In
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, and particularly
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
in a
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
or to a certain word in a phrase or
sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased
loudness
In acoustics, loudness is the subjectivity, subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as, "That attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The rel ...
and
vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
, full articulation of the
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
, and changes in
tone. The terms ''stress'' and ''accent'' are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished. For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called ''
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
'', and when produced through length alone, it is called ''quantitative accent''.
When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called ''stress accent'' or ''dynamic accent''; English uses what is called ''variable stress accent''.
Since stress can be realised through a wide range of
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
properties, such as loudness, vowel length, and pitch (which are also used for other linguistic functions), it is difficult to define stress solely phonetically.
The stress placed on syllables within words is called word stress. Some languages have ''fixed stress'', meaning that the stress on virtually any multisyllable word falls on a particular syllable, such as the
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
imate (e.g.
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
) or the first (e.g.
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
). Other languages, like
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, have ''lexical stress'', where the position of stress in a word is not predictable in that way but lexically encoded. Sometimes more than one level of stress, such as ''primary stress'' and ''
secondary stress
Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is a ...
'', may be identified.
Stress is not necessarily a feature of all languages: some, such as
French and
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
, are sometimes analyzed as lacking lexical stress entirely.
The stress placed on words within sentences is called sentence stress or prosodic stress. That is one of the three components of
prosody, along with
rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...
and
intonation. It includes phrasal stress (the default emphasis of certain words within
phrases
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
or
clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
s), and contrastive stress (used to highlight an item, a word or part of a word, that is given particular focus).
Phonetic realization
There are various ways in which stress manifests itself in the speech stream, and they depend to some extent on which language is being spoken. Stressed syllables are often
louder than non-stressed syllables, and they may have a higher or lower
pitch. They may also sometimes be pronounced
longer
"Longer" is a song written and recorded by the American singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg and released in 1979 by Full Moon Records and Epic Records. The song can be found on Fogelberg's 1979 album '' Phoenix''. It was also included on his 1982 gre ...
. There are sometimes differences in
place
Place may refer to:
Geography
* Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population
** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own Municipality, municipal government
* "Place", a type of street or road ...
or
manner of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...
. In particular, vowels in unstressed syllables may have a more central (or "
neutral
Neutral or neutrality may refer to:
Mathematics and natural science Biology
* Neutral organisms, in ecology, those that obey the unified neutral theory of biodiversity
Chemistry and physics
* Neutralization (chemistry), a chemical reaction in ...
") 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 syllables.
Those particular distinguishing features of stress, or types of prominence in which particular features are dominant, are sometimes referred to as particular types of accent: ''dynamic accent'' in the case of loudness, ''
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
'' in the case of pitch (although that term usually has more specialized meanings), ''quantitative accent'' in the case of length,
and ''qualitative accent'' in the case of differences in articulation. They can be compared to the various types of
accent in music theory. In some contexts, the term ''stress'' or ''stress accent'' specifically means dynamic accent (or as an antonym to ''pitch accent'' in its various meanings).
A prominent syllable or word is said to be ''accented'' or ''tonic''; the latter term does not imply that it carries
phonemic tone
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
. Other syllables or words are said to be ''unaccented'' or ''atonic''. Syllables are frequently said to be in ''pretonic'' or ''post-tonic'' position, and certain phonological rules apply specifically to such positions. For instance, in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, /t/ and /d/ are
flapped in post-tonic position.
In
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
, which is a
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...
, stressed syllables have been found to have tones that are realized with a relatively large swing in
fundamental frequency
The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the ''fundamental'', is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch of a note that is perceived as the lowest partial present. In ...
, and unstressed syllables typically have smaller swings. (See also
Stress in Standard Chinese.)
Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables.
Word stress
Word stress, or sometimes lexical stress, is the stress placed on a given syllable in a word. The position of word stress in a word may depend on certain general rules applicable in the language or
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
in question, but in other languages, it must be learned for each word, as it is largely unpredictable. In some cases, classes of words in a language differ in their stress properties; for example,
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s into a language with ''fixed'' stress may preserve stress placement from the source language, or the
special pattern for Turkish placenames.
