must be right. Stressed syllables need to last longer, and
unstressed syllables need to be short and quick so they don’t
compete with the stressed syllables.
Listen to these sentences:
Teachers have to know a lot of words.
Teachers should know about grammar.
Teachers should know about pronunciation.
The time between the stressed syllables in each sentence
stays fairly constant—not precisely the same, but close—even
though there are many more unstressed syllables between
some pairs of stressed syllables than others.Content words and function words
To help us know which words and syllables in a sentence are
stressed or unstressed, we need to know the di"erence
between content words and function words. We’ve
talked earlier about function words—words that have
grammatical meaning, such as prepositions, articles,
pronouns, and conjunctions. These are words that show the
relationship between other words and don’t have much
meaning in themselves. These are types of function words:9.2 FUNCTION WORDS9.2 FUNCTION WORDS
Category Examples
Articles a, an, the
Auxiliary verbs does, did, has, had, am, is, can
Personal pronouns I, you, he, she, me, him, her
Possessive adjectives my, your, his, her, its, their
Demonstrative adjectives this, that, these, those
Prepositions in, on, under, with, to, in, for
Conjunctions and, or, but, so, because, before, while
Relative pronouns which, who, whom, whose, that
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