575. B. Ph. LAB III 36. Stress (linguistics)

36. Stress (linguistics)

 

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables.

The word "accent" is often used with this sense, but it may be used for other kinds of prominence; stress specifically may thus be called stress accent or dynamic accent.

The stress placed on syllables within words is called word stress or lexical stress. The stress placed on words within sentences is called sentence stress or prosodic stress. The latter is one of the three components of prosody, along with rhythm and intonation.

 

Stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes the difference between the acoustic signals of stressed and unstressed syllables may be minimal.

The possibilities for stress in tone languages are an area of ongoing research, but stress-like patterns have been observed in Mandarin Chinese. They are realized as alternations between syllables where the tones are carefully realized with a relatively large swing in fundamental frequency, and syllables where they are realized "sloppily" with typically a small swing.

Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress is accompanied by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract.

(Much literature emphasizes the importance of pitch changes and pitch motions on stressed syllables, but experimental support for this idea is weak. Nevertheless, most experiments do not directly address the pitch of speech, which is a subjective perceived quantity. Experiments typically measure the speech fundamental frequency, which is objectively measurable, and strongly correlated with pitch, but not quite the same thing.)

 

Lexical stress

Lexical stress, or word stress, is the stress placed on a given syllable in a word. The position of lexical stress in a word may depend on certain general rules applicable in the language or dialect in question, although in some languages it is largely unpredictable, needing to be "learned" for each individual word.

Languages in which the position of the stress can usually be predicted by a simple rule are said to have fixed stress.

For example, in Czech, Finnish, Icelandic and Hungarian the stress almost always comes on the first syllable of a word;

in Quechua and Polish the stress is almost always on the penultimate syllable;

while in Macedonian it comes on the antepenult (third syllable from the end).

Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in Classical Arabic and Latin (where stress is conditioned by the structure of the penultimate syllable). They are said to have a regular stress rule.

French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, although French has no lexical stress at all:

instead, prosodic stress (see below) is placed on the final syllable (or, if that is a schwa, the next-to-final syllable) of a string of words, which may be equivalent to a clause or a phrase.

When a word is said alone, its last syllable is also the end of the phrase, so the stress is placed there.

Languages in which the position of stress in a word is less predictable are said to have variable stress. This applies to English and Russian, and to some extent to Italian and Spanish. Here stress is truly lexical: it must be memorized as part of the pronunciation of an individual word. In such languages stress may be phonemic, in that it can serve to distinguish otherwise identical words; for example, the English words insight and incite are distinguished in pronunciation only by the fact that the stress falls on the first syllable in the former and on the second syllable in the latter. Other examples include umschreiben ("rewrite") vs. umschreiben ("paraphrase, outline") in German, земли́ (genitive of "earth, land") vs. зе́мли (plural of "earth, land") in Russian, ancora ("anchor") and ancora ("more, still, yet") in Italian. English compound nouns can change their meaning based on stress, as with paper bág (a bag made of paper) and páper bag (a bag for carrying newspapers).

Stress placement for some words may differ between dialects. For example, in British English the word labóratory is pronounced with primary stress on the second syllable, while American English stresses the first syllable, láboratory.

Some languages (such as Spanish and Modern Greek) mark the position of lexical stress in their orthography. See Spelling and notation for stress below.

Levels of stress

Some languages are described as having both primary stress and secondary stress.

A syllable with secondary stress is stressed relative to unstressed syllables, but not as strongly as a syllable with primary stress. As with primary stress, the position of secondary stress may be more or less predictable depending on language.

In English it is not fully predictable; for example, the words organization and accumulation both have primary stress on the fourth syllable, but the secondary stress comes on the first syllable in the former word and on the second syllable in the latter. In some analyses, for example the one found in Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English, English has been described as having four levels of stress: primary, secondary, tertiary, and "quaternary", but these treatments often disagree with each other.

Prosodic stress

Extra stress

Prosodic stress, or sentence stress, refers to stress patterns that apply at a higher level than the individual word – namely within a prosodic unit. It may involve a certain natural stress pattern characteristic of a given language, but may also involve the placing of emphasis on particular words because of their relative importance.

Another type of prosodic stress pattern is quantity sensitivity – in some languages additional stress tends to be placed on syllables that are longer (moraically heavy).

