Introduction to the study of English stress

Long vowels, the presence of schwa, root words, nouns vs verbs, and stress shift

Stress is an aspect of suprasegmental features of English pronunciation. The other two aspects are rhythm and intonation. The mastery of these three features is essential for effective oral communication in the English language.

However, I’ve found out from my experience that many students merely memorize the stress rules without actually pronouncing English words with the correct stress placement. It gets even discouraging that even after these students have been taught the correct stress placement, rules and facts surrounding stress, they still go out conversing with their friends without the correct stress.

I consider this carefree attitude as utterly counter-productive to language teaching and learning. In some of my classes, I’ve taught stress and English pronunciation just as a way of fulfilling all righteousness; as an exercise in futility.

It’s extremely important to remind ourselves that learning has occurred when there is a relatively permanent change in our behaviour—in the way we do things, in the way we speak.

Stress is the degree of vocal force that we exert on a particular syllable in a word. It is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. In English, stressed syllables are louder than non-stressed syllables. Also, they are longer and have a higher pitch.

Three characteristics of stress:

1. Loudness

2. Length

3. Higher pitch

It is important to note that English is a stress-timed language, and this essential feature of the language gives us the beauty of the language. Besides, everyone who decides to achieve communicative competence in the language must master the English stress and speak with such mastery. The presence of stress in a syllable of a word and pronouncing a syllable with the correct stress placement every time we speak makes learning English pronunciation somewhat daunting. But we must be conscious of what we pronounce and how we pronounce words at all times. This consciousness is necessary to achieve better spoken English.

In many languages we speak in Nigeria, for example Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa etc, they are called tonal languages.

A tonal language is defined as a language where different words with different tonal inflections will convey different meanings. For example, a single word could be said with four different tones, and each of those tones will change the meaning of the word. An example is OGUN in Yoruba which could mean “twenty”, “war”, “idol”, “he stabs”, “length” etc, depending on the diacritic (amin) on the word.

English isn’t like these languages, and many of us bring our tonal inflections into the English language which affect our learning of stress.

The presence of stress in a syllable is marked by a diacritic (‘). In your examinations, the syllable that carries the stress will be in capital letters.

Since this newsletter is an introduction to the study of stress, I’m going to write some fundamentals that you can bear in mind while learning the English stress.

1. Since stress is defined by its length, long vowels (/u:/, /a:/, /ɔː/, /ɜː/, and /iː/ are indicative of stress placement. The presence of a long vowel in a syllable gives us a high likelihood that the stress will fall on that syllable that carries the long vowel. Examples are in words like department /dɪˈpɑːt.mənt/, reasonable /ˈriː.zən.ə.bəl/, argue /ˈɑːɡ.juː/, defer /dɪˈfɜːr/, recharge /ˌriːˈtʃɑːdʒ/, support /səˈpɔːt/ amoeba /əˈmiː.bə/, usual /ˈjuː.ʒu.əl/ etc

2. The schwa sound /ə/ is NEVER stressed in any syllable. For example, words such as differ /'dɪf.ər/, around /əˈraʊnd/, contain /kənˈteɪn/, police /pəˈliːs/, pilot /ˈpaɪ.lət/, comfortable /ˈkʌm.fə.tə.bəl/ etc.

3. The stress placement of root words remains the same even when a suffix or prefix has been added to the root. Examples are LEgal/ilLEgal/ilLEgally, SOcial/SOcialism/SOcialize, dePEND/dePENdence/indePENdence, imPErial/imPErialism, indiVIdual/indiVIdualism, PERson/PERsonal/PERsonally/PERsonalize, eSTAblish/eSTAblishment, CRItic/CRIticism/CRIticize/CRItical, aGREE/aGREEment, ARgue/ARgument, MARket/MARketable/MARketing/MARketer etc

4. A two-syllable noun is always stressed on the first syllable while a two-syllable verb is mostly stressed on the second syllable. However, there are exceptions such as differ /’dɪf.ər/, argue /ˈɑːɡ.juː/ etc.

5. Apart from the change in stress, words like rebel, refuse, produce etc which can be a noun or a verb have a change in their internal vowels or consonants. Rebel (n) /ˈreb.əl/, rebel (v)/rɪˈbel/, refuse (v) /rɪˈfjuːz/, refuse (n) /ˈref.juːs/, produce (v) /prəˈdʒuːs/, produce (n) /ˈprɒdʒ.uːs/.

6. However, there can be a stress shift in some English words. Examples are PHOto/PHOtograph/phoTOgraphy/photoGRAphic, COUrage/couRAgeous etc.

7. Advice (noun) and advise (verb) both have their stress on the second syllable: advice /ədˈvaɪs/ and advise /ədˈvaɪz/. The difference is the consonant /s/ and /z/ at the second syllables respectively.

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With love and everything English,

Francis