Understanding Stress in English: Emphasis, Contrast, and Function Words

Posted on Feb 14, 2025 in Photography and Digital Creation

Understanding Stress in English

Emphasis, Contrast, and Correct Stress

The use of emphasis can change the focus and meaning of a sentence. For example: “Did you drive to London last week?”

Contrastive stress is used to emphasize the element that needs to be contrasted for clarity. For example: “Are you going to go outside or stay inside today?” or “Do you like this one or that one?”

Correct stress is used to correct a previous statement by giving more prominence to the correct information. For example: “Not a policeman, it was a policewoman.”

Syllable-Timed vs. Stress-Timed Languages

A syllable-timed language is one where there is weak vowel reduction and a simple syllable structure. There is no difference in forms, no secondary stress, and it’s a metrical system of a syllable type. Each syllable is of equal weight and length. Some syllable-timed languages are Spanish, Italian, and French. For example: ‘qie’ ro ‘q ‘ven’g ‘al ‘mé’di’co ‘con’mi’g ‘ma’ña’na

A stress-timed language is one that exhibits strong vowel reduction /i, u, ə/, has a complex syllable structure, weak and strong forms, the presence of secondary stress, and it’s a metrical system of an accentual type. Only certain types of words are stressed, and words in between are compressed. English is a stress-timed language. For example: I ‘want you to ‘go with me to the ‘doc tor ‘mo rrow.

Relationship Between Function Words, Lexical Words, and Accentuation

Function words don’t carry meaning; they make the sentence grammatically correct. Lexical words (or content words) are the key words of a sentence; they carry the meaning or sense. Content or lexical words are stressed, and function words are unstressed.

Weak and Strong Forms in Function Words

Weak and strong forms are English words that can be pronounced in two different ways. Almost all the words that have both a strong and weak form belong to a category that may be called function words. These function words are words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc., all of which are in certain circumstances pronounced in their strong form but which are more frequently pronounced in their weak form.

The strong form is used in the following cases:

  1. For many weak-form words, when they occur at the end of a sentence. For example, the word ‘of’ has the weak form /əv/ at the middle of a sentence, but when it comes at the end of the sentence, it has the strong form /ɒv/.
  2. When a weak-form word is being contrasted with another word. A similar case is the co-ordinated use of prepositions.
  3. When a weak-form is given stress for the purpose of emphasis.
  4. When a weak-form is being ‘cited’ or ‘quoted’.

Note: When weak-form words whose spelling begins with ‘h’ occur at the beginning of a sentence, the pronunciation is with initial /h/, but this is usually omitted in other contexts.

Most Common Weak-Form Words

  1. THE: Weak before consonants (ðə) and before vowels (ði).
  2. A, AN: Weak before consonants (ə) and before vowels (ən).
  3. AND: ən (sometimes n̩ after t, d, s, z, ʃ).
  4. BUT: bət
  5. THAT: Weak form in relative clause > ðət. Strong form with a demonstrative sense.
  6. THAN: ðən
  7. HIS: Weak when it occurs before a noun > ɪz (hɪz at the beginning of a sentence).
  8. HER: Weak when used with possessive sense, preceding a noun; as an object pronoun, this can also occur at the end of a sentence. ə (before consonants) // ər (before vowels).
  9. YOUR: jə (before consonants) // jər (before vowels)
  10. SHE (ʃi) // HE (i ; and hi at the beginning of a sentence) // WE (wi) // YOU (ju)
  11. HIM: ɪm
  12. HER: ə ; hə when sentence-initial
  13. THEM: ðəm
  14. US: əs

((The next group of words occur in their strong forms when they are final in a sentence))

  1. AT: Weak form: ət // Strong form (in final position): æt
  2. FOR: Weak form: fə (before consonants) and fər (before vowels) // Strong form (in final position): f ɔ:
  3. FROM: Weak form: frəm // Strong form (in final position): fr ɒm
  4. OF: Weak form: əv // Strong form (in final position): ɒv
  5. TO: Weak form: tə (before consonants) and tu (before vowels) // Strong form (in final position): tu
  6. AS: Weak form: əz // Strong form (in final position): æz
  7. SOME: Weak form: səm (before uncountable nouns and before other nouns in the plural) // Strong form: sʌm (before a countable noun)
  8. THERE: Weak forms: ðə (before consonants) and ðər (before vowels) // Strong form (demonstrative function): ðeə (ðeər before vowels) // In final position: ðə or ðeə

((The next weak-form words are auxiliary verbs. In their negative form, they never have the weak pronunciation))

  1. CAN, COULD: Weak forms: kən, kəd // Strong forms (in final position): kæn, kʊd
  2. HAVE, HAS, HAD: Weak forms: əv, əz, əd (with initial h in initial position) // Strong forms (in final position): hæv, hæz, hæd
  3. SHALL, SHOULD: weak forms: ʃəl or ʃl̩; ʃəd //strong forms (in final position): ʃæl, ʃʊd
  4. MUST: Weak forms (probability): məs (before consonants), məst (before vowels) // Strong form (in final position): mʌst
  5. DO, DOES: DO: Weak forms: də (before consonants) and du (before vowels). DOES: dəz // Strong forms (in final position): du:, dʌz
  6. AM, ARE, WAS, WERE: Weak forms: əm, ə (before consonants), ər (before vowels), wəz, wə (before consonants), wər (before vowels) // Strong forms (in final position): æm, ɑ: wɒz, wɜ:

Meaning and Uses of Stress Shift

A stress shift involves the relocation of a primary stress into a secondary stress position as a result of a stress clash. A stress clash involves the consecutive production of two stressed syllables in different words. The word *portu*guese has a primary stress on the last syllable and a secondary stress on the first syllable. When this word is in contact with another word which is stressed on the first syllable, such as *histo*ry, the primary stress of *portu*guese is displaced into the syllable with an initial secondary stress.

Also, prominence can move to the secondary stressed syllable in a word like ‘controversial’ when it’s followed by a word with another prominent syllable, particularly when the first syllable of the following word is prominent: “She gave a CONtroversial ANswer”. Stress shift can only happen in words where a secondary stress comes before a main stress. Other words which can often have a stress shift include some place names which have main stress on the last syllable (such as Berlin), -teen numbers and 2-part numbers.