Rhythmic factor

Stress creates the rhythmic structure of an utterance, but rhythm, in its turn, can influence utterance stress. For example, there is a general tendency to place the nuclear stress in a content word in utterance final position, and this is an important feature of the rhythmic organization of English speech. Consider the following:

1) I’m `going. 2) I'm ‘going to `London. 3) I'm ‘going to ‘London for a `holiday.

But when a content word is separated from the end of the utterance by some function words, there is a high probability for the last of them (or the penultimate one) to acquire some degree of prominence and thus maintain rhythm. For example:

His `friends might be .with him. OrHis ‘friends might be `with him.

The most important word may sometimes be placed in the middle or even at the beginning of an utterance. In such case the notional words occurring in the post-nuclear part (the tail) will have, as a rule, some kind of prominence and the last of them often becomes a second nucleus bearing a Low Fall or a Low Rise,

e.g.: ^|This is the `other bedroom. Or We’ve ‘got a ‘non-`smoking rule in the ‘rooms we _\share. Or We can ‘take her to the `sports centre on ,Sunday.

Speech Exercises

Ex. 1 Stress in compound adjectives.

Make up compound adjectives from the two groups below:

well - self - - shouldered - confident

over - badly - - minded - weight

broad - narrow - - dressed - conscious

- centred - behaved

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Utterance stress and its distribution in an utterance	\|	Ex. 2 Read out utterances. Note the difference in the accentual-rhythmic structure of the compound adjectives.

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