Daniela Silva Nauschuetz

Marcia García da Rosa

Lucia Moreira Sánchez

Summary
Accentuation - Primary and Secondary Accent - Stress

Accentuation

What is accentuation?

Accentuation is a suprasegmental phonetic feature, meaning it affects long stretches of

utterance, such as the syllable, the word, and the sentence. Suprasegmental features include
accentuation, rhythm, and intonation, and are also known as prosodic features.

When we speak, we give more emphasis to some parts of an utterance than to others. For
example, we can make a syllable stand out with respect to its neighboring syllables in a word.

Elements that produce prominence at syllable level:

● Pitch - the most important element in terms of prominence

○ articulatorily: depends mainly on the vibration of the vocal folds
○ auditorily: quality of a sound can be placed on a scale from high to low, or
acute to grave
● Quality
○ articulatorily: depends on the shape of the resonators
○ auritorily: feature of which two sounds, similarly presented and having the
same loudness, quantity, and pitch, are perceived as dissimilar, e.g. the
difference between /i/ and /e/
● Quantity:
○ auditorily: can be placed on a scale ranging from long to short, perceived as
length
● Stress
○ articulatorily: caused by greater muscular energy and breath force
○ auridorily: perceived as loudness, can be placed on a scale going from loud to
soft

What kind of syllables are associated with prominence?

In terms of...

● Pitch: those that can act as pitch movement initiators

● Quality: those containing a strong vowel
● Quantity: those containing a long vowel and/or consonant
 ● Stress: those containing a loud sound

Lack of prominence is associated with…

● weak vowels
● syllabic consonants
● short sounds

To keep in mind:

● Pitch, quality, quantity, and stress can play a part in making a syllable stand out
compared to its neighbours, but they do not play an equally important part nor are all
four of them always present together

Accent

● When a syllable is a starter of pitch movement or has the natural potential to be one,
we shall say that it is accented
● When any of the elements causing prominence are present, but the syllable is not
capable of acting a pitch movement initiator, we shall say it is prominent
● Therefore, all accented syllables are prominent, but not all prominent syllables are
accented

Types of accent

When a word has two or more accents, pitch movement will naturally start on the last one
(primary accent) and mark it / ‛ / or / /. The previous accent, or accents, are less likely to

•
initiate pitch movement (secondary accents) and mark them / ′ / or / /. Syllables with
inherent prominence / º /, and unaccented, non-prominent syllables / • / will be marked in the
scalar notation only.

Perception of accent

Native listener’s perception of accent is subjective, it is influenced by his previous knowledge

of the language.

Accentuation of simple words

Simple words are made up of roots alone or with the addition of affixes. It is difficult to
establish rules for the accentuation of simple words in English, so students should learn the
accentual pattern of each word just as they must learn its pronunciation.
Alternative accentual patterns

There exist many words with optional accentuations, of which 150 are in relative state of
equilibrium.

Gimson - Words Chapter 10 (pg. 235 - 249)

Accent
Syllables that stand out in respect to their neighbours are considered accented, meaning that
they receive an accent. Not like in other languages like Czech, where the main accent always
follows a certain rule, in English accentual placement is said to be free in the way that
different words can have different accentual patterns. The accentual pattern of a word reflects
the distribution of prominence among its syllables.

According to Gimson, the effect of prominence in the English language is due to any of these
four factors: pitch, stress, quality and quantity. However, it is mainly pitch changes that mark
accented syllables.

There are four degrees of prominence in English:

Primary accent: The final pitch accent in a word or in a group of words. It is usually he most
prominent.

Secondary accent: A pitch accent on an earlier syllable usually being less prominent.

Minor prominence: The occurrence of a full vowel without a pitch prominence.

Unaccented syllable: Containing no pitch prominence and a weak vowel.

It is very difficult to learn word accentual patterns in English because there are many
exceptions to almost any rule. Gimson, therefore, prefers to talk about tendencies rather than
rules.
It is mainly the statues of the final syllables as strong or weak that establishes the placement
of the primary accent. A strong syllable is considered to have a long vowel or diphthong or
short vowel and two consonants. If this doesn’t happen, we refer to the syllable as weak.

