Stress And Vowel Reduction In English
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 ( schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced" (or sometimes with a syllabic consonant as the syllable nucleus rather than a vowel). Various contradictory phonological analyses exist for these phenomena. For example, in the following sentence, a speaker would typically pronounce ''have'' with a schwa, as or ( homophonous with ''of''): : Alice and Bob have arrived. But in other contexts where the word carries stress, it would be pronounced in its "strong" (unreduced) form as (homophonous with ''halve''). For example: : Alice and Bob have three children. : n response to the question "Have Alice an ...
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