The neutral vowel in different positions

Normal Stress

If a syllable is pronounced with a greater degree of prominence than the neighbouring ones, it’s said to be stressed. This kind of stress is called word stress (lexical). Sometimes, English words of more than 2 syllables contain 2^nd stress, which is weaker than the primary one, and is called secondary stress (communication, possibility). In longer English words it’s possible to distinguish 3^rd and even 4^th degree of stress (extraterritoriality). A word which has 1 syllable has word stress.

In different languages the place of stress is different. In English it’s mobile: dinner, ability, university…

Word stress has its linguistic function, it determines the literary pronunciation of words (laboratory), helps us to distinguish words, differing only be stress (a present – to present, an export – to export). There’re many words which have 2 strong stresses: numerals (13, 14, 15…), compound adjectives (fair-haired), words with negative prefixes (non-final, disapprove), phrasal verbs (take off, put on).

Phrasal Stress

Sentence stress. The meaning of a sentence in oral speech is determined by those words which are more or less important semantically. Such words are pronounced with a certain degree of prominence which is called sentence stress (syntactical, logical). Such parts of speech as nouns, adjectives, notional verbs, adverbs are, as a rule, stressed. Such parts of speech as link, modal, auxiliary words, conj., prep., particles, and articles are usually unstressed.

The cases when unstressed words are stressed

Unstressed words usually stressed at the beginning of a sentence, in negative forms, in short affirmative answers.

The word which constitutes the nuclear centre of the utterance is called logical stress. The word made prominent by logical stress is usually the last stressed word, and it’s pronounced either with the rise or with the fall. The function of sentence stress is usually semantic. E.g.: Do you want to stay here? (different words are stressed depending on what a person means).

The neutral vowel in different positions

The phonological analysis marks the opposition of the neutral sound /ə/ to other unstressed vowels, the most common among them is /ı/. The neutral sound /ə/ is phonologically opposed to the phoneme /ı/ with its own distinctive features capable of differentiating the meaning of lexical units. E.g.: officers /ə/ – offices /ı/; accept /ə/ – except /ı/.

The problem of the phonemic status of the neutral sound /ə/ has a morphological aspect. In English there’re numerous alliterations of vowels in stressed & unstressed syllables between the derivatives of the same root or different grammatical forms of the same word. Cf.:

/æ/ – /ə/ man – sportsman;

/∆/ – /ə/ some – wholesome;

/ס/ – /ə/ combine n – combine v;

/eı/ – /ə/ operation – operative;

/зυ/ – /ə/ post – postpone.

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