The boy was there when the sun rose
So, when we read this sentence, we emphasize the words in boldface.
Primary and Secondary Stress
When polysyllabic occurs, it may be difficult to know where to place the stress. An important reason for this is that English long words may have 2 stresses: primary and secondary. For example, the word "international" has 2 stresses:
- Primary stress on "na"
- Secondary stress on "in"
Below you will find more examples of stress on English words:
abo'lition
po'lice
se'mester
ma'lignancy
'theater
fan'tastic
These aforementioned words have only one stress. When that happens, that stress is always the "primary stress". The words below have 2 stresses: primary (') and secondary (,)
i,nocu'lation
,engi'neer
,fore'knowledge
par,tici'pation
'passion,flower
par,ticu'larity
Suffixes may attract stress
Sometimes, the stress can be predicted. For example, words ending with suffixes such as -tion, -ic, -ical, -ically, -tial, -atory, -city, -ese, -ee have primary stress on the syllable immediately before the suffix:
abo'lition
po'litically
la'boratory (vs. 'lavatory)
coa'lition
po'lemically
in'formative
fan'tastic
i'nitial
su'perlative
po'lemic
po'tential
,elas'ticity
po'litical
,influ'ential
,elec'tricity
po'lemical
pre'paretory
Chi'nese
,emplo'yee
Notice that when the primary is at the end, preceded by 2 syllables (as in "electricity" and "elasticity") the secondary stress is placed 2 syllables before.
So, suffixes can help us choose primary stress, because this primary stress goes precisely before the suffix. However, suffixes are not always there to help. See:
com'ponent
'category
,trans'parent
'secondary
'enterprise
pa'rameter
Stress in compound words
A compound word is a word made up of 2 words that come together to create a new meaning.
An important thing to remember is that compound words usually have the stress on the first part of the compound. But there may exist exceptions to this rule.
'nut,cracker
'news,paper
'flowerpot
'ladybug
'eyebrow
'bedtime
'handbag
'lipstick
'birthday
'scarecrow
'butterfly
'New York
Adjective + Noun
When we have an adjective and a noun, we stress the noun with the primary stress, the adjective with the secondary stress:
,nice'man
,clean'stress
,black'board
,green'house
This is, in fact, how we distinguish between:
'black,board (in a classroom) from a ,black'board (in a box)
'green,house (to grow flowers in cold wheather) from ,green'house (the house is painted in green)
Stress shift
English is so strict about strong and weak forms, that sometimes, the original stress of a words shifts. Remember the sentence:
The boy was there when the sun rose
We have 5 strong words, more or less distributed across the sentence.
WEAK-STRONG-WEAK-STRONG-STRONG-WEAK-STRONG-STRONG.
This distribution is almost perfect: the sentence sounds slightly like an accordion, with ups and downs. It is usually impossible to have the perfect rhythmical sentence in English, with at least one weak syllable in between strong syllables. However, the language tries hard to respect its rhythm. In fact, when too many strong words go together, stress can be shifted to avoid not having weak syllables in between strong syllables. For example, the word Chinese has 2 different stress positions depending on the context (and the contact with a strong, stressed syllable):
The waiters were all Chinese
We went to the Chinese restaurant
While "Chinese" is stressed on the second syllable in the first sentence (this is the usual position), it is stressed on the first syllable in the second sentence. The reason is that "restaurant" is also stressed on the first syllable, and keeping the last syllable of "Chinese" stressed would break English rhythm.
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