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In particular, vowels in unstressed syllables may have a more central (or "neutral") articulation, and those in stressed syllables have a more peripheral articulation. Stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes, the difference is minimal between the acoustic signals of stressed and those of unstressed ...
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress).Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel or with certain other vowels that are described as ...
Each English word has an associated stress pattern: [1] each syllable is stressed or unstressed. Unstressed syllables are generally lower in pitch, quieter, shorter, and typically also phonetically reduced, notably with the vowels nearer to schwa. Many languages mark syllable stress and its absence with some of these features, but rely on them ...
Secondary stress: the secondarily stressed syllables of polysyllabic content words; the most strongly stressed syllable in polysyllabic function words (auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions); subsidiary stress in compound words. Unstressed: unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words; monosyllabic function words.
A stressed syllable is one that is emphasized, or has prominence. In contrast to an unstressed syllable, a stressed syllable has a higher pitch. In musical terms, this pitch is commonly a perfect fourth, perfect fifth, or even minor third, above the voice’s tonic. A stressed syllable tends to have a longer duration and louder volume.
Most languages have at most one degree of stress on the phonemic level (English can contrast up to four levels of stress, that is, three degrees of stressed and one unstressed, according to some analyses [1]). That is, each syllable has stress or it does not. Many languages have rhythmic stress; location of the stress may not be predictable ...
The theory of stress-timing predicts that each of the three unstressed syllables in between bett-and -noth-will be shorter than the syllable of between make and car, because three syllables must fit into the same amount of time as that available for of. However, it should not be assumed that all varieties of English are stress-timed in this way.
Word-final /t/ was lost after an unstressed syllable. This followed the loss of word-final /n/, because it remained before /t/: PrePGmc * bʰr̥n̥t > early PGmc *burunt > late PGmc *burun "they carried". /e/ was raised to /i/ in unstressed syllables. The original vowel remained when followed by /r/, and was later lowered to /ɑ/.