Sentence stress

A separate word when used alone as a sentence is always stressed. In a sentence consisting of more than one word, some of the words are left unstressed. They are the words of small semantic value or those with a purely grammatical function: articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary, modal and link verbs, personal and reflective pronouns.

Words essential to the meaning of the utterance are normally stressed (nouns, adjectives, notional verbs, adverbs, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns). So words that provide most of the information are singled out by means of sentence stress.

Sentence stress is a greater prominence with which one or more words are in a sentence are pronounced as compared with the other words according to their informational (semantic) importance.

This greater prominence is achieved by:

1. Greater force of exhalation and muscular tension.

2. Changing of the pitch level.

3. Pronouncing the stressed syllables longer.

4. Not changing the quality of a vowel in the stressed syllable.

The most important piece of information conveyed in the sentence is called its communicative centre. It may be expressed by a single word or a number of words. Usually it is the last word in a sense-group and it carries the terminal tone.

The main function of sentence stress is to single out the communicative centre of the sentence, which introduces new information. So it performs a distinctive function and distinguished the speaker’s modal and emotional attitude to the words.

Sentence stress may vary in degree. It may be full and partial. Full sentence stress in its turn may be unemphatic and emphatic.

1) Partial sentence stress is indicated by single stress-marks places below the line of print. E. g. I haven’t the slightest idea.

2) Full unemphatic sentence stress is indicated by single stress-marks placed above the line of print. E. g. I haven’t the slightest idea.

3) Full emphatic sentence stress is effected by greater force of utterance, greater force of exhalation and lengthening the sounds. Emphatically stresses syllables become more prominent and sound longer than syllables with unemphatic stress. It is indicated by double stress-marks. E.g. Stop talking!

Sentence stress can also be subdivided as to its function into syntagmatic stress, syntactic stress and logical stress.

Syntagmatic stress presents the most important functional type. Together with the main tones it singles out the semantic centre of the sentence or a sense-group. In sentences where no word is made specially prominent syntagmatic stress is usually realized in the last stressed word.

E. g. I am sending you two tickets for the theatre.

Syntactic (or normal) stress marks the other semantically important words within the utterance.

E. g. I am sending you two tickets for the theatre.

Logical stress is connected with the shifting of the syntagmatic stress from its normal place on the last stressed word to one of the preceding words. It often expresses something new to the listener and creates a new communicative centre.

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