Word Stress and Sentence Stress
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- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 10/07/2013 08:38 PM
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Word Stress and Sentence Stress
Normally when we say "I feel stressed" it means "I feel anxious". Stress is a kind of worried feeling about life or work. But there is another kind of stress that actually helps us understand. This other kind of stress is an accent that we make on certain syllables and words when speaking English.
When words combine to form sentences not all of them are stressed. Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or "beat". You remember that word stress is accent on one syllable within a word. Sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence. For example, in the sentence, She ‘went to the ‘cinema only the words went and the first syllable ‘cinema are stressed. The words she, to, the and the last two syllables of ‘cinema i.e. ne and ma are unstressed. It is on this alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables that the rhythm of English depends. If we stress every word in an English sentence it would sound very odd.
Most sentences have two types of word:
* content words
* structure words
Content words are the key words of a sentence. They are the important words that carry the meaning or sense. Structure words are not very important words. They are small, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form or "structure". If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will probably still understand the sentence. If you remove the content words from a sentence, you will not understand the sentence. The sentence has no sense or meaning.
For example, you receive this telegram message ‘Sell Car Gone France’. This sentence is not complete. It is not a "grammatically correct" sentence. But you probably understand it. These 4 words communicate very well. Somebody wants you to sell their car for them because they have gone to France. We can add a few words: ‘Sell my car I’ve gone to France’. The new words do not...
Normally when we say "I feel stressed" it means "I feel anxious". Stress is a kind of worried feeling about life or work. But there is another kind of stress that actually helps us understand. This other kind of stress is an accent that we make on certain syllables and words when speaking English.
When words combine to form sentences not all of them are stressed. Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or "beat". You remember that word stress is accent on one syllable within a word. Sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence. For example, in the sentence, She ‘went to the ‘cinema only the words went and the first syllable ‘cinema are stressed. The words she, to, the and the last two syllables of ‘cinema i.e. ne and ma are unstressed. It is on this alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables that the rhythm of English depends. If we stress every word in an English sentence it would sound very odd.
Most sentences have two types of word:
* content words
* structure words
Content words are the key words of a sentence. They are the important words that carry the meaning or sense. Structure words are not very important words. They are small, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form or "structure". If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will probably still understand the sentence. If you remove the content words from a sentence, you will not understand the sentence. The sentence has no sense or meaning.
For example, you receive this telegram message ‘Sell Car Gone France’. This sentence is not complete. It is not a "grammatically correct" sentence. But you probably understand it. These 4 words communicate very well. Somebody wants you to sell their car for them because they have gone to France. We can add a few words: ‘Sell my car I’ve gone to France’. The new words do not...