Non-phonemic stress
In some languages, the placement of stress can be determined by rules. It is thus not a
phonemic property of the word, because it can always be predicted by applying the rules.
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
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
,
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
,
Icelandic and
Hungarian, the stress almost always comes on the first syllable of a word. In
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
the stress is on the last syllable of a word. In
Quechua
Quechua may refer to:
*Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru
*Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language
**So ...
,
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
, and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
, the stress is almost always on the
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
(second-last syllable). In
Macedonian, it is on the
antepenult
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
Ul ...
(third-last syllable).
Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, where stress is conditioned by the
structure
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...
of particular syllables. They are said to have a regular stress rule.
Statements about the position of stress are sometimes affected by the fact that when a word is spoken in isolation, prosodic factors (see below) come into play, which do not apply when the word is spoken normally within a sentence.
French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, but that can be attributed to the
prosodic stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
that is placed on the last syllable (unless it is a
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
, when stress is placed on the second-last syllable) of any string of words in that language. Thus, it is on the last syllable of a word analyzed in isolation. The situation is
similar in Standard Chinese. French (some authors add Chinese) can be considered to have no real lexical stress.
Phonemic stress
Languages such as
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
, in which the position of stress in a word is not fully predictable, are said to have ''phonemic stress''. Stress in these languages is usually truly lexical and must be memorized as part of the pronunciation of an individual word. In some languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese,
Lakota
Lakota may refer to:
*Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes
*Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples
Place names
In the United States:
*Lakota, Iowa
*Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County
*Lakota ...
and, to some extent, Italian, stress is even represented in writing using diacritical marks, for example in the Spanish words and . Sometimes, stress is fixed for all forms of a particular word, or it can fall on different syllables in different inflections of the same word.
In such languages with phonemic stress, the position of stress 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. Examples from other languages include
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
( "gist of message" vs. "tenor voice"); and
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
( "anchor" vs. "more, still, yet, again").
In many languages with lexical stress, it is
connected with alternations in vowels and/or consonants, which means that vowel quality differs by whether vowels are stressed or unstressed. There may also be limitations on certain phonemes in the language in which stress determines whether they are allowed to occur in a particular syllable or not. That is the case with most examples
in English and occurs systematically
in Russian, such as (, "castle") vs. (, "lock"); and
in Portuguese, such as the triplet (, "wise woman"), (, "knew"), (, "thrush").
Dialects of the same language may have different stress placement. For instance, the English word ''laboratory'' is stressed on the second syllable in
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
(''labóratory'' often pronounced "labóratry", the second ''o'' being silent), but the first syllable in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, with a secondary stress on the "tor' syllable (''láboratory'' often pronounced "lábratory"). The Spanish word is stressed on the first syllable in Spain () but on the second syllable in the Americas (). The Portuguese words for
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
and the continent
Oceania
Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...
are stressed on the third syllable in
European Portuguese
European Portuguese ( pt, português europeu, ), also known as Portuguese of Portugal (Portuguese: português de Portugal), Iberian Portuguese (Portuguese: português ibérico), and Peninsular Portuguese (Portuguese: português peninsular), refer ...
( and ), but on the fourth syllable in
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...
( and ).
Compounds
With very few exceptions, English
compound words
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when ...
are stressed on their first component. Even the exceptions, such as ''mankínd'', are instead often stressed on the first component by some people or in some kinds of English. The same components as those of a compound word are sometimes used in a descriptive phrase with a different meaning and with stress on both words, but that descriptive phrase is then not usually considered a compound: ''bláck bírd'' (any bird that is black) and ''bláckbird'' (a
specific bird species) and ''páper bág'' (a bag made of paper) and ''páper bag'' (very rarely used for a bag for carrying newspapers but is often also used for a bag made of paper).
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, but the different secondary stress of the words ''organization'' and ''accumulation'' (on the first and second syllable, respectively) is predictable due to the same stress of the verbs ''órganize'' and ''accúmulate''. In some analyses, for example the one found in Chomsky and Halle's ''
The Sound Pattern of English
''The Sound Pattern of English'' (frequently referred to as ''SPE'') is a 1968 work on phonology (a branch of linguistics) by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. In spite of its title, it presents not only a view of the phonology of English, but also ...
