Stress

What is stress? Stress is loudness or length given to a syllable in a word or a sentence.

Where is the stress placed ?

On the vowel sound ,except schwa is never stressed .

General rules of stress : 1-The root of the word usually gets the stress .Therefore, the prefix and suffix are not usually stressed. e.g. Teacher , maker, dislike

2- Verbs are usually stressed on the second syllable begin, prefer Note: Be aware of schwa in verbs enter ,differ

3- words ending in ic or ics have their main stress on the first syllable before the last (penultimate) specific ,diplomatic, democratic phonetics

4-words ending in –ical have their main stress on the second syllable before the last (antepenultimate) mechanical , identical ,economical

5- words ending in –ion have their main stress on the syllable before –ion . Suspicion ,Examination ,Pronunciation

6- Most 2- syllable nouns have stress on the first syllable. Present ,China, Export , Table

7- Most 2- syllable adjectives have stress on the first syllable. Clever ,Slender ,Clever, Happy

8-Most 2-syllable verbs have stress on the second syllable. to present , to export , to decide

9-words ending in cy –ty – phy and gy have their main stress on the ante –penultimate syllable. Democracy , Photography , Geology.

10- Compound nouns have their stress on the first part. Blackbird ,greenhouse , takeaway

11- compound adjectives have their stress on the second part. Bad-tempered ,old- fashioned

12- compound verbs have their stress on the second part. Under stand , overflow

13- Numbers end with ‘teen” have their stress on “teen”. Seventeen

Compounds in which the first element is a number in some form also tend to have final stress:

Compounds functioning as adverbs are usually final-stressed:

Compounds which function as verbs and have an adverbial first element take final stress:

Variable stress Stress position may vary for one of two reasons: either as a result of the stress on other words occurring next to the word in question, or because not all speakers agree on the placement of stress in some words. The former case is an aspect of connected speech the main effect of which is that the stress on a final-stressed compound tends to move to a preceding syllable and change to secondary stress if the following word begins with a strongly stressed syllable.

Examples:

Two-syllable words There is a general tendency for verbs to be stressed nearer the end of a word and for nouns to be stressed nearer the beginning. We will look first at verbs. If the final syllable is weak, then the first syllable is stressed. Thus: