The nature of English stress

The nature of stress in different languages is different. According to A. Gimson, the effect of prominence is achieved by four factors: force, tone, length and vowel colour.

Word stress in languages is based upon a number of principles:

1. Dynamic stress

2. Musical stress

3. Qualitative stress

4. Quantitative stress

The dynamic stress implies greater force with which the syllable is pronounced. It means that the greater muscular energy is produced by the speaker. European languages such as English, German, French, Russian possess dynamic word stress.

The musical word stress is observed in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. It is effected by the variations of voice pitch in relation to the next syllables. The English linguists (D. Crystal, A. Gimson agree that in English word stress is a complex phenomenon, marked by the variations in force, pitch, quantity and quality. The dynamic and the tonic features of English word stress prevail over the others. The accent is also influenced by the vowel length and quality. The vowel of the stressed syllable is never reduced and it is longer than in the unstressed one.

There is no definite demarcation line between word-stress and sentence-stress. G.P. Torsuyev made a supposition that the musical factor belongs to the sphere of sentence-stress. The musical factor cannot be observed and analyzed without the influence of intonation. Even an isolated word, when pronounced, forms a syntagm and has the necessary characteristics of intonation.

The quantitative principle of stress manifests itself by a longe r pronunciation of vowels in stressed syllables, unstressed vowels are shor t. The quantitative principle is used in English and German as an auxiliary aid in making stressed syllables more prominent.

The qualitative principle is based on the fact that vowels of full formation are a feature of stressed syllables only, and cannot occur in unstressed positions. Vowels in unstressed syllables are weakened and reduced to a greater or lesser degree. The qualitative principle in its pure form can be found in Russian where the vowels in unstressed syllables are reduced. If the stressed syllable is near, the reduction is less; the further it is from stress, the more the vowel is obscured.

Languages are also differentiated according to the place of word stress. It may be fixed and free. In languages with a fixed stress its place is on the particular syllable. In Finnish and Czech it is fixed on the first one, in Polish on the last but one. Russian language is a language with free stress: the stress may fall on any syllable in different words.

Some languages have no word-stress, as in French. It had long been considered that French words had the stress on the last syllable. And that is really a case when a word is pronounced by itself. When a group of words is pronounced, all the words in this group are unstressed and only the final syllable is stressed.

The phenomenon of shifted stress exists in different languages in Russian and in English as well. Its function is to differentiate parts of speech: ʹtransport (s) – transʹport (v).

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