Prosodic stress is also often used pragmatically to emphasize (focus attention on) particular words or the ideas associated with them. Doing this can change or clarify the meaning of a sentence; for example:

I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)

In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue

"Is it brunch tomorrow?"

"No, it's dinner tomorrow."

In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the syllables of "tomorrow" would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of "dinner", the emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as "din" in "dinner" are louder and longer. They may also have a different fundamental frequency, or other properties.

Stress and vowel reduction

 

Stress and rhythm

Historical effects of stress

 

Spelling and notation for stress

The orthographies of some languages include devices for indicating the position of lexical stress. Some examples are listed below.

·         PROSODY: PHONETIC BASIS

·         • principal phonetic correlates of linguistic aspects of prosody:

·         pitch, duration, loudness

·         • substratum of voice quality as determined by the state of the vocal tract as well as long-term vocal tract settings

·         – long-term vocal tract (articulatory) settings:

·         • underlying articulatory positions/postures upon which all the dynamics of articulation are superimposed

·         • influences whole stream of speech

·         • judged to be part of speaker’s personal characteristics (e.g. habitually rounded and slightly protruded lips influence frequency range of formant patterns)

·         – flexible vocal tract settings:

·         • change of voice quality by means of changing laryngeal tension (“phonatory”)

·         settings

·         • change of supralaryngeal vocal tract settings (longitudinally or latitudinally)

·influences formant distribution

STRESS

• stress is signaled by a combination of 1] pitch, 2] duration and 3] loudness (usually in this order of significance, but there can be language-dependent differences)

• language-specific types of word accent assignment

– fixed word accent

• either quite straightforward (Czech: always first syllable; French: always final; Polish:

always penultimate etc.)

• or more complex, e.g., Latin: stress on penultimate, if heavy, else on antepentultimate

(imago, ornamentum, movere – cadere, rusticus, exercitus)

– free word accent

• stress is distinctive, e.g. Italian (capitano “captain”, capitano “they happen”, capitanò “he captained”)

– variable word stress

• stress is predictable in limited and complex environments, but not in others; small

numbers of minmal pairs distinguished by stress, e.g. English, German (Konstanz vs.

Konstanz)

STRESS ASSIGNMENT

• “word stress” or “lexical stress” must be considered in isolation or interpreted to

refer to phonological words (or stress groups)

– a number of function words (articles, prepositions, frequent auxiliary and modal

verbs) are unstressed and reduced in connected speech and thus treated like pre- or

suffixes to content words (“the table”, “did he?” etc.)

• degrees of stress:

– primary stress: principal pitch prominence

– secondary stress: subsidiary pitch prominence

– tertiary stress: weak prominence produced principally by loudness/length

– no stress (most likely to have the “schwa”-vowel /ə/)

• English stress is predictable in part, but can also be distinctive

􀁰 variable word stress

• Distinctiveness

– defer – differ (very few examples)

– noun/verb- pairs: an ˈinsult – to inˈsult; an ˈincrease – to inˈcrease; an ˈoverflow – to

overˈflow

– compounds – syntactic phrases: a ˈwalkout – to ˈwalk ˈout

RULES FOR ENGLISH WORD STRESS

• limited predictability (for stress on word stems)

– verbs/adjectives:

• stress on penultimate σ when final σ has a short vowel in an open σ or is followed by no more than one consonant

– suˈrrender, ˈpolish, aˈstonish, ˈrigid, exˈplicit

• else stress on the final σ

– reˈlate, mainˈtain, suˈblime, seˈvere, aˈbrupt

– nouns:

• if the final σ has a short vowel, disregard vowel and apply rules for verbs

– ˈelephant, ˈmoment, comˈplex-ion, suˈrrender

• if final σ has a long vowel, it is stressed

– poˈlice, maˈchine, diˈspute, camˈpaign

– words with more than two syllables and a long final vowel:

• stress may optionally occur not on the final but the antepenultimate σ

– ˈanecdote, ˈpedigree, ˈfahrenheit, ˈerudite, ˈmoribund, ˈescalate

– exceptions:

– ˈwindow, poˈsition, ˈgeneral, toˈmato, saˈlami etc.

