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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 ...
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 ...
That is, each syllable has stress or it does not. Many languages have rhythmic stress; location of the stress may not be predictable, but when the location of one stressed syllable (which may be the primary stress) is known, certain syllables before or after can be predicted to also be stressed; these may have secondary stress.
Unstressed: unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words; monosyllabic function words. For comparative purposes, the following table is a somewhat simplified rendition of these scansion systems. Attridge (1982) and Groves scan ictus/nonictus on a separate line.
In other words, the symbol ɛ does not stand specifically for the open-mid front unrounded vowel in our system but any vowel that can be identified as the vowel in let's, depending on the accent. This is also why we use the simple symbol r for the second sound in grapes. Other words may have different vowels depending on the speaker.
A stressed syllable tends to have a longer duration and louder volume. This contrasts with unstressed syllables to indicate superior meaning. [13] Organized patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables create rhythms and meter in poetry and lyric writing. They are often marked with different symbols when being analyzed.
Old English had a moderately large vowel system. In stressed syllables both monophthongs and diphthongs had short and long versions, which were clearly distinguished in pronunciation. In unstressed syllables, the number of vowel contrasts was generally reduced. Historically, unstressed vowels could be elided in some circumstances.
A version of the foot in poetry in which the first two syllables of a line are unstressed, followed by a stressed syllable; e.g. intercept (the syllables in and ter are unstressed and followed by cept, which is stressed). [22] anaphora anastrophe anecdote A short account of a particular incident or event, especially of an interesting or amusing ...