Sentence stress
- 2. WHAT ISSENTENCE STRESS? • Like word or syllable stress, sentence stress can help you to understand a language, especially when spoken fast. • Remember that word stress (syllable stress) is the 'beaf on one or more syllables within a word; sentence stress is the 'beaf on certain words within a sentence. • In other words, sentence stress can be described as the 'rhythm' of spoken language.
- 3. WHAT ISSENTENCE STRESS? • Like word or syllable stress, sentence stress can help you to understand a language, especially when spoken fast. • Remember that word stress (syllable stress) is the 'beaf on one or more syllables within a word; sentence stress is the 'beaf on certain words within a sentence. • In other words, sentence stress can be described as the 'rhythm' of spoken language.
- 4. WHY IS'STRESS' IMPORTANT IN PRONUNCIATION? • Stress is important because it adds rhythm when you speak. • If you stress all the words in an utterance, you may sound unpleasant or even cause misunderstanding, because: 1. You are giving too much information; and 2. English native speakers usually stress all words only when they are impatient or angry.
- 5. • Dealing with sentence stress, we have to know which words should be stressed and which should be unstressed. • To know more about this, let's see the following types of words:
- 6. According to the way they function, words in a language are normally classified into two types: a). Content words, are the key words of a sentence. They are the important words that carry the meaning or sense. b). Structure words, are not very important words. They are small, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form or structure.
- 7. • Imagine that you receive a telegram message: sell car gone France This sentence is not complete. It is not a grammatically correct sentence. But you probably understand it because the four words communicate very well. This kind of words are known as the content words. The sentence above may has a meaning that: "Somebody wants you to sell his car for him, because he has gone to France."
- 8. sell my car I've gone to France The new words (my, I've, and to) do not really add any more information, but they make the message more correct grammatically . We can add even more words to make one complete, grammatically correct sentence, but the information is basically the same. We can add a few words to the sentence:
- 9. Will you sell my car because I've gone to France? In the sentence above, the four key words (sell, car, gone, and France) are the "content words" and are all stressed. The additional information to complete the sentence are called "structure words"and are all unstressed .
- 10. • In the previous example, there is 1 syllable between "self' and "car' and 3 syllables between "car' and "gone", but the time (t) between "self' and "car' and between "car' and "gone"is the same. Will you sell my car because I've gone to France? I ! II I 1 syllable ! 3 syllables We maintain a constant beat on the stressed words ( sell, car, gone, France) . To do this, we say "my" more slowly, and "because I've" more quickly.
- 11. We change the speed of the small "structure words", so that the rhythm of the key "content words"stays the same. In other words, the time (t) between each stressed word is the same.
- 12. N u m b e r o f S y l l a b l e s Will you sell my car because I've I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I .::;.:..:=to Fr nce? ''''I I ' 0.6 0.60.60.6
- 13. 1. Content words are stressed; 2. Structure words are unstressed; and 3. The time between stressed words is always the same. The following tab le can help you decide which words are the content words and w hich are the structure words : • The basic rules of sentence stress in English are:
- 14. Main Verbs buy, give, take, eat, employ Words Carrying the Meaning or Sense: Examples: Nouns chair, book, music, Mary Adjectives red, big, interesting, beautiful Adverbs quickly, loudly, never, always, now Negative Auxiliaries don1, can't, won1, shouldn't Possessive Pronouns mine, yours, her, his, ours, theirs Interrogatives what, who, why, where, when, how
- 15. Personal & Relative Pronouns Prepositions Articles Conjunctions Auxiliary Verbs Possessive Adjectives Demonstratives Expletive "THERE" /, you, we, he, whom, which on, at, into, in the, an, a and, but, because, or do, can, have to, must my, your, her, his, our, their, its this, that, these, those there
- 16. Exception !!! The above rules are for what is called "normal stress". But sometimes we can stress words that are structure words, for example to correct information, such as in: They've been to Japan, haven't they? No, they haven't, but we have. NOTE: The underlined words are stressed, although they belong to the structure words.