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In particular, vowels in unstressed syllables may have a more central (or "neutral") articulation, and those in stressed syllables have a more peripheral articulation. Stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes, the difference is minimal between the acoustic signals of stressed and those of unstressed ...
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress).Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel or with certain other vowels that are described as ...
A stressed syllable is one that is emphasized, or has prominence. In contrast to an unstressed syllable, a stressed syllable has a higher pitch. In musical terms, this pitch is commonly a perfect fourth, perfect fifth, or even minor third, above the voice’s tonic. A stressed syllable tends to have a longer duration and louder volume.
The theory of stress-timing predicts that each of the three unstressed syllables in between bett-and -noth-will be shorter than the syllable of between make and car, because three syllables must fit into the same amount of time as that available for of. However, it should not be assumed that all varieties of English are stress-timed in this way.
An unstressed syllable between 2 even slightly weaker syllables may be perceived as a beat; and the reverse is true of a stressed syllable between 2 even slightly stronger syllables. These phenomena are called "promotion" and "demotion".
Long vowels shorten in stressed closed syllables. Short vowels lengthen in stressed open syllables. On account of the above, the vowel inventory changes from /iː i eː e a aː o oː u uː/ to /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/, with pre-existing differences in vowel quality achieving phonemic status and with no distinction between original /a/ and /aː ...
In practice, however, IPA transcription is typically divided into words by spaces, and often these spaces are also understood to be syllable breaks. In addition, the stress mark ˈ is placed immediately before a stressed syllable, and when the stressed syllable is in the middle of a word, in practice, the stress mark also marks a syllable break ...
The unstressed, or thesis, syllables are usually short, and frequently on the words that are lower in the hierarchy. Secondary stresses occur in only a few types of lines, and are usually only on the second part of a compound word. Stress indicators are usually assigned thus: primary stress (/), secondary stress (\), and unstressed (x).