The nature of word stress in English

Word stress (WS)is the singling out of one or more syllables in a word which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound, which is usually a vowel.

1. Dynamic or force stress – if special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables is achieved by the greater force of articulation, which results in greater loudness on the auditory level and greater intensity on the acoustic level. English, German, French, Russian and all European languages have this stress.

2. Quantitative.If special prominence in the stressed syllables is achieved through the changes in the quantity of the vowels which are longer in the stressed syllables than in unstressed ones. Ukrainian and Russian WS is considered to be mainly quantitative. In English the quantitative component of word stress is not very important because of the non-reduced vowels in the unstressed syllables, which sometimes occur in English words.

3. Qualitative type of stress is achieved through the changes on the quality of the vowel under stress. It is distinguished because in many languages the quality of vowels in stressed syllables differs greatly of the quality of vowels in unstressed syllables.