Stress

1. Stress 1.Stress is defined as initiator power. 2.The IPA diacritic for stress is a short vertical line[‘] placed before the symbol for the stressed sound or syllable.

2. Characteristics of a stressed syllable • 1.Stressed syllables are prominent.This is due to 4 factors: • a)loudness b)length c)pitch d)quality • How to decide on stress placement? • -whether it is a simple or complex word • -which grammatical category it belongs to • -number of syllables the word has • -the phonological structure of the word

3. Placement of stress • Single syllable words are said with primary stress. • Two syllable words-either the first or the second syllable will be stressed not both. • Verbs-if the second syllable is strong,then the second syllable is stressed.eg.a’pply,a’rrive,’attract,etc • If the final syllable is weak,then the first syllable is stressed,eg.’enter,’open,etc

4. Placement of Stress • Nouns-if the second syllable contains a short vowel,then the stress will usually come on the first syllable,eg.’money,’product,’balloon,etc • Other 2 syllable words such as adverbs and prepositions behave like verbs and adjectives.

5. Complex Words • Complex words are of 2 types: • -words with an affix • -compound words • Stress on Affixes: • -receive the primary stress,eg.’semicircle,’person,etc • -the word stressed is as the affix was not there,eg.’unpleasant,etc • -stress remains on the stem,not the affix,but to a different syllable,eg.mag’netic.