sentence stress patterns

SENTENCE STRESS PATTERNS
I. INTRODUCTION
Before finding out information about sentence stress patterns, we have to what stress is. In
linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. The
term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables.
And it can see that English is a stress-timed language which is spoken with rhythm. This
results form strong and weak stresses that are built into both individual words and sentences.
During verbal communication, suprasegmental features including stress, intonation, duration
and juncture are important elements in conveying metal linguistic information such as emotion
and identity of the speaker (Raphael, Borden & Harris, 2007).One of them is sentence stress
which is a natural part of spoken English and it is also a difficult area to work on for learners
and teachers alike. For this reason it's also an area which is often neglected, but this aspect of
the language can cause problems for learners in both their speaking and perhaps more
importantly listening. If you do not already know about sentence stress, you can try to learn
about it. This is one of the best ways for you to understand spoken English - especially English
spoken fast.
II. BODY
1. The definition of sentence stress.
As we see that some linguists give many opinions about sentence stress which are useful
for learns study English as the second language of them. However, there are students who
don’t recognize how stresses in sentence are. And as known, sentence stress is the pattern of
strong and weak syllables in a sentence.
2. The role of sentence stress in English
We can see that sentence stress is the rhythm of English. Like word stress, sentence stress
will help you understand spoken English more easily even when people speak
quickly. Moreover, it also brought to the English accent which makes English become greater
and people love speaking it all over the world.
In sentence, stress patterns also will help us hear the difference between similar sentences.
Ex: He can talk He can’t talk
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According to the above example, verbs with the negative “- n’t” are always stressed. This

helps us to hear the difference between “can” and “can’t” in the following two sentences,
because sentences have different stress patterns.
3. Types of sentence stress in English
In spoken English each sentence or phrase contains:
 A Focus word-the most important word
 Content words-very important for meaning
 Function words-not as important for meaning
3.1 Content Words and Focus Words - Stressed
The most important words in English phrases and sentences are content and focus words.
These are pronounced with emphasis. They also are stressed words.
CONTENT words are usually; nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, negatives and
numbers. The focus word usually comes last.
Look at the example sentences below and read them aloud emphasizing the capitalized and
highlighted text.
1. Susan is happy with her new job.
2. She likes to eat lunch in the cafeteria.
In longer sentences, there is a focus word in each phrase or thought group.
3. If you plan to become a teacher, you need to have experience with children.
3.2 Function Words - Unstressed
The unstressed words in a sentence are called function words or structured words. These
are important to the grammatical structure of a sentence but they don't convey much meaning.
Americans pronounce them quickly with a low pitch so they can be difficult to hear. Function
words are usually pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs.
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Stressing or emphasizing words correctly in phrases and sentences will greatly improve the
rhythm of your speech and make your accent less noticeable. Americans will be able to understand
you much more easily!
1. John wants to be an actor, so he wants to live in Hollywood.
2. Mary made an appointment with the dentist on Monday.
3. After the movie, they went to a bar to have beer.

And the following table shows some examples about content words and function words:
Examples:
Content Words Function Words
Main Verbs go, talk, writing Pronouns I, you, he ,they
Nouns student, desk Prepositions on, under, with
Adjectives big, clever Articles the, a, some
Adverbs quickly, loudly Conjunctions but, and, so
Negative Aux.
Verbs
can’t, don’t, aren’t Auxiliary Verbs can, should, must
Demonstratives this, that, those Verb “to be” is, was, am
Question Words who, which, where
Ex: I am talking to the clever students.
You’re sitting on the desk, but you aren’t listening to me.
He’s writing quickly, so it’s difficult for him to hear me.
Notice:
The above types are for what is called "neutral" or normal stress. But sometimes we can
stress a word that would normally be only a structure word.
Ex : "They've been to Mongolia, haven't they?"
"No, they haven't, but we have.
3.3 Emphatic stress
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Emphatic stress is a special case of sentence stress. In conversation, speakers can choose to
put the stress in any place in order to emphasize words and to put stress on a word, speakers do one
or more of these things:
+ Make it louder
+ Make it longer
+ Make it higher
. And the following sentences are examples which show us one reason to move the tonic
stress from its utterance final position is to assign an emphasis to a content word which is usually a

modal auxiliary, an intensifier, an adverb, etc.
1. It was very boring. (unmarked)
2. It was very boring. (emphatic)
3. You mustn't talk so loudly. (unmarked)
4. You mustn’t talk so loudly. (emphatic)
Some intensifying adverbs and modifiers (or their derivatives) that are emphatic by nature
are: Indeed, utterly, absolute, terrific, tremendous, awfully, terribly, great, grand, really, definitely,
truly, literally, extremely, surely, completely, barely, entirely, very (adverb), very (adjective),
quite, too, enough, pretty, far, especially, alone, only, own, -self,etc.
3.4 Contrastive Stress
In contrastive contexts, the stress pattern is quite different from the emphatic and non-
emphatic stresses in that any lexical item in an utterance can receive the tonic stress provided that
the contrastively stressed item can be contrastable in that universe of speech.
Ex:
a) Do you like this one or THAT one?
b) b) I like THIS one.
Many other larger contrastive contexts (dialogues) can be found or worked out, or even
selected from literary works for a study of contrastive stress. Consider the following:
• She played the piano yesterday. (It was her who...)
• She played the piano yesterday. (She only played (not. harmed) ...)
• She played the piano yesterday. (It was the piano that...)
• She played the piano yesterday. (It was yesterday...)
3.5 Tonic Stress
An intonation unit almost always has one peak of stress, which is called 'tonic stress', or
'nucleus'. Because stress applies to syllables, the syllable that receives the tonic stress is called
'tonic syllable'. The term tonic stress is usually preferred to refer to this kind of stress in referring,
proclaiming, and reporting utterances. Tonic stress is almost always found in a content word in
utterance final position. Consider the following, in which the tonic syllable is underlined:
• I'm going.
• I'm going to London.

I'm going to London for a holiday
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3.6 New Information Stress
In a response given to a wh-question, the information supplied, naturally enough, is stressed,.
That is, it is pronounced with more breath force, since it is more prominent against a background
given information in the question. The concept of new information is much clearer to students of
English in responses to wh-questions than in declarative statements. Therefore, it is best to start
with teaching the stressing of the new information supplied to questions with a question word:
A: What's your NAME
B: My name's GEORGE.
A: Where are you FROM?
B: I'm from WALES.
A: Where do you LIVE?
B: I live in BONN
A: When does the school term END?
B: It ends in MAY.
A: What do you DO?
B: I'm a STUdent.
4. Rules of sentence stress
• One word, one stress
• The stress is always on a vowel
• There is normally a space between stressed syllables in a sentence.
Unstressed syllables can be put in that space
Ex: That was the man
That could be the man
• Stress can be put in some syllable of a word in a sentence.
Ex: Are you coming?
• The time between stressed words is always the same. We can see :
1 2 3 4
1 and 2 and 3 and 4

1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4
1 and then a 2 and then a 3 and then a 4

The four sentences take the same length of time to say and you will notice the numbers are
stressed and the unstressed words in between are said much more quickly in order to keep the
rhythm of the language. In other languages, which are not stress-timed the stress would fall more
equally on each word and syllable.
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