"In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence."
The emphasis placed on a syllable or word in speech, often determined by the loudness and duration of the sound.
Articulation: The process of shaping and moving the articulators (i.e. tongue, lips, jaw, and soft palate) to produce speech sounds.
Vowel and Consonant Sounds: Phonetics studies the types of sounds that can be produced in human speech. The two main categories are vowels and consonants.
Syllables: The basic unit of spoken language. A syllable is a unit of sound composed of one or more phonemes, usually containing a vowel sound.
Word Stress: The emphasis placed on one syllable of a word when spoken. It is often used to distinguish between words that have different meanings but are spelled the same.
Sentence Stress: The emphasis placed on certain words or syllables in a sentence, often used to convey meaning or emphasis.
Intonation: The rise and fall of the voice in speech, used to convey emotion or emphasis. It can also be used to indicate the end of a sentence or question.
Dialects: Variations in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary that are specific to a particular geographic location or social group.
Phonemes: The smallest units of sound that can be used to distinguish between words in a particular language.
Suprasegmental Features: The features of speech that go beyond individual sounds and include aspects such as stress, intonation, and rhythm.
Prosody: The overall patterns of stress, intonation, and rhythm in a language or dialect. It helps to convey the emotional tone or emphasis of speech.
Primary Stress: This is the most important and prominent stress or emphasis in a word or phrase. It is pronounced with a higher pitch, longer duration, and greater intensity than unstressed syllables.
Secondary Stress: In words with more than two syllables, a secondary stress may be present on one or more syllables. It is not as strong as the primary stress but still carries some emphasis.
Tonic Stress: This is a stress that is determined by the lexical meaning of a word. Depending on the context or position in a sentence, different syllables may carry the tonic stress.
Contrastive Stress: This type of stress is used to contrast two or more elements in a sentence, and it serves to emphasize the difference between them.
Compound Stress: In words formed by compounding, stress may fall on the first or second element, depending on the stress pattern of the base words.
Sentence Stress: This type of stress occurs at the level of the sentence, where certain words or phrases are emphasized to convey meaning or to add emphasis to a point.
Word Stress: This is the stress pattern of a word, with some syllables being more prominent than others.
Phrase Stress: This type of stress occurs within a phrase or a clause, where certain words are emphasized to convey meaning or to add emphasis to a point.
Emphatic Stress: This is a type of stress used to add emphasis to a word or phrase, typically to convey strong emotion or conviction.
Rhythmical Stress: This is a type of stress that is determined by the rhythmic pattern or meter of a poem, song, or other artistic work.
"That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in tone."
"The terms stress and accent are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished."
"For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called pitch accent, and when produced through length alone, it is called quantitative accent."
"When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called stress accent or dynamic accent; English uses what is called variable stress accent."
"Since stress can be realized through a wide range of phonetic properties, such as loudness, vowel length, and pitch (which are also used for other linguistic functions), it is difficult to define stress solely phonetically."
"The stress placed on syllables within words is called word stress."
"Some languages have fixed stress, meaning that the stress on virtually any multisyllable word falls on a particular syllable, such as the penultimate (e.g. Polish) or the first (e.g. Finnish)."
"Other languages, like English and Russian, have lexical stress, where the position of stress in a word is not predictable in that way but lexically encoded."
"Sometimes more than one level of stress, such as primary stress and secondary stress, may be identified."
"Stress is not necessarily a feature of all languages: some, such as French and Mandarin Chinese, are sometimes analyzed as lacking lexical stress entirely."
"The stress placed on words within sentences is called sentence stress or prosodic stress."
"It includes phrasal stress (the default emphasis of certain words within phrases or clauses), and contrastive stress (used to highlight an item, a word or part of a word, that is given particular focus)."
"When emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called pitch accent."
"When emphasis is produced through length alone, it is called quantitative accent."
"When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called stress accent or dynamic accent."
"English uses what is called variable stress accent."
"It is difficult to define stress solely phonetically."
"Some languages have fixed stress, meaning that the stress on virtually any multisyllable word falls on a particular syllable, such as the penultimate (e.g. Polish)."
"Some, such as French and Mandarin Chinese, are sometimes analyzed as lacking lexical stress entirely."