Types of utterance stress. Factors conditioning the location of utterance stress

The subsystem of utterance stress in English includes 3 basic functional types (the main difference between them is in the way the syllables that bear them are marked):

1. NUCLEAR - is generally marked by a kinetic tone and is, therefore, perceived as the most prominent.

2. NON-NUCLEAR FULL - more often is marked by static tones. Both are pitch prominent, both initiate tones.

3. PARTIAL - stress syllable is not pitch prominent, doesn’t initiate tones, his pitch characteristics depend on the pitch pattern of the preceding fully stressed syllable.

The distribution of stresses in an utterance depends on several factors (Torsuyev):

1) SEMANTIC - the semantic centre of an utterance is singled out by the nuclear stress, in their turn non-nuclear full stresses signal greater semantic value than partial stresses; notional word are predisposed to be stressed

2) GRAMMATICAL - grammatical structure determines the accentual structure (the inverted word order for expressing question requires stress on the auxiliary verb)

3) RHYTHMICAL - notional words may be or unstressed and form words may be stressed due to the English rhythm.

26. Speech rhythm and utterance stress UTTERANCE STRESS - the special prominence given to 1 or more words in an utterance. The means, with the help of which this prominence is achieved are variations of pitch, loudness, length and quality. Acoustically, utterance stress is determined by variations of fundamental frequency, intensity, duration and formant structure. RHYTHM - regularity or periodicity in the occurrence of a particular phenomenon in an utterance. In some languages the recurring phenomena are stresses, in others - syllables. So languages can be characterized either by stress-timed or syllable-timed rhythm. English is considered to be mostly a language with stress-timed rhythm (it presupposes that utterance stress serves as a basis for the rhythmical organization of speech and that stresses segment the speech continuum into units of more or less equal length. These are accentual, or rhythmic units. Hierarchically higher are prosodic units: intonation groups and utterances. Rhythmic units form a certain hierarchy, since stresses, on which they are based, are not equal in their prominence, position and function. The most prominent and functionally more important is the nuclear stress. Therefore the NUCLEAR RHYTHMIC UNIT is the most important in an utterance. A rhythmic unit formed by full stress together with partial stress can be defined as a COMPLEX RHYTHMIC UNIT.

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