by: Shiela Ann Neron

WORD STRESS

Word stress- is the manner in which stresses are distributed on the syllables of a word.The discussion of vowels provides a good

foundation for understanding word stress.Multisyllabic words have more than one

stressed syllable but only one of those syllables receives primary stress. Other(s) receives secondary stress or almost no stress.

example: communication

Factors of English word stress patterns: origin of a word, the part of the speech and affixation.

In general terms:1. Stress falls more often on the root or base word and less often on a prefix:

beLIEVE preDICT comPLAINT2. Compound nouns tend to make primary stress on the first element and secondary stress on the second:

AIRplane BUS stop comPUter disk

3. Suffixes can either a. Have no effect on stress

BEAUty --- BEAUtifuldeLIVer --- deLIVeranceperFORM –perFORMer

b. take the primary stress themselvespicturESQUE trusTEE enginEER

c. Cause the stress pattern in the stem to shift to a different syllable

PERiod --- periODicSEquence --- seQUENtialORganize --- organiZAtion

The end.Thank you!