'', English has been described as having four levels of stress: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, but the treatments often disagree with one another.
Peter Ladefoged
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged ( , ; 17 September 1925 – 24 January 2006) was a British linguist and phonetician.
He was Professor of Phonetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught from 1962 to 1991. His book ''A Course ...
and other phoneticians have noted that it is possible to describe English with only one degree of stress, as long as prosody is recognized and
unstressed syllables are phonemically distinguished for
vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
.
[Ladefoged (1975 ''etc.'') '']A course in phonetics
''A Course in Phonetics'' is a textbook by Peter Ladefoged and Keith Allan Johnson designed for an introductory course in phonetics.
Reception
The book was reviewed by Laurie Bauer, J. C. Wells, Timothy Riney, Lisa Davidson, Douglas Pulleybl ...
'' § 5.4; (1980) ''Preliminaries to linguistic phonetics'' p 83 They find that the multiple levels posited for English, whether ''primary–secondary'' or ''primary–secondary–tertiary'', are not
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
stress (let alone
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
), and that the supposed secondary/tertiary stress is not characterized by the increase in respiratory activity associated with primary/secondary stress in English and other languages. (For further detail see
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 ...
.)
Prosodic stress
''
Prosodic
In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, str ...
stress'', or ''sentence stress'', refers to stress patterns that apply at a higher level than the individual word – namely within a
prosodic unit
In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...
. 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 (contrastive stress).
An example of a natural prosodic stress pattern is that described for
French above; stress is placed on the final syllable of a string of words (or if that is a
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
, the next-to-final syllable). A similar pattern is found in English (see above): the traditional distinction between (lexical) primary and secondary stress is replaced partly by a prosodic rule stating that the final stressed syllable in a phrase is given additional stress. (A word spoken alone becomes such a phrase, hence such prosodic stress may appear to be lexical if the pronunciation of words is analyzed in a standalone context rather than within phrases.)
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:
As in the examples above, stress is normally transcribed as
italics
In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed tex ...
in printed text or underlining in handwriting.
In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue
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 "''din''ner" are louder and longer. They may also have a different fundamental frequency, or other properties.
The main stress within a sentence, often found on the last stressed word, is called the ''nuclear stress''.
Stress and vowel reduction
In many languages, such as
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
may occur when a vowel changes from a stressed to an unstressed position. In English, unstressed vowels may reduce to
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
-like vowels, though the details vary with dialect (see
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 ...
). The effect may be dependent on lexical stress (for example, the unstressed first syllable of the word ''photographer'' contains a schwa , whereas the stressed first syllable of ''photograph'' does not ), or on prosodic stress (for example, the word ''of'' is pronounced with a schwa when it is unstressed within a sentence, but not when it is stressed).
Many other languages, such as
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
and the mainstream dialects of
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
, do not have unstressed vowel reduction; in these languages vowels in unstressed syllables have nearly the same quality as those in stressed syllables.
Stress and rhythm
Some languages, such as
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, are said to be ''stress-timed languages''; that is, stressed syllables appear at a roughly constant rate and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate that, which contrasts with languages that have ''syllable timing'' (e.g.
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
) or ''
mora
Mora may refer to:
People
* Mora (surname)
Places Sweden
* Mora, Säter, Sweden
* Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality
* Mora Municipality, Sweden
United States
* Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community
* Mora, Minnesota, a city
* M ...
timing'' (e.g.
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
), whose syllables or moras are spoken at a roughly constant rate regardless of stress. For details, see
isochrony
Isochrony is the postulated rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language. Rhythm is an aspect of prosody, others being intonation, stress, and tempo of speech.
Three alternative ways in which a language can divide time are postula ...
.
