Degrees of word-stress

Instrumental investigations show that a polysyllabic word has as many degrees of prominence as there are syllables in it. D. Jones indicated the degrees of prominence in the word “Opportunity”. But not all these degrees of prom are linguistically relevant. The problem is to determine which of these degrees are linguistically relevant. There are 2 views of the matter. Some (e.g. D. Jones, R. Kingdon, V. Vassilyev consider that there are 3 degrees or W-s in English: primary, secondary (partial stress) and weak (unstressed). Secondary stress is chiefly needed to define the stress pattern of words. E.g. “e,xami'nation”, “,qualifi'cation”, “'hair-,dresser”.

All these degrees stress are linguistically relevant as there are words in English the meanings of which depend on the occurrence of either of the 3 degrees in their stress patterns. E.g. 'import - im'port, ,certifi'cation - cer,tifi'cation =certificate.

Some American linguists (G. Trager, A. Hill) distinguish 4 degrees of W-s:

• Primary (as in “cupboard”) /  /

• Secondary (as in “discrimination) / ^ /

• Tertiary (as in “analyze”)

Weak stress (as in “cupboard”), but very often the weakly stressed syllable is left unmarked. /v/

American phoneticians consider that secondary stress generally occurs before the primary stress (as in examination), while tertiary stress occurs the primary stress (as in handbook, specialize).

Linguistically, tertiary word-stress can be taken for a variant of secondary w-s, as there are no words in English the meanings of which depend on whether their stress patterns is characterized by either secondary of tertiary stress.

The stress Patterns of English words

There are languages in which stress is always falls on the first syllable (as in Czech and Finish), or on the last syllable (as in French and Turkish). Word stress is in such languages is said to be fixed. English words is said to be free because stress is not fixed to any particular syllable, in all the words of the language.

G. Torsuyev, who has made a special analyses of English stress patterns, distinguishes more than 100 stress patterns, which he groups into 11 main types. The most common among them are:

 (Words w/I primary stress as in “'after”)

  (Words w/2 primary stresses, as in “'week'end”)

_&_  (words w/one primary and one secondary stress, as in 'hair-, dresser, maga'zine).

Though w-s in English is called free, there are certain tendencies in English which regulate the accentuation of words. There are 2 main accentuation tendencies: the recessive and the rhythmic tendency.

According to the recessive tendency, stress falls on the 1^st syllable (e.g. “'mother”, “'father”, “'sister”, “'brother”) or on the 2^nd syllable (e.g. be'come, in'deed, for'give etc.) According to the rhythmic tendency stress is on the 3^rd syllable from the end (in'tensity, possi'bility).

It has also been noticed that the stress of the parent word is often retained in the derivatives. 'Personal-,perso'nality, 'nation-,natio'nality.

This regularity is sometimes called the retentive tendency in English.

There is one more tendency in English: the tendency to stress the most important elements in words. Such negative prefixes as “-un, -in, -mis, -ex, -vice, -sub, -under, semantically important elements in compound words: well-'known, red-'hot, bad-'tempered.