8. Word accent as a component of phonetic structure of a word and its functions

The nature of stress, is simple enough – practically everyone would agree that the first syllable of words like 'father', 'open', 'camera' is stressed, that the middle syllable is stressed in 'potato', 'apartment', 'relation' and that the final syllable is stressed in 'about', 'receive', 'perhaps', and most people feel they have some sort of idea of what the difference is between. Stressed and unstressed syllables, though they might explain it in many different ways.

What are the characteristics of stressed syllables that enable us to identify them? It is important to understand that there are two different ways of approaching this question, one being to consider what the speaker does in producing stressed syllables and the other being to consider what characteristics of sound make a syllable seem to a listener to be stressed. In other words we can study stress from the point of view of production and of perception; the two are obviously closely related, but are not identical. The production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables. Measuring muscular effort is difficult, but it seems possible, according to experimental studies, that when we produce stressed syllables, the muscles that we use to expel air from the lungs are more active, producing higher subglottal pressure. It seems possible that similar things happen with muscles in other parts of our speech apparatus.

Many experiments

What makes a syllable prominent? At least four different factors are important.

1) Most people seem to feel that stressed syllables are louder than unstressed; in other words, loudness is a component of prominence. In a sequence of identical syllables (e.g. ba:ba:ba:ba:), if one syllable is made louder than the others, it will be heard as stressed. However, it is important to realise that it is very difficult for a speaker to make a syllable louder without changing other characteristics of the syllable such as those explained below (2-4); if one literally changes only the loudness, the perceptual effect of stress is not very strong.

2) The length of syllables has an important part to play in prominence. If one of the syllables in our "nonsense word" ba:ba:ba:ba: is made longer than the others, there is quite a strong tendency for that syllable to be heard as stressed.

3) Every syllable is said on some pitch; pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords and to the musical notion of low- and high-pitched notes. It is essentially a perceptual characteristic of speech. If one syllable of our "nonsense word" is said with a pitch that is noticeable different from that of the others, this will have a strong tendency to produce the effect of prominence. For example, if all syllables are said with low pitch except for one said with high pitch, then the high-pitched syllable will be heard as stressed and the others as unstressed. To place some movement of pitch (e.g. rising or falling) on a syllabic is even more effective.

4) A syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighbouring vowels. If we change one of the vowels in our "nonsense word" (e.g. ba:bi:ba:ba) the "odd" syllable bi: will usually be heard as stressed. This effect is not very powerful nor very important, but there is one particular way in which it is relevant in English: the most frequently encountered vowels in weak syllables are i, — and ” (syllabic consonants are also quite common).

Prominence, then, is produced by

The sequence

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.

If we compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the words contract ['kŒntrækt], to contract [kən'trækt], we may note that in the stressed syllable:

(a) the force is greater, which is connected with more energetic articulation;

(b) the pitch of voice is higher, which is connected with stronger tenseness of the vocal cords and the walls of the resonance chamber;

(c) the quantity of the vowel [æ] in [kən'trækt] is greater, the vowel becomes longer;

(d) the quality of the vowel [æ] in the stressed syllable is different from the quality of this vowel in the unstressed position, in which it is more narrow than ['æ].

On the auditory level a stressed syllable is the part of the word which has a special prominence. It is produced by a greater loudness and length, modifications in the pitch and quality. The physical correlates are: intensity, duration, frequency and the formant structure. All these features can be analyzed on the acoustic level. Word stress can be defined as 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. In different languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more significant than the others. According to the most important feature different types, of word stress are distinguished in different languages.

1) If special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables is achieved mainly through the intensity of articulation, such type of stress is called dynamic, or force stress.

2) If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved mainly through the change of pitch, or musical tone, such accent is called musical, or tonic. It is characteristic of the Japanese, Korean and other oriental languages.

3) If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved through the changes in the quantity of the vowels, which are longer in the stressed syllables than in the unstressed ones, such type of stress is called quantitative.

4) Qualitative type of stress is achieved through the changes in the quality of the vowel under stress.

English word stress is

Russian and Ukrainian word stress is not only dynamic but mostly quantitative and qualitative. The length of Russian vowels always depends on the position in a word.

Stress difficulties peculiar to the accentual structure of the English language are connected with the vowel special and inherent prominence. In identical positions the intensity of English vowels is different. The highest in intensity is / R /, then go /L, “, Š, ‘, æ, Œ, e, υ, ‰/.

All English vowels may occur in accented syllables, the only exception is /ə/, which is never stressed. English vowels /‰, ə υ/ tend to occur in unstressed syllables. Syllables with the syllabic /1, m, n/ are never stressed. Unstressed diphthongs may partially lose their glide quality. In stressed syllables English stops have complete closure, fricatives have full friction, and features of fortis/lenis distinction are clearly defined.

Word stress in a language performs three functions.

1.

2.

3.

Minimal pairs can be found in which a compound noun is differentiated from a free word combination (adjective + noun) by the opposition tertiary stress vs. primary stress, e.g.

A blackbird – a particular kind of bird

A black bird – any bird which is black

A blackboard – in the classroom

A black board – any board whish is black