Sentence stressrefers to the pattern of stressed and unstressed words in a
sentence or utterance. English sentence stress most commonly falls on
content words that contain new information, for example, He was
going to LONdon, where the strongest stress falls on the first syllable of the
word London.
Emphatic stress:a speaker can emphasize any syllable or word that he or
she wishes to highlight. Emphatic stress is considered to be contrastive
stresswhen the highlighted word is explicitly or implicitly contrasted with
another word, for example in the utterance SHE was getting ON the plane
while HE was getting OFF.stress pattern n
see stress
stress shift n
also reverse stress
in English, a change in the stress patterns of certain words or phrases when
they are used in connected speech.
A stress shift depends on whether or not the word or phrase is followed by
a noun which has a strong stress.
Usually, these words and phrases have a low (secondary) stress, shown here
as /a/, followed by a high (primary) stress, shown here as /c/
For example:
aindecpendent
aplatecglass
When, in connected speech, the word or phrase itself has the tonic stress,
the most important stress of the sentence (shown here by ), these words
and phrases keep their usual stress pattern, e.g.:
She was cvery aindependent
This window is aplate glass
They may be followed by a noun with a low stress, e.g.:
They are aplate glass manuafacturers
However, before a noun that has either a high stress or the tonic stress, the
strong (primary) stresses on the third syllable of independent and on the
word glass in “plate glass” are lost and the secondary stress on the first
syllable of independent and on plate in “plate glass” now becomes a primary
stress, e.g.:
He has cindependent means
It’s a aplate glass window
The aplate glass cwindow is broken
Words or phrases which may have a stress shift are followed by the symbol
// in some other dictionaries.
stress shift