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Conclusion
Having analysed the features of the word stress and its features in English I may come to the conclusion that characteristics of word stress is a very interesting theme. It gives us the ground to state that word stress and its types in English are very complicated phenomena.
English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. It means that in English, certain words have stress within a sentence, and certain syllables have stress within a word. And it is this stress that allows our ears to understand the meaning and also to pick up the important parts of the sentence. We give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length). English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.
Word stress is a greater degree of prominence of a syllable or syllables as compared to the other syllables of a word.
The stressed syllables are pronounced with more muscular energy than the unstressed ones.
On the acoustic level stressed syllables are characterized by increased intensity, duration and fundamental frequency, which correspond to increased loudness, length and pitch on the perception level.
There are two types of word stress: dynamic and musical (tonic).
English word stress is a complex phenomenon formed by interdependent components: loudness, pitch, length and vowel quality.
The syllables in a word have different degrees of prominence. In English they generally distinguish three linguistically relevant degrees of stress: primary, secondary and weak. Some scholars also include tertiary stress, but the first classification is more acceptable for teaching English as a foreign language.
According to its placement stress can be fixed or free. Both in English an in Russian word stress is not only free, but it is also shifting, it can change its position indifferent forms of the word.
To define the position of word stress in an individual word it is helpful to consider the following factors: the phonological structure of a syllable (syllable weight), the number of syllables in the word, the morphological factor (if the word is simple, complex or compound) and the grammatical category the word belongs to.
They generally distinguish three tendencies that account for the variations of stress patterns in English: recessive, rhythmical and retentivetendencies. Word stress can perform the following functions: constitutive (it organizes the syllables into a word), identificatory, or recognitive (it helps the listener to recognize the word in the chain of speech) and distinctive (it can distinguish grammatical forms and meaning of words). The correct selection of a syllable or syllables to stress in an English word causes a lot of difficulties to Russian learners. So in teaching pronunciation special attention should be given to the aspects which present difficulties due to the instability of English stress structure, on the one hand,
and the differences in English and Russian word stress:
– stress in multi-syllable words, containing secondary stress;
– stress in complex words containing suffixes;
– stress in compound words;
– word-class pairs with shifting stress ('insult – in'sult).
Fluent English speakers use word stress to communicate rapidly and accurately, even in difficult conditions. If, for example, you do not hear a word clearly, you can still understand the word because of the position of the stress. Stress can be used to provide emphasis, but more often than not it is used to provide meaning to words in general and can be either associated word stress on the word, phrase or sentence levels.
Word-level stress, as Harold T. Edwards says in "Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English," is influenced by the context and content of the stress to inform meaning.
In connected speech, the stressed syllables follow each other nearly at roughly equal intervals of time, and the unstressed syllables (whether many or few) occupy almost the same period of time between the stressed syllables. The greater the number of unstressed syllables, the quicker they are pronounced. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English. Word stress is not an optional extra that you can add to the English language if you want. It is part of the language! English speakers use word stress to communicate rapidly and accurately, even in difficult conditions. If, for example, you do not hear a word clearly, you can still understand the word because of the position of the stress.
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