Stress & Rhythm

Importance of Stress & Rhythm

 Speech is a continuous stream of sounds, without clear-cut borderlines

between them. Stress and rhythm are the key to gaining a natural, smooth-
flowing style of speech. People do not speak in separate words, they speak in
logical connected groups of words. Even native speakers sometimes “stumble
over their words” because they are unaware of the “little tricks” for avoiding
the pitfalls. Thus, stress and rhythm is a highly valued concept.
 Stress
 Stress is to place emphasis on some syllables of a word, if they do not want to
sound strange or be misunderstood.
 e.g. permit (PER mit) is a document or license that gives one permission to do
something, while Permit (per MIT) means to allow someone to do something,
to allow something to happen, to give permission or to authorize an action.
 This can also cause misunderstanding in sentences e.g. His friend will presént
you with a présent.
Stress & Syllable
 Disyllabic noun or adjective placement
This where you put the stress at the first syllable of the word. E.g. Noun- PREsent,
Adjective- CLEver
 Disyllabic Verb
Disyllabic stress is a stress that can be found in the last syllable of the word. Usually, this
stress implies to words that connote action. E.g. aMAZEd
 Penultimate syllable
The stress can be located at the second syllable from the end of the word. E.g. GRAPHic
 Ante-penultimate syllable
The ante-penultimate syllable focuses its stress on the third syllable word from the end.
E.g. deMOcracy
 Compound word syllable
A compound word syllable stress varies depending on what type of word it is. For compound
nouns and adjective, the stress is on the first syllable. While for verbs, it is on the second or
last syllable of the word. E.g. BIRDbox, overFLOW, high-FAshioned
 Types of Stress
 Primary Stress:  The syllable with the Primary Stress is the loudest and
longest syllable in a word. It has a very noticeable change in pitch on the
vowel. In one-syllable words, that one syllable gets the primary stress.
E.g. “blue” = /BLUUU/, “ten” = /TEHN/
The only exceptions to this rule are a handful of function words like “the” which
are usually unstressed or reduced.

 Secondary Stress:  These are the syllables that are stressed, but not as much
the primary stress, so they are loud and long with a change in pitch, but
not as loud or as long as the syllables that get the primary stress. The change
in pitch on the vowel is not quite as noticeable.
E.g. “disappear” = /DIH-suh PEEER/ (syllable with secondary stress is underlined)
 Level 3 is the completely Unstressed Syllable:  These are the syllables that
have no stress at all so we rush through them and shorten them so much that
the vowel in the syllable is almost completely gone.   The change in pitch on
the vowel is barely noticeable, but it is there.
E.g. “prepare” = /pruh-PAIR/ (unstressed syllable is underlined)
 Rhythm
 Rhythm in English language is basically the musicality in the speech. Speech sounds
appealing if proper rhythm is maintained in the speech i.e Stresses and de stresses
in the speech.  
 In sentences there are two types of words.
 Content words
Words that are crucial to the meaning of the sentence. They actually formulate
the CONTENT of the sentence.
 Function words
These are the non-essential words in the sentence.
 
 Content words in a sentence are stressed whereas the function words are distressed.
Content words are pronounced with stress and prominently while function words are
pronounced relatively faster without any stress.
 
 Example 1
 “I WANT A NEW IPHONE”
 Here you could see that the here some words are stressed and some are
destressed which sounds the rhythm of the sentence.
 Here “I” and “A” are destressed and “want new iPhone” is stressed.
 We would speak like this:
 “I WAAANNTT A NEWW IPHONEE.”
 Example 2

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Do you notice how you place stress on certain syllables and words ? Below the
stressed syllables are in bold:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
The stressed syllables and words help to create the rhythm of the sentence.