In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in Phonology that determines Syllable weight (which in turn determines stress Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words A tone contour is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable Register (sociolinguisticsIn Linguistics, a register language also known as a pitch-register language is a language which combines tone and vowel In Phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or Phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language In Phonetics, upstep is a phonemic or Phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language In Phonetics, downdrift is the cumulative lowering of pitch over time due to interactions among tones called Downstep, in a Tonal language Tone terracing is a type of phonetic Downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone shift downward in pitch ( downstep) after certain A floating tone is a Morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no Consonants no Vowels but only tone. Tone sandhi is the change of tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase Tone letters are Written characters that represent the tones of a language especially Contour tones that were invented by Yuen Ren Chao and adopted Secondary stress is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the Pronunciation of a word the stronger degree of stress is called 'primary' Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress In Phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that are distinctively longer than other sounds In linguistics a chroneme is a basic theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound The International Phonetic Alphabet uses a Breve,, to indicate a speech sound (usually a Vowel) with less than normal duration In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech In Linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch whilst speaking which is not used to distinguish words In Linguistics, Speech synthesis, and Music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound In speech phonetic pitch reset occurs at the boundaries between Prosodic units Over the course of such units the median pitch of the voice declines from its Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός - rhythmos, "any measured flow or movement symmetry" is the variation of the length and accentuation of In verse, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythm of a poem Loudness is the quality of a Sound that is the primary psychological correlate of physical strength (amplitude In Linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single Language timing is the rhythmic quality of a particular type of speech in particular how Syllables are distributed across time Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.

Types of stress

The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent. In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed syllables — so-called pitch accent (or musical accent). Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable In other languages, they may bear either higher or lower pitch than surrounding syllables (a pitch excursion), depending on the sentence type. There are also dynamic accent (loudness), qualitative accent (full vowels), and quantitative accent (length, known in music theory as agogic accent). In Music, an accent is an emphasis placed on a particular note, either as a result of its context or specifically indicated by an accent mark. Loudness is the quality of a Sound that is the primary psychological correlate of physical strength (amplitude Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound Music theory is the field of study that deals with the Mechanics of music and how Music works In Music, an accent is an emphasis placed on a particular note, either as a result of its context or specifically indicated by an accent mark. Stress may be characterized by more than one of these characteristics. Further, stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes the difference between the acoustic signals of stressed and unstressed syllables may be minimal.

In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focussed or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue

"Is it brunch tomorrow?"

"No, it's dinner tomorrow. "

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 "dinner" are louder and longer. ^[1][2][3] They may also have a different fundamental frequency, or other properties. Unstressed syllables typically have a vowel which is closer to a neutral position (the schwa), while stressed vowels are more fully realized. In contrast, stressed and unstressed vowels in Spanish share the same quality—unlike English, the language has no reduced vowels.

(Much literature emphasizes the importance of pitch changes and pitch motions on stressed syllables, but experimental support for this idea is weak. Nevertheless, most experiments do not directly address the pitch of speech, which is a subjective perceived quantity. Experiments typically measure the speech fundamental frequency which is objectively measurable, and strongly correlated with pitch, but not quite the same thing. )

The possibilities for stress in tone languages is an area of ongoing research, but stress-like patterns have been observed in Mandarin Chinese. A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words ^[4] They are realized as alternations between syllables where the tones are carefully realized with a relatively large swing in fundamental frequency, and syllables where they are realized "sloppily" with typically a small swing.

Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress is accompanied by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract. In living organisms a respiratory system functions to allow Gas exchange. The vocal tract is that cavity in animals and humans where sound that is produced at the sound source ( Larynx in mammals syrinx in birds is filtered

Timing and placement

Further information: Timing (linguistics)

English is a stress-timed language; that is, stressed syllables appear at a roughly constant rate, and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this. Language timing is the rhythmic quality of a particular type of speech in particular how Syllables are distributed across time English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Other languages have syllable timing (e. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds g. Spanish) or mora timing (e. Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in Phonology that determines Syllable weight (which in turn determines stress g. Japanese), where syllables or morae are spoken at a roughly constant rate regardless of stress. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities

Some languages have fixed stress. That is, stress is placed always on a given syllable, as in Finnish and Hungarian (stress always on the first syllable) or Quechua and Polish (stress always on the penult: one syllable before the last) or on third syllable counting backwards (the antepenult), as in Macedonian (see: Stress in Macedonian language). Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. Quechua ( Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America. Polish ( język polski, polszczyzna) is the Official language of Poland. In Linguistics, the penult is the Penultimate Syllable of a word that is the second-to-last syllable Macedonian () is the official Language of the Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian () is the official Language of the Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in Classical Arabic and Latin (where stress is conditioned by the structure of the penultimate syllable). Classical Arabic (CA also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. They are said to have a regular stress rule.

French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, but actually French has no word stress at all. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Rather, it has a prosody whereby the final or next-to-final syllable of a string of words is stressed. In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech This string may be equivalent to a clause or a phrase. In Grammar, a clause is a word or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in some Languages and some types of In Grammar, a phrase is a group of Words that functions as a single unit in the Syntax of a sentence. However, when a word is said alone, it receives the full prosody and therefore the stress as well.

There are also languages like English, Italian and Spanish, where stress is (at least partly) unpredictable. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. Rather, it is lexical: it comes as part of the word and must be memorized, although orthography can make stress unambiguous for a reader, as is the case in Spanish and Portuguese. In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. In such languages, otherwise homophonous words may differ only by the position of the stress (e. g. incite and insight in English), and therefore it is possible to use stress as a grammatical device.

