Word stress article

Name: Robby Maulidiyawan

NIM: 5180511030

Word stress
Abstract

This article review presents an overview of what word stress is and its importance in
intelligibility. As we know, word stress is very important in English language. So, this article
is contains small amount of information about word stress. How to understand native speaker
and of course increasing our knowledge.

Introduction

This literature review presents an overview of what word stress is its relationship with
intelligibility might encounter.

In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is relative emphasis or

prominence given to a certain syllable in a word, or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence.
This emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length,
full articulation of the vowel, and changes in pitch. Word stress is not only making
differences of certain words meaning. but it also give that certain words “a life” which make
what we says is not just have different meaning but also easy to understand to the native
speaker or foreigner.

Main problem

Distinguish certain words and avoid any possible misunderstanding. Native speakers
of English use word stress naturally. Word stress is so natural for them that they don't even
know they use it. Foreigner or receiver find would difficult to understand native speakers,
especially those speaking fast. Faulty suprasegmental aspects of speech that can impact on
intelligibility. That’so why words stress gain important roles in English language as main
aspect of complete conversation.
Word stress

Word stress in English is quite variable: some words are stressed on their first syllable
(e.g., sis-ter, de-co-ra-te, A-ra-bic), some are stressed on the second (e.g., present, arcane,
America, attention), some on the third (e.g., de-co-ra-tion, his-to-ry-ici-ty, re-fe-ree), some
on the fourth (e.g., ex-as-pe-ra-tion), etc.

In principle, stress alone could serve to distinguish words, but in reality it seldom does.
Minimal pairs in English which are distinguished by word stress, such as ‘in-sig-ht/in-ci-te’,
are rare (Cutler, Dahan & van Donselaar, 1997). However, we know that faulty
suprasegmental aspects of speech can impact on intelligibility (Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson &
Koehler, 1992; Derwing, Munro, & Wiebe, 1998; Hahn, 2004; Kang, Rubin & Pickering,
2010) and that word stress constitutes a significant part of suprasegmental speech. There is
evidence to indicate that intelligibility and comprehensibility are undermined specifically by
faulty word stress (Cutler & Clifton, 1984; Gallego, 1990; Bond, 1999; Field 2005). Faulty
prosodic features including word stress may affect comprehension more adversely than
segmental errors (Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson, & Koehler, 1992; Bond, 1999). This
misunderstanding of word stress can have significant impact beyond the language. For
example, it has been found that word stress mispronunciation contributes to
misunderstandings between GPs and their patients in multicultural medical clinics (Roberts,
Moss, Wass, Sarangi & Jones, 2005).

Words which change meaning

Sometimes certain word with same spelling are pronounced with different word
stress, this way or option to distinguish that certain words, but in reality it seldom does.
Minimal pairs in English which are distinguished by word stress, such as ‘insight/incite’, are
rare (Cutler, Dahan & van Donselaar, 1997).

Noun Verb
OB-ject ob-JECT
TRANS-fer trans-FER
RE-cord re-CORD
CON-trast con-TRAST
 In English, as we have seen, stress placement is not entirely random: nouns, for
instance, are typically stressed on the penult or the antepenult, depending on the weight of the
former. That is, there is a certain degree of phonological conditioning in stress placement. As
we’ll see, this is often overridden by morphological factors; for example, some suffixes, such
as -ic, attract the stress on the immediately preceding syllable, witness pairs such as hístory
— historic, photograph — photográphic, etc.).

Such suffixes are called pre-stressed — I guess the term is quite self-explanatory.
Finally, some suffixes are never stressed and they do not alter the stress of the stem, either;
examples include -ing, -ed, -ly, etc., e.g., decorate — decorating, decorated, colourful —
colourfully, etc. Such suffixes are referred to as stressneutral ones. Some suffixes attract
stress on themselves, such as -ee, cf. Re-fe-ree, absentee; such suffixes are known as self-
stressed. Some prefixes, then, may interfere with the stress of the stem.

The prefixes per-, o-, com, for example, are basically unstressable, so verbs like per-
mit, vo-mit, com-mít, etc., are stressed on the ult, even though, verbs with a light ult are
generally stressed on the penult, cf. the verbs límit, vomit, where li and vo, of course, are not
prefixes but part of the stem. To sum up, stress placement often happens according to
morphological conditioning, which often overrides phonological conditioning. Finally, some
items are stressed irregularly.

For example, the noun evént is stressed on the penult, although it contains no self-
stressed suffix; cháracter, on the other hand, is stressed on the antepenult, even though the
penult is heavy, and no morphological condition can account for why the antepenult is
stressed, either. In such cases, we talk about lexical conditioning — a tricky term used by
linguists to say that the word is simply irregular. (The term refers to the fact that stress
placement is determined by the individual lexical item — i.e., it doesn’t follow a general
pattern, but it’s irregular.)
 A word normally stressed on the first syllable, unless there is reason to put stress
somewhere else. The reason is either suffixes or prefixes.

