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Utterance stress and its distribution in an utterance

Words grouped in an utterance are not equally important. Those that are semantically significant are made prominent through contrasts in loudness, duration, and higher pitch. Prominence given to a syllable in a word is called word stress. But prominence given to one or more words in an utterance is called utterance stress. The linguistic function of utterance stress is indicating the relative importance of words in an utterance.

Utterance stress is closely related to word stress. It is the stressed syllable of a word that carries prominence when the word is important in an utterance. Yet not all the syllables that are stressed when the word is pronounced in isolation become stressed in the speech flow. One of two stresses in polysyllabic words, such as absolutely, justifiable, motorcycle, misinterpret, irreproachable, diplomatic, independent, afternoon, etc., is often lost in the speech flow.

e.g.: ,week’end butThen she’s got the week‵end to settle `down.

In compound adjectives, such as bright-eyed, light-minded, good-looking, middle-aged, etc. the stress shifts with regards to the rhythm and the lexical environment. The main stress is on the first word when a compound adjective is followed by a noun. In other cases the main stress is on the second word.

Compare: ‘Have a ‘piece of ‘home-made `cake. – This ‘cake is home-`made.

Or: He was a ‘silver-haired `doctor. - He was ‘silver-`haired.

The distribution of stress in an utterance is determined by two factors: semantic and rhythmic.

Semantic factor

Stressing words in an utterance depends very much on the context. It is nevertheless possible to predict for most utterances a “normal stressing”. Some words carry higher information content in the utterance and are usually stressed while those carrying lower input (information) are left unstressed. The important words are ‘content’ (notional) words as opposed to ‘function’ words. Most content words are polysyllabic while function words are not.

Table 2 - Stressed and Unstressed Words

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