Masaryk UniversityFaculty of Arts

Department of Englishand American Studies

English Language and Literature

Marek Bednář

Stress Patterns in English and Czech: The Systems, the Conflicts and their Impact on Second

Language EducationBachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D.

2012

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………Author’s signature

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my supervisor PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D. for her encouragement and valuable advice and help.

Table of ContentsIntroduction.................................................................................................................................5

1. What are Stress Patterns?....................................................................................................7

2. Notation..................................................................................................................................9

3. English Stress System.........................................................................................................10

3.1 Influence of Suffixes......................................................................................................15

3.2 Influence of Prefixes......................................................................................................17

3.3 Stress in Compounds.....................................................................................................19

3.4 Rhythm and Stress-Timing..........................................................................................23

3.5 Presence v. Absence of Stress and Influence on Vowel Quality................................25

4. Czech Stress System and its Conflicts with English........................................................30

5. Grammar School Survey Analysis....................................................................................33

6. Conclusion...........................................................................................................................41

Works Cited.............................................................................................................................43

Appendix 1...............................................................................................................................44

Resumé......................................................................................................................................45

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1. Introduction

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the topic of similarities and conflicts

between the English and Czech stress system and examining the impact of these on the second

language education. The issue of stress patterns and its importance will be first described on a

theoretical level, before proceeding to the practical section of the thesis – testing via

recordings how or whether secondary school students recognize stress in a spoken text and are

able to identify stressing mistakes.

It is the author’s goal to prove that the importance of adhering to correct stress patterns

should not be underestimated and should even be one of the main focuses of second language

teaching and learning. In second language education, especially on primary and secondary

schools, the emphasis is oftentimes placed on the correct pronunciation of words and

syllables, and the issue of correct stress placement within the word or within the sentence is

largely ignored. The primary purpose of second language education is, naturally, enabling the

student to successfully communicate in a foreign language. To this end, students of foreign

languages are taught grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as these are seen as the main

contributors to the students’ ability to communicate intelligibly. The author, however, argues

that correct stress placement plays a vital role in speaker’s intelligibility, and that mastering

English stress patterns and eliminating incorrect stress placements taken from the mother

tongue should be among the primary goals of second language learning.

In his research the author made use of books dealing with theoretical aspects of stress

patterns in both of the chosen languages and has also conducted a survey with students of

English an unnamed secondary school. The results of the survey will subsequently be

analyzed in the practical section of the thesis to see how well students recognize English

stress and whether the current teaching system provides sufficient background in this area of

English language.

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As the theoretical background for this work, Erik Fudge’s English word-stress (1984)

and Roger Kingdon’s The groundwork of English stress (1958) will be used as the principal

sources as the The groundwork of English stress is suitable for the lay person and thus quite

useful for the majority of the cases covered in my work. Though it does provide valuable

explanations of phonetic issues, as well as definitions of various phonetic terms, its main

worth lies in its coverage of theoretical cases one might encounter and complete listing of all

possible stress patterns.

English word-stress (1984), which builds on Kingdon’s work to a certain extent,

functions perfectly as a background for studies on tone, intonation, stress and pitch, provides

explanations of the rules of stress placement and sufficient examples, and is therefore suitable

for a student wanting to venture into the area of phonetics for the first time. Due to its all-

encompassing, detailed and methodical approach, the majority of the theoretical section of

this thesis will be focused on introducing Fudge’s system to the reader. However, this system

will not be introduced in its entirety; emphasis will be put on transparent categorization and

rule sets, readability, and logical arrangement. Minor simplifications or omissions of the more

peripheral cases will be introduced only where necessary for better understandability to the

reader.

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2. What are Stress Patterns?

