The stress tag has no wiki summary.
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0answers
35 views
Reading with intonation [closed]
I'd like to know why the bolded words in the following two sentences are stressed:
I'm taking American Accent Training. (How come the stress is on the word "Accent" and not on the word "Training"?)
...
0
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1answer
70 views
Which syllable is stressed in word “comparatively” in British usage?
British syllable emphasis on "comparatively"?
1
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1answer
68 views
Stress in “control” word
I heard the "control" word (and other similar words) stress depends on whether it is a noun or a verb. But I can't find any proof to that. Is it really so?
6
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2answers
324 views
Why don't “-use” verb-noun pairs obey initial stress derivation?
It's well known (and several past questions on this SE have covered) that to convert a two-syllable Latin-derived English verb into a noun, you shift the stress to the first syllable. This is ...
2
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3answers
319 views
Four-word phrase stress
I'm interested to learn why the following four-word phrases have stress on different words.
"Little Red Riding Hood" (stress is on little and riding)
"Infamous National Rifle Association" ...
5
votes
3answers
324 views
How to stress any word properly?
Personally I think stress is one of the hardest things. There are thousands of words around, so most likely I cannot remember all stress-marks of every word then pronounce them exactly. Is it so ...
3
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1answer
113 views
Pronunciations of 'retard' and 'retardation'
Why are the verb form (/rɪtɑːd/, ri-tard) and the offensive noun form (/ˈriːtɑːd/, ree-tard) of the word retard pronounced differently?
While I have heard both variants in use as part of the ...
5
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1answer
162 views
Why is “accidentally” pronounced “accident-ly” instead of “accident-tal-y”?
Why is accidentally pronounced accident-ly and not accident-tal-ly?
Incidentally, some other adverbs have this same phenomenon, where some dictionaries show the second-to-last syllable as being ...
21
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4answers
545 views
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior?
I first noticed in this answer that there is something sneaky going on with the word photon: its ‹t› is the stressed allophone of /t/, a fully aspirated [tʰ]. It does not reduce to [t] or [ɾ] the way ...
19
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4answers
980 views
Why don’t we write poetry like Beowulf any longer?
Beowulf, the Old English epic poem, uses a characteristically Germanic style of poetry in which the number of strong beats per line is what counts. Instead of counting syllables, strong beats alone ...
14
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2answers
654 views
What did we gain in return for the loss of phonemic vowel length from Old English?
In Old English, vowel length was phonemic, but stress and certain kinds of consonant voicing were not. In Modern English, that situation is reversed: vowel length is no longer phonemic, but stress ...
1
vote
1answer
203 views
Three-word phrase stress (“little straw house” vs. “small wooden house”)
I'm interested to learn why the following three-word phrases have stress on different words.
"little straw house" (stress is on little and house)
"small wooden house" (stress is on wooden)
Here ...
2
votes
3answers
206 views
Why are all acronyms accented on the last syllable?
When saying acronyms out loud, almost always the last syllable is accented (no matter how long the acronym is): US*A*, U*N*, RSV*P*, etc.
Accenting any syllable but the last makes you sound silly ...
0
votes
1answer
133 views
Practice tool or package for stress and pronunciation [closed]
I think I'm not bad at written English. However, recently, as I started speaking English on a daily basis, I am noticing that my pronunciation, especially on where to put the stress, does not align ...
4
votes
2answers
209 views
Prosodic stress
What difference do different stress positions make to the meaning of the following sentence:
What would you like?
What would you like?
What would you like?
What would you like?
6
votes
4answers
540 views
Which syllable is stressed in the word “nineteen”?
The dictionaries list both possibilities to stress nineteen (or any other -teen, for that matter): ,nine-teen and nine-'teen.
Are the two pronunciations completely interchangeable, a matter of ...
5
votes
1answer
405 views
Why is the verb form of “record” pronounced [ri-kawrd] but the noun form is pronounced [rek-erd]?
Is there a different origin of pronunciation style for record as a verb and as a noun?
Fun fact: in OS X, if you type say "this record" and say "record this" — the text to speech system picks up the ...
4
votes
1answer
174 views
What is the proper emphasis for the word “indent”?
Does indent carry an accent on the first or the second vowel?
I've seen both in IPA. My non-native ear would tend to favor the first.
5
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1answer
338 views
How did “defect” and “defect” come to have different pronunciations?
There are many interesting events in the history of the English language. Which one of them gave us “defect” (noun, /diːˈfɛkt/, imperfection) and “defect” (verb, /dɪˈfɛkt/ , change allegiances)?