English words are divided into roots and affixes:

a- Roots
There are different tendencies that apply to verb, adjective or noun roots.

Verbs: If the final syllable is strong, it is accented. Otherwise, the accent falls on the
penultimate syllable.
Adjectives: If the final syllable is strong, it is accented. Otherwise, accent falls on the
penultimate syllable or if there is a weak vowel on the penultimate, the accent falls on the
antepenultimate or rarely on the ante antepenultimate syllable.
Nouns: If the final syllable is strong, it is optionally accented. Otherwise, accent falls on the
penultimate syllable or if there is a weak vowel on the penultimate, the accent falls on the
antepenultimate or rarely on the ante antepenultimate syllable.

b-Suffixes
Suffixes can be added to a root word or even added to an already combined root plus a suffix.
Accent-neural suffixes: Inflectional suffixes like –s, -es, -ed, -ing and most derivational
suffixes ending in –y or –ie do not affect the accent. Other suffixes in this category include –
ish, -ism, -ist, -ise, -ment, -ness and –er.
Accent-attracting suffixes: These suffixes take the accent themselves. This includes somo
common derivational suffixes like –ade, -eer, -esque, -ette and –ation.
Accent-fixing suffixes: These suffixes have the effect of fixing the accent on a particular
syllable of the stem.

c- Prefixes
Prefixes are mostly accent-neutral like de-, disco-, in-, mis-, re-, sub-, and un-. Generally,
when such prefixes result in a doubled consonant like unnecessary it is pronounced with a
double length. This rule doesn’t apply for in- and its variants like il- where illogical is only
pronounced with one /l/ sound.

Compound words
Compound words are composed of more than one word, but function as a single word. These
words may be written as one word like glasshouse, with a hyphen like clear-cut, or with a
space like working party.

There is no systematic practice in the choice among these three ways. However, there is a
tendency for compound words with primary accent on the first element to be written as one
word or with a hyphen and for those with primary accent on the final element to be written as
two separate words.

These words also follow a general pattern:

- Compound functioning as nouns: (Around 75% of compound words) If the first part of
the word is broadly speaking of a noun, then the first element will normally carry the accent
like in shop-lifter and birth-mark.
Like always, there are some general exceptions. When the second item is made up of the first
like in apple-pie, then the second word takes the accent.
This also happens when the first noun is a name like in Easter eggs.

- Compound functioning as adjectives and verbs: (Much more limited in number than
noun compounds and are equally divided between those with initial accent and final accent)
Adjectives
Initial accent: Those compound adjectives that the noun is a special application of the
adjective like in seasick.
Final accent: Those compound adjectives that the noun modifies the adjective like in tax-
free.

Verbs
The amount of these compounds is very small and usually involve initial accent. The
sequence ADV or PREP plus a VERB usually take final accent.

Distinctive Word Accentual Patterns

In English, accent has a distinctive function. This means that it can be used to establish a
difference in meaning between two words where the only distinction is the where the accent
is placed.
Some pairs of noun and verb may differ in the location of the primary accent, this being
accented on the first syllable for nouns and on the second syllable for verbs.
There are a large amount of verbs that apart from being accented on the second syllable, also
take a /ə/ or / ɪ/ in the first syllable.
Like in most rules, there are several disyllables that do not conform to the general noun/verb
accentual pattern distinction or exhibit instability. Some words like “comment” are
pronounced in the same way for their noun and verb form.

Acquisition of Word Accent by Native Learners

There is not much information about children's acquisition of word accent. This area doesn’t
seem to be a problem for native learners. Children usually place the primary accent on the
correct syllable of words. These are probably learnt individually as they are heard.

Advice to Foreign Learners

Many learners come from language backgrounds where word accent is regular and follow a
certain pattern, but in English this doesn’t happen.
Although accentual patterns are not as regular as in other languages, there are certain
tendencies that foreign learners can acquire.
Gimson states that in particular, learners should pay attention to:
- The influence of suffixes on the placement of the primary accent noticing whether the suffix
leaves the accent on the stem unchanged, if it takes the accents itself or if it moves the accent
on the stem.
- The role of accentual contrast specially where word classes are distinguished by a shift of
accent.