Abstract
Not all languages have stress and not all languages that do have stress are alike. English is a lexical stress language, which means that in any English word with more than one syllable, the syllables will differ in their relative salience. Some syllables may serve as the locus for prominence-lending accents. Others can never be accented. The stress pattern of an English polysyllabic word is as intrinsic to its phonological identity as the string of segments that make it up. This type of asymmetry across syllables distinguishes stress languages from languages that have no stress in their word phonology. Within stress languages, being a lexical stress language means that stress can vary across syllable positions within words, and in principle can vary contrastively; this distinguishes lexical stress languages from fixed-stress languages where stress is assigned to the same syllable position in any word.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Handbook of English Pronunciation |
| Editors | Marnie Reed, John (John M.) Levis |
| Place of Publication | U.K. |
| Publisher | Wiley & Sons |
| Pages | 106-124 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781118314470 |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- English language
- accents and accentuation
- pronunciation