Sunday, 29 September 2013

Word stress



II.  Word Stress
-----  nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

In a poly-syllabled word, it is natural to stress on a particular syllable and the stressed syllable is louder, longer in duration and higher in pitch than the surrounding syllables in a word.

You may capitalise that particular syllable, for example,  responsiBIlity. 

You may use a stress mark (diacritic) on the top before the primary stressed syllable and the secondary stress mark on the bottom before the syllable to indicate.  For example, reˌsponsi'bility
 
-----  Mono-syllabled words
A monosyllabled word consists of one syllable only and it is always stressed.    

  -----Poly-syllabled words
For words more than 2 syllables, the nature of the vowel or peak of the various syllables must be reconsidered. 

The syllable next to the last is called pen-ultimate position ( 3rd syllable in the 4-syllabled word; 4th syllable in 5-syllabled word; 5th syllable in the 6 –syllabled word)
The syllable before pen-ultimate syllable is called ante-pen-ultimate. 

The stress falls on either pen-ultimate or ante-pen-ultimate poly-syllabled words.

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