Word and Sentence Stress

Consider the sounds of these words: qualify, banana, understand.

All of them have three identifiable syllables, and one of the syllables in each word sounds louder than the others: so, we get: 

QUAlify, baNAna and underSTAND. (The syllables indicated in capitals are the stressed syllables.)

Each stressed syllable, in a word in isolation, also has a change in the pitch, or the level of the speaker’s voice, and the vowel sound in that syllable is lengthened. Stress can fall on the first, middle or last syllables of words, as is shown here:

The words in the first group (Ooo) are all stressed on the first syllable, the words in the second group are stressed on the second syllable, and those in the third group are stressed on the third syllable.
If you have any difficulty initially in recognising where the stress falls, listen to the examples many times. This will help you to identify the stressed syllables in the example words but also will help you to identify the stressed syllable in all of the English words you encounter. The pattern for the words that you are learning can be used for your vocabulary notes.

Another idea is to say the word in question as though you have been completely taken by surprise, or are taken aback by the mere mention of the idea.

Listen to these words ( SYLLabus? baNAna? kangaROO?) as taken by surprise then listen to the following sentences and try to follow the stress pattern of the words.

Some find it relatively easy to spot stresses, and others will take time to be able to do so consistently. Whichever group you fall into, you need to be aware of stress, and to deal with it specifically in your English learning and pronunciation.

In order for one syllable to be perceived as stressed, the syllables around it need to be unstressed. For stressed syllables, three features were identified:
loudness, pitch change and a longer syllable.
Unstress may be described as the absence of these.
Have another look at the groups of words in the previous table. In the word syllabus, we said that the first syllable was stressed. This logically implies that the final two are unstressed. Also, in the word banana, the first and third syllables are unstressed, and the middle one is stressed. The same applies to the other words in the table. The table below shows the incidences of / ə / with the corresponding written vowels underlined.

We can see that the phoneme known as ‘schwa’ (the phonemic transcription is / ə / ). This sound can be heard in the first syllable of about / əˌbaʊt /, in the second syllable of paper / peɪ pə /, and also in the third syllable of intricate / ˈɪn trɪ kət /.

The most commonly occurring sound in English is the schwa / ə /. It never appears within a stressed syllable. Schwa is not unique to the English language, but it is its most frequent sound. The correct perception of the sound is also crucial because the lack of awareness may lead to difficulties in understanding native speaker speech.
Look at the table below and notice how / ə / can be represented through spelling in a variety of ways. Here are some spellings, with the incidences of / ə / underlined. Remember, though, that these may not always be the same for all the varieties of spoken English.

Sometimes whole syllables or word endings may be ‘reduced’ to / ə /, as in butter, thorough, facilitatator and polar. This is common among British English

accents, though not so common in US English.

At other times / ə / is a central sound in a syllable, and several written vowels may_represent the sound; this is very common in words ending in -ous (like conscious and fictitious). It also occurs frequently in –al endings (like spatial, capital and topical), in –ion words (like session, pronunciation and attention) and –ate endings (like accurate, private and delicate).