SUFFIXES AND STRESS

• suffixes influence word stress as stress rules involve counting number and types of syllables backwards from the end of the word

– leaving stress on stem unaffected: e.g., -ment, -ly, -ize

• ˈgovern – ˈgovernment, ˈusual – ˈusually, ˈlegal - ˈlegalize

– stressed suffixes: e.g., -ation, -esque, -ese, -ee

• ˈlimit – limiˈtation, ˈpicture – pictuˈresque, ˈChina – Chiˈnese, ˈtrain - traiˈnee

– suffixes that shift stress on the stem: e.g., -ic, -ity

• eˈconomy – ecoˈnomic, ˈcurious – curiˈosity, aˈpply – ˈapplicant

ANALYSIS EXERCISE

1. Sort the following English words into three lists.

List A should include all the words that have primary stress on the first syllable.

List B should include all the words that have primary stress on the second syllable.

List C is for words that have primary stress on the last syllable.

kangaroo, mystery, fantasy, fantastic, hullaballoo, recover, intention, concentrate, elephant, maroon, millionaire, understand, excitement, troublesome, venerable, alongside, clemency, puppeteer, conservative, attendee, magazine, condition, possession

ANALYSIS EXERCISE

2. The placement of stress in Maori is governed by the following principles:

a) stress never falls more than 4 syllables away from the end of the word

b) long vowels attract stress

c) diphthongs attract stress except in the final syllable

d) long vowels take precedence over diphthongs

e) stress is as near to the beginning of the word as possible unless a) – d) holds Predict the stress (all adjacent vowels count as diphthongs):

atapo: ‘early dawn’ pa:paɾakauta ‘hotel’

kihiɾimete ‘Christmas’ kawanataŋa ‘government’

paepae ‘beam’ kauma:tua ‘male elder’

tauɾekaɾeka ‘slave’ papakaiŋa ‘village’

maɾae ‘courtyard’ kaimoana ‘seafood’

fafai ‘war’ mokopuna ‘grandchild’

COMPOUNDS

• compounds have nonphrasal stress patterns

– [ˈAB]: ˈgreenhouse, ˈtextbook, ˈfiling cabinet

– [[ˈAB]C]: ˈblackboard eraser, ˈgreenhouse effect, ˈhouse-warming party

– [A[ˈBC]]: government ˈworking party, office ˈfiling cabinet

– [[ˌAB][ˈCD]]: ˌLabour party ˈfinance committee

– [[A[ˈBC]]D]: home ˈword-processing equipment

• predictable by the Compound Prominence Rule:

– in a pair of sister elements the second one is stronger, if and only if it branches (simplified representation) labour party finance committee home word-processing equipment

INTONATION

• “speech melody” – movement of pitch during the course of an utterance

• phrasing: structuring of spoken utterances into several levels of smaller tone groups (e.g., intonation phrases) that often reflect syntactic units and are part of the rhythmic hierarchy

• pitch accent: specific tonal movement associated with the stressed syllable of a particular word

– in English only relevant on the phrase- not the word-level, i.e., not all words in a sentence receive a pitch accent

• boundary constellations: specific tonal configurations that - together with pauses - signal the end (or sometimes the beginning) of specific tone groups

FOCUS

• broad focus: the whole intonation group is in focus, no element is meant to be stressed more than the others (“normal stress”)

– utterances with broad focus can be thought of as “all-new” or ‘out-of-the-blue” or as

if in response to the question “What happened?”

– falls on last lexical item of the utterance (classic definition) resp. on the most deeply

embedded constituent (Cinque)

• What’s new at work? – They have granted Bill a company car

• narrow focus: part of the intonation group is out of focus (because already mentioned in the preceding context) – the parts that remain in focus express

– new information (same as broad focus, only more restricted)

• What have they granted Bill? – They have granted him a company car

– contrast and new information:

• Did you have a good day? – I had a horrible day

• Jane found it easy whereas John found it difficult

– contrast and old information:

• I didn’t go after all – You didn’t go? (echo)

• What sort of powder do you use? – I don’t use powder (insist)

INTONATION DESCRIPTION

• ToBI (Tones and Break Indices)

– common standard for the description of intonation and phrasing structure, originally conceived for the description of American English prosody

– category-based interpretation of the intonation contour as a sequence of discrete intonational events, i.e., tonal categories, that are designated by tone labels

– pitch declination in the overall contour interpreted as downstep, a

phonologically controlled phenomenon associated with a particular tonal category (pitch range compression)

– language-specific tone inventory equivalent to phoneme inventory

– break indices delimit different levels of phrasing, esp. intonation phrases

(IP) and intermediate phrases (ip)