Before we can delve into the field of stress patterns in English and Czech, it is first

important to define what stress patterns and stress itself actually are. By Kingdon’s (1958)

definition, stress is “the relative degree of force used by a speaker on the various syllables he

is uttering. It gives a certain basic prominence to the syllables, and hence to the words, on

which it is used, and incidentally assists in avoiding monotony.” (p. 1) We differentiate two

types of stress: word stress and sentence stress. Word stress, as the name suggests, is the

placement of stress on certain syllables within a given word. Some words have no word stress

(mostly in the case of monosyllabic words) while others have multiple stresses, with varying

degrees of strength. Sentence stress on the other hand is the placement of stress on certain

words within a sentence. It does not necessarily have to coincide with word stress; indeed

some monosyllabic words may bear sentence stress if they are sufficiently important within

the sentence while some words with multiple syllables may be unstressed if they are quite

unimportant within the context of the sentence. Sentence stress mostly denotes emphasis and

importance: new or more important information within a sentence will generally bear stronger

stress than information that has already been mentioned in a previous sentence.

Stress itself comes naturally with speech. Native speakers acquire stress placement

habits during childhood, as it is one of the basic features of any given language. Small

children already have such mastery of correct stress placement that they can shift the sentence

stress from one word to another in order to emphasize what they are trying to say. In sentence

“I want that cake,” an extremely desperate or demanding child will most likely strongly

emphasize the word “want” within the sentence to signify how powerful the urge to acquire

the abovementioned pastry really is. Since stress is such a natural feature of speech, acquired

in the first years of one’s life, it comes as very unnatural and confusing to a native speaker to

hear someone misplace stress when speaking the language. Stress is just as basic a feature of

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speech as correct pronunciation, pauses, intonation etc. and can therefore greatly hinder one’s

ability to be understood. Kingdon (1958) illustrates this perfectly on the case of a German-

speaking student who, due to incorrect stressing, repeatedly received a train ticket to

Kensington even though he wanted to buy one to Camden Town (p. xi). In this case, the

student incorrectly pronounced the place name as single stressed, thus reducing the

prominence of the word Town sufficiently for the hearer to perceive it as –ton.

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3. NotationNaturally, linguists all over the world wishing to study language from the phonetic

perspective required to develop their own system of notation to transcribe words, denote

rising and falling tones and mark varying degrees of stress within words and sentences. While

Kingdon and Fudge differ in terminology, they both use three basic stress marks to indicate

the placement of stress within a word, all of which are placed before the syllable they indicate

as bearing the given stress:

` which Kingdon (1958) calls the Kinetic Tone Mark (p. 4) indicates the placement of

the primary/main, i.e. the strongest stress in a word, as can be seen for example in a`bout,

`current or con`tribute.

ˈ which Kingdon (1958) calls the High Level Tone Mark (p. 4) represents the

secondary stresses within a word. There may be multiple instances of these within a word, but

they always must come before the primary stress as can be seen in enˈcyclo`paedia or

ˈun`ethical.

Lastly there is the ˌ symbol Low Level Tone Mark in Kingdon (1958, p. 5) which

indicates other syllables with a certain degree of prominence. These do not stand out in the

word, but usually can be recognized by the fact that they do not undergo vowel reduction.

This can often be used to differentiate between words which, if the reduction occurred, would

be impossible to distinguish in speech (e.g. `eˌxorˌcise compared to `exerˌcise).

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4. English Stress System

The issue of stress patterns, that is, the arrangement of stressed and unstressed

syllables in the given word and the types of stresses used, in English is unfortunately

extremely complicated. Kingdon (1958) himself admits that the field of English word stress is

practically unexplored due to the fact that many believe it follows no rules whatsoever (p. xi).

This is caused mainly by the fact that the English vocabulary has been taken and combined

from Germanic and Romanic sources (Kingdon, 1958, p. 12). Regretfully for the English

language, Germanic languages have the tendency to place stress on the earlier syllables of a

word, whereas Romanic languages gravitate towards later word stress. Thus English stress is

being etymologically pulled in two different directions, tending towards having some sort of

full stress on one of the initial syllables while also being strongly influenced by presence of

various suffixes. While in English the alignment of word stress within a given word is usually

constant, the rules that the placement of word stress follows are highly complex as a result of

the language’s mixed origin and are consequently difficult to understand for an English

learner (contrasting for example with Czech, Hungarian, Polish or Welsh, where the stress is

placed on a fixed syllable). Due to this complex and confusing system, English second

language teaching on primary and secondary schools only rarely focuses on the correct

placement of stresses, since it would generally mean that the students would have to

memorize the stress placement for each individual word without being told why it is placed

the way it is. Emphasis is thus put on the correct pronunciation of words, with the hope that

stress placement will be acquired with frequent use of the word in listening exercises and

conversations.