Historical effects
It is common for stressed and unstressed syllables to behave differently as a language evolves. For example, in the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
, the original Latin
short vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
and have often become
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s when stressed. Since stress takes part in
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
conjugation, that has produced verbs with
vowel alternation
In linguistics, apophony (also known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, internal inflection etc.) is any alternation wit ...
in the Romance languages. For example, the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
verb (to return, come back) has the form in the past tense but in the present tense (see
Spanish irregular verbs).
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
shows the same phenomenon but with alternating with instead. That behavior is not confined to verbs; note for example Spanish "wind" from Latin , or Italian "fire" from Latin .
Stress "deafness"
An operational definition of word stress may be provided by the stress "deafness" paradigm.
The idea is that if listeners perform poorly on reproducing the presentation order of series of stimuli that minimally differ in the position of phonetic prominence (e.g.
úmi umí, the language does not have word stress. The task involves a reproduction of the order of stimuli as a sequence of key strokes, whereby key "1" is associated with one stress location (e.g.
úmi and key "2" with the other (e.g.
umí. A trial may be from 2 to 6 stimuli in length. Thus, the order
úmi-númi-numí-númiis to be reproduced as "1121". It was found that listeners whose native language was French performed significantly worse than Spanish listeners in reproducing the stress patterns by key strokes. The explanation is that Spanish has lexically contrastive stress, as evidenced by the
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
s like ("mole") and ("
e/she/itmet"), while in French, stress does not convey lexical information and there is no equivalent of stress minimal pairs as in Spanish.
An important case of stress "deafness" relates to Persian.
The language has generally been described as having contrastive word stress or accent as evidenced by numerous stem and stem-clitic minimal pairs such as /mɒhi/
ɒ.hí("fish") and /mɒh-i/
ɒ́.hi("some month"). The authors argue that the reason that Persian listeners are stress "deaf" is that their accent locations arise postlexically. Persian thus lacks stress in the strict sense.
Stress "deafness" has been studied for a number of languages, such as Polish or French learners of Spanish.
Spelling and notation for stress
The
orthographies
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
of some languages include devices for indicating the position of lexical stress. Some examples are listed below:
* In
Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
, all
polysyllables are written with an
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
() over the vowel of the stressed syllable. (The acute accent is also used on some
monosyllable In linguistics, a monosyllable is a word or utterance of only one syllable. It is most commonly studied in the fields of phonology and morphology and it has no semantic content. The word has originated from the Greek language.
"Yes", "no", "jump", ...
s in order to distinguish
homograph
A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
s, as in ('the') and ('or'); here the stress of the two words is the same.)
* In
Spanish orthography
Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping ...
, stress may be written explicitly with a single acute accent on a vowel. Stressed antepenultimate syllables are always written with that accent mark, as in . If the last syllable is stressed, the accent mark is used if the word ends in the letters ''n'', ''s'', or a vowel, as in . If the penultimate syllable is stressed, the accent is used if the word ends in any other letter, as in . That is, if a word is written without an accent mark, the stress is on the penult if the last letter is a vowel, ''n'', or ''s'', but on the final syllable if the word ends in any other letter. However, as in Greek, the acute accent is also used for some words to distinguish various syntactical uses (e.g. 'tea' vs. a form of the pronoun 'you'; 'where' as a pronoun or ''wh''-complement, 'where' as an adverb).
* In
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
is sometimes indicated explicitly with an acute accent (for ''i'', ''u'', and open ''a'', ''e'', ''o''), or circumflex (for close ''a'', ''e'', ''o''). The orthography has an
extensive set of rules that describe the placement of diacritics, based on the position of the stressed syllable and the surrounding letters.
* In
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, the grave accent is needed in words ending with an accented vowel, e.g. , 'city', and in some monosyllabic words that might otherwise be confused with other words, like ('there') and ('the'). It is optional for it to be written on any vowel if there is a possibility of misunderstanding, such as ('condominiums') and ('joint owners'). (In this particular case, a frequent one in which diacritics present themselves, the difference of accents is caused by the fall of the second "i" from Latin in Italian, typical of the genitive, in the first noun (con/domìnìi/, meaning "of the owner"); while the second was derived from the nominative (con/dòmini/, meaning simply "owners").
Though not part of normal orthography, a number of devices exist that are used by linguists and others to indicate the position of stress (and
syllabification
Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed.
