ACCENTUAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH

ACCENTUAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH

While pronouncing words, we can distinguish syllables which are articulated
with different degrees of prominence. Syllables given a special degree of
prominence may occur at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of words. A
greater degree of prominence given to one or more syllables in a word which
singles it out through changes in the pitch and intensity of the voice and
results in qualitative and quantitative modifications of sounds in the accented
syllable is known as word accent.

Languages differ from each other in the principal means by which the
special prominence of speech sounds is achieved and word accent thus effected.
One of such means is the pronunciation of a syllable in a word with greater force
of utterance as compared with that of the other syllables of the same word. Word
accent effected by these means is called dynamic or force stress.

A syllable can be made especially prominent by uttering each on a different pitch level than the
other syllable or syllables of the same word. Word accent effected by these means
is called musical or tonic accent.

 A syllable becomes more prominent when its vowel is pronounced longer than another vowel or other vowels of the same timbre. Word accent effected by these means is called quantitative accent. In most languages stressed syllables are made prominent by the combination of
several all the above mentioned means.Scandinavian languages make use of both
dynamic stress and tonic accent in a more or less equal degree.

Recent investigations of the acoustic nature of word accent in English and
Russian have shown that word stress in these languages is effected rather by
creating a definite pattern of relationships among all the syllables of every
disyllabic or polysyllabic word.

From a purely phonetic point of view a polysyllabic word has as many degrees of stress as there are syllables in it.

Free word accent is characterized by the fact
that in different words of the language different syllables are stressed.

Free word accent has two sub-types: constant which always remains on the same morpheme in different grammar forms of a word or in different derivatives fromthe same root (wonder, wonderful, wonderfully)

shifting accent is one which fallson different morphemes in different grammatical forms of a word or in derivatives from one and the same root (history – historical; active – activity;