Ministry of higher and secondary specialized

particular combination of varying prominence of syllables in a word forms
its stress pattern. Stress is defined differently by different scientists. B.A. Bogoroditsky defined stress as in increase of energy, accompanied by an increase of expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones defined stress as the degree of
force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhalation and gives an impression of loudness. H. Sweet also stated that stress is connected with
the force of breath. A.C. Jimson admits that a more prominent syllable is accompanied by pitch changes in the voice, quality and quantity of thestressed sounds.
Actually, the nature of word stress can be studied from the point of view of
production and perception; the two are obviously closely related but are
not identical. The production of stressed syllables requires more muscular
energy. Greater muscular effort and muscular activity produce higher
subglottal pressure and an increase in the amount of air expelled from the
lungs. On the acoustic level this extra articulatory activity leads to the
increase of intensity, duration and fundamental frequency of the stressed
syllable. On the perception level it corresponds to the increase of loudness,
length and pitch.
The effect of prominence of the stressed syllable is achieved by a
number of phonetic parameters such as pitch, loudness (force of utterance), length, vowel quality or their combination. As a result, there appears a contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables.
If to compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the words contract
['kɒntrækt] договор and to contract [kən'trækt] заключать договор, one
may note that in the stressed syllable:
− the force of utterance is greater, which is connected with more energetic articulation;
− the pitch of the voice is higher, which is connected with stronger tenseness of the vocal cords and the walls of resonance cavity;
− the quantity of the vowel [æ] in [kən'trækt] is greater, the vowel
becomes longer;
− the quality of the vowel [æ] in the stressed syllable is different from the quality of this vowel in the unstressed position, in which it is more
narrow.
Generally, these four factors work together in combination, though syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one or two of them. Experimental work has shown that these factors are not equally
important. The strongest effect is produced by pitch and length. Loudness and quality have much less effect.
Word stress can be defined as the singling out of one or more syllables in a word, which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound, which is usually a vowel. Stress in connected speech is termed sentence stress.
Mary Beckman (1986) presented what she called the Stress Accent Hypothesis with two proposals: 1. “...there is such a thing as accent that can be identified and separated from other phonological phenomena in a language.” (ix) and 2. “...phonological categories are not necessarily phonetically uniform across languages or within a language.” (ix) While the first few chapters of her text focus on defining “accent” and in what contexts it refers to “stress”, it is the latter half in which she discusses the effect on accent of various phonological cues. These are fundamental frequency, duration, amplitude, and spectral coefficient (vowel quality).
Beckman was particularly interested in examining these cues in the context of Japanese and English, and was surprised to find that fundamental frequency showed a much greater mean effect on accent than did any of the other cues in Japanese. But with English, fundament frequency only showed slightly more mean effect than duration and spectral coefficient, and amplitude was yet still not far behind those two cues. Beckman’s work shows us acoustic ways we can account for stress in English, and these cues have been well attested in other work for quite some time (Schane 1979, Fry 1955)
We have already noted that the native speaker’s perceptual capacities allow him or her to say how many syllables a word has, in the absence of any conscious knowledge of what a syllable might be, or how it might be defined. Similarly, English speakers can tell which syllable in a word receives most stress, in the absence of any conscious knowledge of exactly what ‘stress’ might be. While the native speaker may not know consciously what stress is, it seems clear that, the more stressed a syllable is, the more salient it is, perceptually. For instance, most native speakers of English will agree that, in the word photography, it is the antepenultimate (third last) syllable(the one before the penultimate, or second last, one) which is most stressed. Equally, most speakers will know that, in kangaroo, it is the last of its three syllables which receives most stress, and so on. It is equally striking that the native speaker can judge that, while the final syllable in kangaroo receives more stress than either of the others, the antepenultimate (thirdly from last) syllable in turn receives more stress than the penultimate (second from last) syllable. The final syllable and the penultimate syllable of photography are unstressed, as is the syllable before the ante-penultimate syllable. They are therefore less salient than the antepenultimate syllable, which has primary stress.
