Chapter 10 Chapter 10 Stress and Stress and

RhythmRhythm

Chapter 10 Chapter 10 Stress and Stress and

RhythmRhythm

What is a syllable?

• A syllable is a word part and the basic unit of English rhythm. English words can have one, two, three or even more syllables. In the word ‘driveway’, there are two syllables. In the sentence ‘Drive him away’, there are four.

•take; ta‘ble; po‘ta’to•po’pu‘la’tion •con’gra‘tu’la‘tion •te‘le’co‘mmu‘ni’ca’tion

What is a stressed syllable?

• In English words with more than one syllable, one of them will receive more stress than the others. Stressed syllables are those that are marked in the dictionary as stressed. For example, in the word ‘driveway’, the first syllable is a stressed syllable while the second syllable is not.

• Stressed syllables in English are usually longer, louder, and higher in pitch.

• For example:• ba NAAAA na• Syllable 1 Syllable 2 Syllable 3• (short) (long) (short)• The word "banana" has 3 syllables. Syl

lable 1 is not stressed and so is short. Syllable 2 is stressed and so is long with a clear vowel sound /a:/. Syllable 3 is not stressed and so is also short.

Stress Chinese is a tone language

while English is a highly stressed language.

Stresses play a very important role in conveying the meaning of a sentence in English.

Example: I’m sorry I can’t.

Word StressExample: • coming letter

beautiful• report myself forget• remember explosion• modernization

Sentence Stress• In a normal English sentence

certain words are stressed and certain words are unstressed.

• Normally stressed are content words, which carry the most information. Normally unstressed are form words.

Rhythm

•Stress gives a natural rhythm to spoken English.

• The rhythm of spoken English is determined by the occurrence of stressed syllables. Stressed syllables occur at more or less equal intervals in English. The other syllables in a sentence are reduced or blended to accommodate the regular beat of the stressed syllables.

•1.As a general rule English tries to avoid having stresses too close together.

2. English stresses tend to recur at regular intervals.