12.2. Place of word stress in English. Degrees of stress

Languages are also differentiated according to the place of word stress. The traditional classification of languages concerning place of stress in a word is into those with a fixed stress and those with a free stress. In languages with a fixed stress the occurrence of the word stress is limited to a particular syllable in a polysyllabic word. For instance, in French the stress falls on the last syllable of the word (if pronounced in isolation), in Finnish and Czech it is fixed on the first syllable, in Polish on the one but last syllable. In languages with a free stress its place is not confined to a specific position in the word. In one word it may fall on the first syllable, in another on the second syllable, in the third word — on the last syllable, etc. The free placement of stress is exemplified in the English and Russian languages, e.g. English: 'appetite - be'ginning - ba'lloon; Russian: озеро - погода - молоко.

The word stress in English as well as in Russian is not only free but it may also be shifting, performing the semantic function of differentiating lexical units, parts of speech, grammatical forms. In English word stress is used as a means of word-building; in Russian it marks both word-building and word formation, e.g. 'contrast — con'trast; 'habit — habitual 'music — mu'sician; дома — дома; чудная — чудная, воды — воды.

There are actually as many degrees of stress in a word as there are syllables. The opinions of phoneticians differ as to how many degrees of stress are linguistically relevant in a word. The majority of British (D. Jones, R. Kingdon, A.C. Gimson) and Russian linguists (V.A. Vassilyev, J. Shakhbagova) usually distinguish three degrees of stress in the word. The primary stress is the strongest, the secondary stress is the second strongest. All the other degrees are termed weak stress. Unstressed syllables are supposed to have weak stress.

The American scholars B. Bloch and G. Trager find four contrastive degrees of word stress, namely: loud, reduced loud, medial and weak stresses. Other American linguists also distinguish four degrees of word stress but term them: primary stress, secondary stress, tertiary stress and weak stress. The difference between the secondary and tertiary stresses is very subtle and seems subjective. The criteria of their difference are very vague. Secondary stress differs from tertiary in that it usually occurs on the 3rd or 4th pretonic syllable, and tertiary is always post-tonic. The second pre-tonic syllables of such words as ,libe'ration, ,recog'nition are marked by secondary stress in RP, in General American they are said to have a tertiary stress. In GA a tertiary stress also affects the suffixes -ory, -ary, -ory of nouns and the suffixes -ate, -ize, -y of verbs, which are considered unstressed in RP, e.g. 'terri,tory, 'cere,mony, 'dictio,nary;

'demonst,rate, 'orga,nize, 'simpli,fy.

It is also advisable to pay attention to some word stress rules (Table 5):

Table 5

Rule	Applid to	Examples
stress on the 1st syllable	most 2-syllable nouns	NOTEbook, LAMPshade, PRESent, REbel Except: machine , event
	most 2-syllable adjectives	HAPpy, HANDsome, GRACEful
	Verbs of 2 syllables ending with OW, EN, Y, EL, ER, LE, ISH	to open, to follow, to hurry, to struggle, to flatter, to finish
stress on the last /2nd syllable	most 2-syllable verbs	preSENT, reBEL, seLECT, inVITE
stress on the last syllable	stress on the following ending syllables: ADE, OO, OON, EE, EEN, EER, ESE, ISE, IZE, AIRE, SELF	pickaboo, millionaire, cocoon, analyze, engineer, themselves
stress on penultimate syllable (the syllable which is 2nd to the last)	words ending in -ic	DemoGRAPHic, PSYCHic, bioLOGic
stress on penultimate syllable (the syllable which is 2nd to the last)	words ending in –sion and –tion, –tal	teleVIsion, revoLUtion, inVENtion, preCIsion, conti`nental, tra`dition
stress on ante-penultimate syllable (the syllable which is third from end)	most three or > three syllable words	to celebrate,curriculum, to unify Except: to develop, imagine, banana
	words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy	biOgraphy, aBIlity, Allergy
stress on ante-penultimate syllable (the syllable which is third from end)	words ending in -al	psychoLOgical, mythoLOgical
stress on the 1st part	Compound nouns	WHITEboard, STAIRway
stress on the 2nd part	Compound adjectives	red-HAIRED, high-HEELED
stress on the 2nd part	Compound verbs	to overFLOW, to underSTAND