English does this to some extent with noun-verb pairs such as a récord vs. to recórd, where the verb is stressed on the last syllable and the related noun is stressed on the first; record also hyphenates differently: a réc-ord vs. Initial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English, wherein Verbs become Nouns or Adjectives when the stress is A hyphenation algorithm is a set of rules (especially one codified for implemention in a computer program that decides at which points a word can be broken over two lines with a Hyphen to re-córd. The German language does this with certain prefixes — for example úm-schrei-ben (to rewrite) vs. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word um-schréi-ben (to paraphrase, outline) — and in Russian this phenomenon often occurs with different cases of certain nouns (земли́/zemli (genitive case of the Earth, land or soil) and зе́мли (soils or lands — plural form)). Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another

It is common for dialects to differ in their stress placement, as in British English and American English. British English or UK English ( BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the Phonology North American English regional phonology In many ways compared to English English, North American English is conservative in its Phonology.

Historical effects of stress

It is common for stressed and unstressed syllables to behave differently as a language evolves. For example, in the Romance languages, the original Latin short vowels /e/ and /o/ have generally become diphthongs when stressed. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with Since stress takes part in verb conjugation, this has produced verbs with vowel alternation in the Romance languages. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. For example, the Spanish verb volver has the form volví in the past but vuelvo in the present (see Spanish irregular verbs). Spanish verbs are a complex area of Spanish grammar, with many combinations of tenses aspects and moods (up to fifty conjugated forms per verb Italian shows the same phenomenon, but with /o/ alternating with /uo/ instead. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. This behaviour is not confined to verbs; for example, Spanish viento "wind" vs. ventilación "ventilation", from Latin ventum.

Degrees of stress

Main article: Secondary stress

'Primary' and 'secondary' stress are distinguished in some languages. Secondary stress is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the Pronunciation of a word the stronger degree of stress is called 'primary' English is commonly believed to have two levels of stress, as in the words cóunterfòil [ˈkaʊntɚˌfɔɪl] and còunterintélligence [ˌkaʊntɚ. ɪnˈtɛlɪdʒəns], and in some treatments has even been described as having four levels, primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, but these treatments often disagree with each other. It is possible to describe English with only one degree of stress, as long as unstressed syllables may occur without vowel reduction. Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress

Stress and vowel reduction

In many languages, such as Russian and English, vowel reduction may occur when a vowel changes from a stressed to an unstressed position. See also Russian language For assistance in making phonetic transcriptions of Russian for Wikipedia articles see HelpIPA for Russian This article discusses English phonology is the study of the Phonology (ie the sound system of the English language. Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress In English, many unstressed vowels reduce to schwa-like vowels, though the details vary with dialect. In Linguistics, specifically Phonetics and Phonology, schwa can mean the following An unstressed and toneless neutral Other languages, such as Finnish, have no unstressed vowel reduction. Spoken Finnish ( suomen puhekieli) is the colloquial variant of the Finnish language often used in spoken language

Notation

Different systems exist for indicating syllabification and stress. Syllabification is the separation of a word into Syllables whether spoken or written

• In IPA, primary stress is indicated by a high vertical line before the syllable, secondary stress by a low vertical line. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Example: [sɪˌlæbəfɪˈkeɪʃən] or /sɪˌlæbəfɪˈkeɪʃən/.
• In English dictionaries which do not use IPA, stress is typically marked with a prime mark placed after the stressed syllable: /si-lab′-ə-fi-kay′-shən/. The prime symbol ( ′  double prime symbol ( &Prime  triple prime symbol ( ‴  etc
• In ad hoc pronunciation guides, stress is often indicated using a combination of bold text and capital letters. Ad hoc is a Latin phrase which means "for this [ Purpose ]" Example: si-lab-if-i-KAY-shun or si-LAB-if-i-KAY-shun
• In Russian and Ukrainian dictionaries, stress is indicated with an acute accent on a syllable's vowel. History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. Example: вимовля́ння.
• In Dutch, ad hoc indication of stress is usually marked by an acute accent on the vowel (or, in the case of a diphthong, the first two vowels) of the stressed syllable. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with Compare achterúítgang (deterioration) and áchteruitgang (back exit).
• In Modern Greek, all polysyllables are written with an acute accent over the vowel in the stressed syllable. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds (The acute accent is also used to distinguish some monosyllables in order to distinguish homographs (e. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds A homograph is one of a group of words that share the same spelling but have different meanings g. , η ("the") and ή ("or")); here the stress of the two words is the same).
• In Portuguese, stress is sometimes indicated explicitly with an acute accent (for i, u, and open a, e, o), or circumflex (for close a, e, o). Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. In diphthongs, when marked, the semivowel (or the semivowels) never receives the accent mark. Semivowels — also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels —are Vowels that form Diphthongs with full syllabic vowels Stress is not marked with diacritics when it can be otherwise predicted from spelling, i. e. , it is only marked on uncommon pronunciation of pattern of letters.
• In the Spanish language writing system, stress is explicitly indicated with an acute accent on one vowel of a word. For those words which have no written accent, the stressed syllable is predictable with three simple orthographic rules according with the word pattern: Antepenultima syllables (as in árabe) are always accentuated. The last syllable is accentuated if the word ends with n, s or a vowel (as in está). Finally, penultima syllables are accentuated if the word ends with any word except n, s or a vowel, as in cárcel.

Notes

See also

• Accent (poetry)
• Accent (music)
• Antepenult
• Initial-stress-derived noun
• Penult
• Pitch accent
• Phonology
• Secondary stress
• Syllable
• Timing
• Vowel reduction
• Weak form and strong form

External links

• An russian dictionary with word stress