the lead; to tear, the tear; to wind, the wind; to present, the present; to desert, the desert; to object, the object; to contract, the contract, to accent, the accent; to suspect, the suspect, to decrease, the decrease; to row, the row; to produce, the produce; to permit, the permit; to protest, the protest; to refund, the refund, to content, content.
birdcage, coalmine, teapot, mail-bag, dance-music, grandfather, handwriting, shopkeeper, ladybird, waiting-room, tape-recorder, ground floor, knee-deep, shop-window, hot-water-bottle, waste-paper-basket, post-graduate, second-hand.
| <== previous lecture | | | next lecture ==> |
| TRIPHTHONGS | | | Answer the following questions using the words from exercise ¹3. |