Stress distinctions of an English utterance.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 962.

The sequence of syllables in the word is not pronounced identically. The syllable or syllables which are uttered with more prominence than the other syllables of the word are said to be stressed or accented. Stress in the isolated word is termed word stress; it is a phonetic unit that arranges syllables in words. 1. Word stress constitutes a word, it organizes the syllables of a word into a language unit having a definite accentual structure, that is a pattern of relationship among the syllables; a word does not exist without the word stress Thus the word stress performs the constitutive function. Sound continuum becomes a phrase when it is divided into units organized by word stress into words. 2. Word stress enables a person to identify a succession of syllables as a definite accentual pattern of a word. This function of word stress is known as identificatory (or recognitive). Correct accentuation helps the listener to make the process of communication easier, whereas the distorted accentual pattern of words, misplaced word stresses prevent normal understanding. 3. Word stress alone is capable of differentiating the meaning of words or their forms, thus performing its distinctive function. The accentual patterns of words or the degrees of word stress and their positions form oppositions, e.g. 'import — im'port, 'billow — below.

Stress in connected speech is termed sentence stress. It is a greater prominence of the syllable in the word which carries the most important information. Sentence stress organizes information structure and rhythmic structure of larger units: intonation groups, utterances and texts. Sentence stress and intonation
Sentence stress is the key component of English intonation. Intonation organizes words into sentences, distinguishes different types of sentences, and adds emotional colouring to utterances. English intonation is quite difficult for Russian students. Developing the ability to hear, understand, and reproduce sentence stress in speech is the main prerequisite to mastering English intonation. Let's sum up the functions of sentence stress. Sentence stress organizes separate words into sentences by making content words stressed andfunctionwordsunstressed.
Sentence stress makes the utterance understandable to the listener by making the important words in the sentence stressed, clear, and higher in pitch and by shortening and obscuring the unstressed words.
Sentence stress organizes the words in the sentence rhythmically, making the stressed syllables occur at regular intervals and jamming together the unstressed syllables between the stressed syllables.
Sentence stress organizes the words in the sentence into sense groups by joining the unstressed syllables to the main stressed syllable in the group and marking the end of the sense group with a slight pause if necessary.
Sentence stress marks the end of the sentence by giving the strongest stress to the last stressed syllable with the help of a fall or a rise. As a rule all notional words in sentence are stressed, but it can be shifted. It is a syntactic or normal one. There is also a

Stress, as a sound phenomenon, can be studied from two points of view: production and perception. The production of stressed syllables is said to imply a greater muscular energy than the production of unstressed syllables. From the perceptive point of view, stressed syllables are prominent. Prominence is the sum of different factors such as loudness, length, pitch and quality. Here are three possibilities of stress in a word: a primary stress characterised by prominence and, basically, by a rise-fall tone; a secondary stress, weaker than the primary. Stress but stronger than that of the unstressed syllables (,photo'graphic); and unstressed syllables, defined by the absence of any prominence, becoming then the background against the prominent stressed syllables appear. Stress is defined differently by different authors. B.A. Bogoroditsky, for instance, defined stress as an increase of energy, accompanied by an increase of expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones defined stress as the degree of force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhalation and gives an impression of loudness. H. Sweet also stated that stress, is connected with the force of breath. According to A.C. Gimson, the effect of prominence is achieved by any or all of four factors: force, tone, length and vowel colour. In the articulation of the stressed syllable greater muscular energy is produced by the speaker. Russian, English, French, German—dynamic stress. The musical stress is observed in Chinese, Japanese. In English it does not change the meaning. Dynamic stress—the first source of prominence of the stressed syllable is the intensity/force of the articulatory organs of speech and the pressure of the air stream.( `daughter, `reader) Qualitative stress—vowels in stressed syllables are more prominent and distinct than those in the unstressed ones, vowels are of full quality(non-reduced).Quantitative stress—we consider the length of the syllable, whether it is a short one or a long one. There are also several types of stress in English:

Syntactic(normal)—when notional words are stressed.

EMPHATIC
Most human utterances express not only the speaker's thoughts, but also his feelings and attitudes to reality and to the content of the sentence. Both Normal and Logical
stresses can be unemphatic or emphatic. Emphatic stress increases the effort of expression.

Logical stress-- means of emphasizing a meaningful unit of an utterance. Superimposed on the obligatory word stress, logical stress usually intensifies the phonetic features of a word, emphasizing information that is new or disputable for one of the interlocutors. For example, in the phrase “Your sister came” logical stress may emphasize any one of the three words. The same may be achieved graphically (italics, etc.), lexically (“none other than,” “just now”), or syntactically (by word order and emphatic constructions). Logical stress is one of the methods of actual division of a sentence.

Rhythmic stress—English is what is called a stress-timed language, which means that the natural segmentation of the elements depends on the differentiated changes of air pressure in the vocal tract. Stressed syllables will always be separated by unstressed ones.

We can consider the stress as the component of the intonation together with the voice pitch, tempo, timber and rhythm.

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