loudness, in English only one syllable in a word is stressed. The other syllables are pronounced less louder than the stressed syllable, some may not be heard at all. This is why we do not follow the English spoken by native speakers. The stressed syllable in a word is constant.
For example, heat , par ty, en ergy, me m ory, emplo yee , philo so phical, adminis tra tion. In spoken language, grammatical or form words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, articles etc., are generally not stressed. Lexical or content words, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, linkers must have at least one stressed syllable. Note: A SYLLABLE is a unit formed by a vowel with one or more consonants.
Syllables combine to form words. 12th Communicative English Book.indb Page Celebrations of Expressions However, there is no rule to decide which syllable should be stressed in a polysyllabic word (word with more than one syllable). They have to be learnt consciously using a dictionary. Lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are stressed.
Grammatical words (auxiliaries, prepositions, pronouns, articles) do not receive any stress. In words with weak suffixes, the root of the word is stressed. Compound Nouns take the stress on the first syllable. Compound adjectives take the stress on the second syllable.
Compound Verbs take the stress on the second syllable. Inflectional words do not change their stress pattern even after the suffix is added. Derivational words change from parts of speech to another and so their utterance varies and so does the stress. Words ending with -ic, -sion, -tion are stressed on the penultimate syllable.
(second from the end). Words ending with -cy, -ty, -phy, -gy -al are stressed on the ante-penultimate syllable. (third from the end) Syllable stress is usually indicated by a (')mark over the syllable, as is seen in dictionaries. In the above examples, the spellings that represent the syllables are highlighted.
In sentences, we stress only some words and pronounce them louder than the others. By emphasising on a particular word, we can add/ modify the meaning of the