How would you mark primary stress on the following words: (i) 'ego', (ii) 'conquer' and (iii) 'argue' into syllables? [click here for answer 3]
In any word with two or more syllables, you will always pick out one syllable and pronounce it with more prominence than the other syllables. For example, with a word like 'napalm' you will emphasize the first syllable. With a word like 'annoy', you will emphasize the second syllable.
To make this 'prominence' marking, what you are doing is exerting more muscular effort. This pushes our extra air out, giving three properties to the prominent syllable:
(i) the prominent syllable is somewhat louder;
(ii) it is somewhat longer; and
(iii) it is somewhat higher in pitch.
This prominence is what we call stress. (Note that the phonetic realization of stress may vary across languages, and will not always have all three properties shown above.)
The choice of which syllable receives primary stress varies from language to language. Here are some samples:
(i) Some languages (e.g. Czech) always stress the first syllable of the word.
(ii) Some languages stress the one-before-the-last syllable (the 'penultimate' syllable).
(iii) Many stress-rules are also sensitive to the form of the syllable, treating syllables with codas differently from syllables with no codas (for example, in Latin you stress the penultimate syllable if it has a coda or long vowel, otherwise you stress the syllable before it).
Placement of primary stress in English follows a complex set of rules. The rules are different for nouns and verbs; the rules also partly depend on the historical origin of the word (e.g. some French borrowings are stressed differently); the rules are also sometimes sensitive to the form of the syllable. See the link below for some (though not complete) discussion of English stress.
The IPA standard for marking the main stress in the word (as we have noted in passing in previous units) is to put a small raised line at the start of the stressed syllable (note that the mark goes before the syllable onset, not the vowel). For example:
annoy [ə'nɔɪ]
napalm ['neɪpɑm]
to record ['tu rə'kɔrd]
a record [ə 'rəkɔrd]
Some linguists mark stress with a rising accent over the vowel; however, this is not the IPA standard.
How would you mark primary stress on the following words: (i) 'ego', (ii) 'conquer' and (iii) 'argue' into syllables? [click here for answer 3]
[Link : Some Notes on Stress-Placement in English]
In words with multiple syllables, it is sometimes possible to identify more than one level of stress in the word. One syllable will always be the most stressed (i.e. have primary stress), but you might find that another syllable has a kind of intermediate stress--not as strong as the primary stress, but still clearly more stressed than others. This is called 'secondary stress'.
For example, consider the word 'economic'. The primary stress is clearly on the third syllable ([nɑ]);but the first syllable ([ε] or [i], depending on your pronunciation) also has more stress than the remaining syllables. The IPA standard for marking secondary stress is to put a short vertical line below the start of the first syllable. For example, 'economic' would be transcribed like this:
[,ɛkə'nɑmək ] or [,ikə'namək]
The placement of secondary stress in many languages follows a pattern of binary 'feet' (weak-strong or strong-weak pairs of syllables) stretching across the whole word (...stressed then unstressed then stressed then unstressed..'), though often the existence of this pattern only becomes apparent on long words.
How would you transcribe 'capitalist', marking both primary and secondary stresses? [click here for answer 4]
[Link
: A few more notes on the topic]