A first general principle (Principle 1: The End-Based Principles that the placement of primary stresses in English words is calculated by counting from the end of the word: the primary stress in a word will tend to fall on either the final syllable ofthe word, the penultimate (second last) syllable or the antepenultimate (third last) syllable (though it can fall earlier than that). This reflects the fact that most varieties of English have word stress patterns which are essentially trochaic. Recall that the adjective trochaic is derived from the noun trochee, and that a trochee is a stressed syllable (whether primary stressed or secondary stressed) followed by zero or more unstressed syllables. We will say that stressed monosyllabic words (such as box), words with penultimate stress (such as spider and departure) and words with antepenultimate stress(such as cinema and America) all exhibit trochaic stress patterns. The rhythm of most varieties of English is trochaic: there is a tendency to place the rhythmic beat on the stressed syllables of trochaic feet .A second general principle (Principle 2: The Rhythmic Principle) is that, while it is possible for English words to end with as many as four unstressed syllables (as in unˈgentlemanliness), English words cannot begin with more than one unstressed syllable. Principle 2 is directly related to Principle 1: the reason why we do not begin words with sequences of two or more unstressed syllables is that, if we place a secondary stress within such sequences, we can create a trochaic foot, which is desirable from the point of view of the rhythmic structure of English. When we derive Japanese from Japan, the primary stress shifts from the final syllable of Japan onto the final syllable of Japanese (we will examine such stress shifts shortly). But, having shifted the primary stress, we cannot leave the word Japanese with a sequence of two unstressed syllables preceding the primary stressed syllable: we must place a secondary stress on one of the two preceding syllables: ˌJapaˈnese .When this happens, a third general principle (Principle 3:The Derivational Principle) comes into play: there is a tendency to place the secondary stress on the syllable which had primary stress in the deriving word (the word which we are deriving the more complex word from). For instance, the word characterization exhibits a shift of primary stress from its deriving word ˈcharacterize (which itself is derived fromˈcharacter). Since Principle 2 dictates that we cannot leave the word characterization with a series of four unstressed syllables prior to the syllable with primary stress, we must place a secondary stress somewhere in that sequence of syllables. The Derivational Principle says that we ought to place it on the syllable which had primary stress in the deriving word:ˌcharacteriˈzation.
A word as a meaningful unit has a definite phonetic structure. The phonetic structure of a word comprises not only sounds that the word is composed of and not only the syllabic structure that these sound form; it also has a definite stress pattern. The auditory impression of stress is that of prominence. And if a wood contains more than a syll., the relative prominence of those syllables differs. There may be one prominent syllable in a word as compared to the rest of syllables of the same word (as in im'portant). There may be 2 equally prominent syllables (as in 'misbe'have), 2 unequally prominent syllables (as in e,xami'nation) or more prominent syllables (as in 'unre,lia'bility). And this correlation of degrees of prominence of the syllables in a word forms the stress pattern of the word, which is often called the accentual structure of a word.
The stress patterns of different words may coincide with mother, table, __ __. The stress pattern of these words differs from that of prominent, analyze, syllable __ __ __. The stress pattern of words is generally perceived without difficulty. We easily distinguish between 'subject and sub'ject.
The stress pattern of a word is altered in connected speech. Cf. 'un'happy. She was 'so un`happy. He re'membered those 'unhappy `days. Word stress belongs to the word when said in isolation, whereas utterance stress belongs to the utterance.
As stated above, the auditory impression of stress is that of prominence. So a stressed syll. on the auditory level is a syll. that has special prominence. The effect of prominence may be produced by a greater degree of loudness, greater length of the stressed syll., some modifications in its pitch and quality.
Acoustic analysis shows that the perception of prominence may be due to definite variations of the following acoustic parameters: intensity, duration, frequency, formant structure. All these parameters generally interact to produce the effect of prominence.
In different languages stress may be achieved by various combinations of these parameters. Depending upon which parameter is the principal one on producing the effect of stress, word stress in languages may be of different types.
There are languages with dynamic word stress. Stress on such languages is mainly achieved by a greater force of articulation which results in greater loudness, on the auditory level and greater intensity on the acoustic level. The stressed syllables are louder than the unstressed ones. All the other parameters play a less important role in producing the effect of stress in such languages.
In languages with musical word stress prominence is mainly achieved by variations in pitch level, the main acoustic parameter being fundamental frequency. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese are languages with musical word stress (or tonic word stress). The meaning of the words in those languages depends on the pitch levels of their syllables.
Swedish word stress is characterized as dynamic and musical, because both loudness and pitch variations are relevant factors in producing prominence.
In languages with quantitative word stress the effect of stress is mainly based on the quantity of the sound. i.e. length. In such languages vowels in the stressed syllables are always longer than vowels in unstressed ones.
Russian word stress is considered to be mainly quantitative though it has been proved that duration is not the only parameter that produces the effect of stress in Russian.
Besides those types of word stress, linguists distinguish qualitative word stress, as in many languages the quality of vowels on stressed syllables is unobscured and consequently differs greatly from the quality of vowels in unstressed syllables. Until recently, English word stress was considered to be dynamic, as stress was generally correlated with loudness. But numerous investigations of the acoustic nature of English word stress have made it clear that stress in English does not depend on intensity alone and that English w-s is of a complex nature.
Thus, D. Fry synthesized pairs of words ('object ob'ject) on monotones and varied the relative durations and intensities of the two vowels. His experiment showed that as long as duration and intensity were increased together, reinforcing each other, there was agreement on which of the syllables was the most prominent one but, when increased separately, duration appeared to be more important than intensity.
D. Bolingers experiments have shown that pitch movement in English is also one of the most important cues for prominence. But it is not the pitch direction that is significant in English, it is the pitch contrast.
A. Gimson notes that if a synthesized nonsense word / i l l e l / is presented to English listeners, with no pitch, intensity or length variations but with vowels of different quality, the vowels which are the most sonorous (i.e. the most open vowels) will be judged most prominent. In this word / / & / / are usually judged as the points of the greatest prominence. This shows what an important role the inherent quality of a vowel plays in producing the effect of prominence.
We consider that English word stress is created by an interaction of 4 parameters: intensity, fundamental frequency, duration and format structure.