What is word stress?
To understand what word stress is, you need to understand that words are made up of syllables, some of which are stressed when they are pronounced. When we pronounce the syllables of a word, we employ the use of a variety of features.
The stressed syllable in a word consists of five features. These features are:
The stressed syllable is longer
The stressed syllable is louder
The pitch of the stressed syllable usually deviates from the pitch of the other syllables. This makes the pitch of the stressed syllable higher than the others.
The stressed syllable is said clearer, than the other syllables. This makes the sound of the stressed syllable purer.
The stressed syllable requires the use of larger facial movement.
Rules related to word stress
As it relates to ‘rules’ that govern word stress in the English language, it is hardly believed that there are actual ‘rules’, due to the fact that deviations are commonly found. There are, however, certain ‘patterns’, in word stress, in English.
With reference to the story of The Hare and the Tortoise, we can find certain word stress patterns. The narrative of The Hare and the Tortoise is one that is very simple, as it relates to the words used, so, there can hardly be found any words with more than two syllables. Despite this fact, there are word stress patterns that can be found in the story. Let us look at some examples.
1. Word stress rule: A word is normally stressed on the first syllable, unless there is a reason to put the stress somewhere else. (Reasons include suffixes like –ity or –ion and prefixes like -con or –dis.)
Some examples of this rule that can be found in the story are: making, tortoise, being, ever, anywhere, mocking.
Here, the first syllab...
... middle of paper ...
...and when at last he did wake up the tortoise was near the goal. The hare now ran his swiftest but he could not overtake the tortoise in time.
The voice moves to a higher pitch at the highlighted sections of the text, for emphasis. This draws attention to the idea surrounding the specific word, which may make the thought group clearer. The change of the pitch can also convey shades of meaning.
It can place even more emphasis on the superlative of a word, for example the word “swiftest”, in the text. This word is already in a superlative form, however, the heightening of the pitch, while pronouncing this word in the sentence can make the speed at which the hare was running, seem to be even more extreme. Reading the passage with the emphasis on the selected words, can make the story seem more interesting and exciting. It can also make the text easier to understand.
The literary device, author’s voice, affects the meaning of a text in almost everything you read. This is especially true for the classic book Night as well as the short story “ A Spring Morning”. Some of the examples of when text is affected by the author’s voice include: when the author is foreshadowing, when the author is writing about someone is being told to obey what another person is saying, and when the author is writing about a loved one dying.
The Voices also build a relationship with the listener, they seem to be trustworthy and to have a sense of humour, and this helps the listener to learn about the characters and to understand the town. An example of this could be found in the prologue when the First Voice addresses the listener personally by saying “Only your eyes are unclosed” and again when it says “And you alone can hear the invisible starfall”. The effect of this makes the listener feel like the Voices are talking to them alone.
takes away from the mood of the story. Another reason speech is so important is
... using assonance to connect the reader to middle vowel sounds. This way, the reader's attention is directed to where the speaker wants it to go. In conclusion, the speaker develops the theme by getting readers to be focus exactly on her ideas and feelings towards perseverance and hard working people.
This helps signify that there is a transition in the conversation, as well as serving to provide a more forceful conclusion to the poem. Beginning the third stanza with a stressed syllable gives the entire stanza a feel of more power, even as it flows back into the easy rhythm of iambs. Iambs also fit with the tone of the poem, which is one of earnestness, but not anger, or even frustration. Marvell's tone is one of calm persuasion.
Stress, as defined as a reaction to a stimulus that breaks our physical and mental harmony, is ubiquitous. However, stress has two sides – the bad and the good, in which the latter is mostly overlooked as most people suffer from the affliction of the former.
The article “The Nature of Stress in English Language A Study from a Perspective of Rule-Governed Approach, by Sardar Fayyaz ul Hassan, claims that, “Good speech in English involves control of the system of sounds, stress and intonation pertaining to the language” (2). Secondly, Hassan believes in correct accent since it is, “a linguistic feature that creates rhythm in English language” (2). The author’s thoughts say that to speak “good” English, you must follow all the rules. Hassan discusses that, “a native speaker knows intuitively which word or syllable is to be stressed” (6). People who believe in rules like Hassan, will also think those who are not native of English, will not know all the rules. Therefore they will not speak his definition of “good” English. Zanuttini would condemn that Hassan and his followers want, “to live in a homogeneous white bread world”
The transitional phrases lead the reader into the next paragraph by maintaining their attention with concepts from the previous one.
To begin, the poem, “Eve’s Apology,” uses many different poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, rhyme scheme, and simile. The author uses a great number of alliteration, which is the repetition of constant sounds generally at the beginnings of words. Alliteration can be seen in the words “what” and “weakness” in line 3. Some more examples of alliteration throughout the poem are “subtle serpent’s” (23), “he had him” (24), and “with words which” (30). Assonance, the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds, is another poetic device that the author uses greatly. Some examples of assonance are found in lines 10 “ The ‘p...
AAVE can differ in the placement of the stress comparing to other English varieties from some other varieties .So, where words like police, hotel and July are pronounced with stress on the last syllable in Standard English, in AAVE they may have stress placed on the first syllable so that you get ‘po-lice, ‘ho-tel and ‘Ju-ly. (Green 131)
The poetic conventions used by this poet include two half-lines in each verse, separated by a caesura or pause. The half-lines are joined by the oral stressing of alliterative words in the half-lines, both consonants and vowels (Tharaud 34). “At least one of the two stressed words in the first half-line, and usually both of them, begin with the same sound as the first stressed word of the second half-line” (Donaldson 67). When a word was stressed in the first half-line, its alliterative counterpart was stressed in the following half-line; the words could either complement each other, like holy/heaven or sin/enemy, or they could contrast each other like happy/wretched or warm/winter.
These three groups were then asked to complete three different tasks. The first was to repeat and segment 20 different words (5 consonant-vowel-consonant, 5 CCVC, 5 CVCC, and 5 CCVCC) and two overall scores were administered to the participants. Both scores were out of a maximum of 20 points; the first score was based on giving 1 point for each correctly analyzed word, and the second score was based on giving 1 point for correctly analyzing medial vowels.
Garrett (1975) represented four characteristics of slips of the tongue. The first one is that the exchange exists between linguistic units of the same positions. For example, initial linguistic segments are replaced by another initial linguistic segment. The same generalization is applied to the middle and final linguistic segments. Additionally, slips appear in similar phonetic units. This means that that the consonants are replaced by consonants and vowels are replaced by vowels. Furthermore, the slips occur in similar stress patterns, which signifies that stressed syllables are replaced by stressed syllables and unstressed syllables are replaced by unstressed syllables. Finally, slips of the tongue follow the phonological rules of a language (cited in Carroll, 2007, p. 195).
Stress happens to everyone at some point in their lives. My definition of stress is when one is worried about something that is bothering them, whether it is miner or major. Personally I stress about every day, financially, family, school, work, at tons more. The key is how does one actually deal with stress so it will not get out of hand? Everyone is different and some may not know how to cope with it. The actual definition according to our Life Fitness book stress is used to describe the general physical and emotional state that accompanies the stress response. There are ways to deal with stress. There are many things that happens to us when we stress. Three examples are; types of stress, common sources of stress, and how to deal with stress.
Stress, we all struggle with it. "Stress" is a word we're all familiar with, some of us maybe too familiar. Stress cannot be avoided and it is not possible to entirely eliminate it from our lives. The hassles, deadlines and frustrations have made stress so common that it has become a way of life for people. Life is full of challenges, and a life without it is not only impossible but is also undesirable.