1. Suffixes
The word with suffix “-ion” start with letter i or u this will affect the position
of stressed word (exception: suffix -ist, -ism, -ize and ing)
e.g.: re-LA-tion, re-ve-LA-tion com-BUS-tion, ci-vi-li-ZA-tion, cap-pi-ta-li-
ZA-tion, com-pe-TI-tion.
2. Prefixes
Word beginning with: (a-, ab-, be-, con-, de-, dis-, e-, ex-, in-, im-, per-, pre-
and re-)
Most two-syllable verbs starting with prefix are almost stressed on the
second syllable
(Example: ad-DRESS, be-COME, com-PLETE, con-TRAST, dis-CUSS, ex-
PORT, im-PROVE, re-QUI-re, pre-FER, con-TEMPT)

Two syllable nouns and adjectives starting with prefix need to be

learned individually
(Example: adjectives and nouns stressed on prefix: AB-sent, COM-plex, DIS-
tant, an EX-pert, a CON-tract, a PER-mit, a RE-cord)
(Example; adjectives and nouns not stressed on prefix: ex-TREME, con-CISE,
a re-PORT, an ex-PORT

Prefixes in three-syllable words.

Prefix are usually stressed in three-syllable nouns and adjectives, they are not
always stressed in verbs, which need to be learned individually.
E.g.: nouns and adjectives: CON-fi-dent, DE-ca-dent, IN-fam-mous, IN-ci-
dent
e.g: verbs: con-SI-der, en-VIS-age, COM-pli-cate, IN-di-cate.

Note: all three syllable verbs suffixes with “-ate” are stressed on the first syllable.
 Three main rules have been discussed in the literature. The first of the three is
phonological similarity. This is when students use known stress patterns from other similar
words and transfer them to new words. For example, a student may know the word stress
pattern of ‘humanity’ and apply its word stress structure to a new vocabulary item such as
‘absurdity’.

It is particularly of note that late learners of English rely most on the stress patterns
of phonologically-similar known words (Guion, 2006). The placement of certain suffixes in
English can alter a stress pattern. For example, adding ‘-ian’ to a root word changes the stress
(consider LI-brary and Li-br-AR-ian), while other suffixes do not have this effect (evident in
‘FRIEND’ and ‘FRIENDship’ where both place stress on the same syllable 2006, for a full
review). It is suggested that this feature of stress patterns in English be explicitly taught and
practiced in the classroom (Ghorbany, 2011). The explicit teaching of suffix rules may assist
in accessing the students’ ability to learn stress through the use of phonological similarity.

Additionally, analogy exercises, where students group words with similar stress
patterns or find the odd one out (Field, 2005), again rely on phonological similarity. It has
been shown how early and late bilinguals both demonstrated ability for analogical extension
and learning simple patterns (Guion, 2004).

The second rule relates to word class. Just over 80% of two syllable nouns and
adjectives place stress on the first syllable, e.g., ‘KITCHen’ and ‘EXT-ra’ (Hammond,
1999). However, verb stress works in the opposite manner (consider ‘ach-IEVE’ and ‘ag-
REE’). The word class rules appear in many English teaching textbooks but there is little
evidence for the effectiveness or transfer of this rule.

1. Stress the first syllable of:

(Example CLI-ma-te, KNOW-led-ge, EA-sy, O-pen, STA-tion, WOrk-er)
2. Stress the last syllable of:
3. Most two-syllable verbs
(Example: re-QUI-re, de-CI-de, pre-FER, sug-GEST, con-TEMPT)
 An important third rule concerns the syllabic structure of words (Guion, 2006).
English stress tends to fall on syllables with longer vowels or when the word ends in two or
more consonants (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). However, it may be that consonant clusters are
less important than vowel length and there are many exceptions to this rule (Guion, 2006).
Early bilinguals can pick up more complex pattern learning such as syllabic structure rules
but still show some slight deficits in this area (Guion, 2004).

Whatever rule is decided upon, they have one thing in common; all of these
explanations take time and need to be broken down to teachable concepts, if they can be at
all. Mastering a linguistic rule may happen but internalizing the stress patterns for specific
words is not the same (Field, 2005).

Word glossary

Suprasegmental refer to denoting a Antepenult refer to the third from

feature of an utterance other than the last syllable in a word.
consonantal and vocalic components, e.g.,
Phonological similarity refer to
(in English) stress and intonation. In when the items sound similar than when
phonetics, connected with features of the items sound different (Conrad, 1964).
speech such as pitch and stress that Although this effect has become known as
the phonological similarity effect, a better
accompany rather than constitute
term is the acoustic similarity effect,
phonemes because what matters is that the items
sound similar to each other.
Segmental refer to linguistics any
Internalizing keep problem inside,
of the individual speech sounds that make
to deal with an emotion or conflict by
up a longer string of sounds. thinking about it rather than expressing it
openly.
Penult refer to the second to last
Lexical relating to the individual
item in a series of things, especially the
words that make up the vocabulary of a
second to last syllable of a word. language.

Special thanks:

1. Martin Checklin TESOL in Context TESOL as a Global Trade: Special Edition

S3: November 2012 Ethics, Equity and Ecology.
2. ELTS Master class Oxford University Press.
3. Unknown site resources.