Overview
The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
in some cases) when it is desirable to do so. Some of these are listed here.
* Most commonly, the stress mark is placed before the beginning of the stressed syllable, where a syllable is definable. However, it is occasionally placed immediately before the vowel. In the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA), primary stress is indicated by a high vertical line (primary stress mark:
) before the stressed element, secondary stress by a low vertical line (secondary stress mark:
). For example, or . Extra stress can be indicated by doubling the symbol: .
* Linguists frequently mark primary stress with an acute accent over the vowel, and secondary stress by a grave accent. Example: or . That has the advantage of not requiring a decision about syllable boundaries.
* In English dictionaries that show pronunciation by
respelling
A pronunciation respelling is a regular phonetic respelling of a word that has a standard spelling but whose pronunciation according to that spelling may be ambiguous, which is used to indicate the pronunciation of that word. Pronunciation respe ...
, stress is typically marked with a
prime mark
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , triple prime symbol , and quadruple prime symbol are used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, science, linguistics and music.
Although the characters differ little in appearance f ...
placed after the stressed syllable: /si-lab′-ə-fi-kay′-shən/.
* In pronunciation guides, stress is often indicated using a combination of bold text and capital letters. For example, si-lab-if-i-KAY-shun or si-LAB-if-i-KAY-shun
* In
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Belarusian, and
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
dictionaries, stress is indicated with marks called (, 'stress marks'). Primary stress is indicated with an
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(´) on a syllable's vowel (example: ).
Secondary stress
Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is a ...
may be unmarked or marked with a
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
: . If the acute accent sign is unavailable for technical reasons, stress can be marked by making the vowel capitalized or italic. In general texts, stress marks are rare, typically used either when required for disambiguation of
homograph
A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
s (compare 'in great quantities', and 'in great quantities'), or in rare words and names that are likely to be mispronounced. Materials for foreign learners may have stress marks throughout the text.
* In
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, indication of stress is usually marked by an acute accent on the vowel (or, in the case of a
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
or double vowel, the first two vowels) of the stressed syllable. Compare ('deterioration') and ('rear exit').
* In
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...
, a complex system of
cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of prayers and responses. It often specifically refers to Jewish Hebrew cantillation. Cantillation sometimes refers to diacritics used in texts that are to be chanted in liturgy.
Cantillation includes:
* Chant
...
marks is used to mark stress, as well as verse syntax and the melody according to which the verse is chanted in ceremonial Bible reading. In
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
, there is no standardized way to mark the stress. Most often, the cantillation mark (part of ), which looks like a left-pointing arrow above the consonant of the stressed syllable, for example ('morning') as opposed to ('cowboy'). That mark is usually used in books by the Academy of the Hebrew Language and is available on the standard Hebrew keyboard at AltGr-6. In some books, other marks, such as , are used.
See also
*
Accent (poetry)
In English poetry, accent refers to the stressed syllable of a polysyllabic word, or a monosyllabic word that receives stress because it belongs to an "open class" of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) or because of "contrastive" or "rhetoric ...
*
Accent (music)
In music, an accent is an emphasis, stress, or stronger attack placed on a particular note or set of notes, or chord, either as a result of its context or specifically indicated by an accent mark. Accents contribute to the articulation and prosod ...
*
Foot (prosody)
The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The ...
*
Initial-stress-derived noun
Initial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English that moves stress to the first syllable of verbs when they are used as nouns or adjectives. (This is an example of a suprafix.) This process can be found in the case of several dozen ve ...
*
Pitch accent (intonation)
Pitch accent is a term used in autosegmental- metrical theory for local intonational features that are associated with particular syllables. Within this framework, pitch accents are distinguished from both the abstract metrical stress and the a ...
*
Rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...
*
Syllable weight
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable ...
References
External links
"Feet and Metrical Stress" ''The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology''
''Linguapress''
''Word Stress Rules: A Guide to Word and Sentence Stress Rules for English Learners and Teachers'' based on affixation
{{Nonverbal communication
Phonetics
Phonology
Poetic rhythm