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TYPES OF SENTENCE-STRESS

We differentiate three types of sentence-stress:

1. normal (or syntactical) sentence-stress,

2. logical sentence-stress,

3. emphatic sentence-stress.

1. Normal stress affects content words which convey the necessary information to the listener, eg: We have plenty of _vtime.

Normal sentence-stress is used to arrange words into sen­tences or intonation groups phonetically. Together with the lexi­cal and grammatical means it expresses the general idea of the sentence and indicates its communicative centre. The nuclear syllable is generally associated with the last content word of the intonation group.

Sentence-stress in English is related to rhythm. It substanti­ates the rhythmical structure of the sentence. To make the inter­vals between the stressed segments regular content words often lose their normal stresses (but never have weak forms) as a ten­dency to avoid two consecutively stressed syllables is found in English. For the same reason form-words may receive stresses. This realization of normal stress is called rhythmic stress.

2. The position of the last sentence-stress determines the place of the nucleus of the communicative centre. By shifting the position of the last stress we can change the place of the nucleus of the communicative centre.

Logically different messages are expressed in the given sentences. Each shifting of the stress modifies the meaning of the sentence. The type of sentence-stress which gives special prominence to a new element in a sentence or an intonation group is called logical stress. The word which is singled out by the logical stress is the most important in the sentence. It is the communicative centre (or the logical centre) of the sentence which bears the terminal tone.

The communicative centre of the sentence marked by logical stress introduces something new to the listener (a new object, person, idea), while the other words of the sentence convey what is already known to him, something which has already been mentioned in the discourse or is clear from the situation. The words following the logical stress remain unstressed, eg: They didn’t want trouble, that crowd. I had their promise, their v written promise.

3. Most human utterances express not only the speaker's thoughts, but also his feelings and attitudes to reality and to the contents of the sentence. Both normal and logical stresses can be unemphatic or emphatic. Emphatic stress increases the effort of expression. It may strengthen the stressed word making it still more prominent. Emphatic stress manifests itself mainly on the High Fall or the Rise-Fall of the nuclear syllable. Emphatic stress is a powerful expressive means. It is the highest degree of logical and emotional prominence of words in a phrase.

In the analysis of intonation means we sometimes mention sentence-stress being only decentralized or dispersed, when all the content words are normally stressed, and centralized or concentrated when the utterance is marked with one reinforced sentence-stress.