The students who study hard will get good grades.
The students who study hard / will get good grades /
The students, who study hard, will get good grades.
The students / who study hard / will get good grades /
Again, the words are the same, but in speaking, pauses and
intonation change the meaning. In the !rst sentence, all the
students study hard and get good grades. (This is called a
non-restrictive adjective clause—it doesn’t limit the number
of people that the clause refers to.) In the second, only the
students who study hard will get good grades. (This one is a
restrictive adjective clause.) When these pairs of sentences
are written, punctuation gives us clues to their meaning, but
when they’re spoken, only pauses and intonation indicate the
di"erence.
This humorous message was seen in our ESL program o#ce:
Let’s eat Grandma.
Let’s eat, Grandma.Punctuation saves lives!
Pauses also save lives. (Or at least they help us communicate
our meaning more clearly!)What is prominence?
In every thought group, there is one word that is emphasized
more strongly than the rest. This most-emphasized word is
called the prominent word, or the word that has
prominence. Prominence can also be called focus or
sentence stress. If the prominent word has more than one
syllable, only its stressed syllable is emphasized. In some
cases, the prominent word is one that is very important for
the meaning of the sentence or one that the speaker wants to
bring special attention to; however, even if there is no word
that needs particular attention, there is still a prominent
word that is pronounced more forcefully than the rest.How is the prominent word di"erent from the others? In
some ways, the prominent word in a thought group is like the
stressed syllable in a word. Some of the same qualities make
it “pop out” at the listener. These are the qualities that make
the prominent word di"erent from the rest of a thought
group:- The prominent word is pronounced more forcefully than
the other syllables, and it may be louder than the others.
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