What is the difference in word stress and sentence stress?

Answer 1

If you are asking whether there is a general rule about which words are stressed and which are unstressed in English, then there is such a "rule." Words that usually have weak stress are called "form words"; words that contribute more to the form of an utterance than to its material sense. The form words in English are articles, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and modal auxiliaries. Some examples are a, the, but , for, are, is, and, was, are, do, can If, on the other hand, you are asking for a general rule about how to pronounce stressed and unstressed words, there is a general rule for that, too. Words that are relatively unstressed -- that is, those that have weaker stress than nearby words -- are generally pronounced with vowels that are "neutral" rather than clear; vowels that are less readily identifiable as the specific vowels that may differentiate one word from another. Thus, for example, the word "for," when it is unstressed sounds like "fer"; "the" like thuh; "from" like "frum"; "to" like "tuh"; "and" like "n"; "was" like "wuz"; "are" like "r." Saying unstressed words correctly in a flow of speech could be described as a kind of accurate slurring and running words together. For example, the sentence "She was as tall as her brother and a lot smarter," if spoken unnaturally, with fully stressed vowels, would sound something like 'shee 'wahz 'az 'tall 'az 'her 'broth-'er 'and 'a 'lot 'smart'er But spoken conversationally, the sentence would sound more like 'shewuzuz 'talluzer 'brotheruna 'lot 'smarter.

Answer 2

The basic rules of sentence stress are: # content wordsare stressed # structure words are unstressed# the time between stressed words is always the sameThe following tables can help you decide which words are content words and which words are structure words: Words carrying the meaning Example main verbs SELL, GIVE, EMPLOY nouns CAR, MUSIC, MARY adjectives RED, BIG, INTERESTING adverbs QUICKLY, LOUDLY, NEVER negative auxiliaries DON'T, AREN'T, CAN'T Words for correct grammar Examplepronouns he, we, they prepositions on, at, into articles a, an, the conjunctions and, but, because auxiliary verbs do, be, have, can, must The above rules are for for what is called "neutral" or normal stress. But sometimes we can stress a word that would normally be only a structure word, for example to correct information. Look at the following dialogue: "They've been to Mongolia, haven't they?"

"No, THEY haven't, but WE have. Note also that when "be" is used as a main verb, it is usually unstressed (even though in this case it is a content word).

Answer 3

It usually takes many pages to treat any rule in English. This is just a few hints. In the case of words like content and permit and perfume, most of which come from French, the stress is on the first syllable when it is a noun, and on the last when it is a verb. thus a PERmit perMITs; we are are conTENT with the CONtent; we perFUME the air with PERfume. English stress tends to fall on the first syllable of a word, but never more than four syllables from the end. We say FORmidable, EXquisite etc. Added syllables may move the stress. RIDicule becomes riDIculous. But agent words ending with -er or -ist retain the stress of the root word, as in piANist, vioLINist, COMmunist. Compound prepositions are stressed on the ultima: unTIL, beFORE, wiTHOUT, aBOVE, but other disyllables are "normal' like AFter and Over and UNder.

Answer 4

The word stress is not different than a sentence that has the word stress in it. Either way the word "stress" means the same thing, with the same definition.