Because of the complexity of word stress placement patterns, there have been various

approaches to the explanation of the issue by various scholars. While Kingdon (1958)

approaches the issue more from a case-to-case point of view, and describes in-depth the

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influence compounds, various prefixes and suffixes etc. on the placement of stress, Chomsky

and Halle (1968) reject his “suffix-based” explanation as unnecessary and take a more general

approach, deriving the placement of word stresses by the segmental makeup of a word

(division into clusters beginning with a vowel and ending before the next vowel,

differentiation of tense and lax vowels) as well as its internal structure, i.e. whether a word

can be divided into smaller parts and what relations hold between these. They develop a

cyclical principle, where certain rules apply in certain order first to the word root and then to

the next larger constituent until the cycle arrives at the end of the word. Thus in the word

theatricality, the primary stress is first applied to the first syllable of `theatre, then to

ˈthe`atrical, placing the primary stress on the antepenultimate syllable and reducing the other

stresses by one degree and finally to the antepenultimate syllable of ˌtheˈatri`cality, again

reducing the other stresses by one degree. Fudge’s approach (1984), the approach which will

be explained in greater detail in this chapter and its subchapters, takes a bit of both systems.

While it modifies Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) concept of tense and lax vowels, instead

applying the concept of strong and weak syllables, it rejects their cyclic principle and accepts

Kingdon’s (1958) suffix-based approach and his explanation of stress placement in compound

words. It is important to emphasize, however, that few of the rules introduced in this thesis

and in Fudge’s, or indeed any stress system are absolute: to most of them, there exists a

number of exception which will not be covered in this thesis due to the fact that, as exceptions

tend to, they cannot be systemized and must be learned one by one.

In the system described by Fudge (1984), the basic thing necessary to determine the

placement of stress within a word in Fudge’s system is to first find the stressable portion (SP)

of the word. The SP is what is left of the word once certain stress-neutral suffixes and prefixes

(i.e. suffixes and prefixes which do not influence stress placement) have been removed from

it. These suffixes include all inflectional suffixes i.e. plural form suffixes -s or -es and

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possessive form’s -‘s in nouns, comparative -er and superlative -est in adjectives, 3rd person

singular -s, -es, past tense/participle -ed, past participle -en and present participle/gerund -ing

forms in verbs. In addition to these, forty-eight derivational suffixes are also excluded from

the SP. Twenty of these, however, are so called mixed suffixes (marked (m) in the list below)

meaning they can fall into different suffix categories in regards to stress placement depending

on the types of words they appear in. It is also important to note that certain suffixes, while

similar in form, may have differing meanings and therefore fall into different categories.

These shall be further specified in parenthesis. The complete list of stress-neutral suffixes is

as follows:

-able (m), -acy (m), -age (m), -al (stress-neutral in noun-forming use, e.g. peruse - perusal), -

ance (m), -ant (m) (noun-forming use; is stress-neutral only when coupled with a free stem i.e.

a stem that can stand by itself e.g. account - accountant), -ary (m), -ce, -cy, -dom, -en, -er (m)

(agent-noun-forming use; stress-neutral when coupled with a free stem e.g. fly - flyer), -er

(abstract-noun-forming use e.g. disclaim - disclaimer), -ery (m), -ess, -ful, -hood, -ier (m), -

iour, -ise (verb-forming use, e.g. energy - energise)/-ize (m), -ish, -ism (m), -ist (m), -ite (m)

(noun-forming use in words meaning native of x or supporter of x; stress-neutral only when

coupled with free stems e.g. Jacob - Jacobite), -less, -let, -ly, -ment (m), -ness (abstract-noun-

forming use; stress-neutral only when coupled with free stem, e.g. ugly - ugliness), -or (m)

(agent-noun-forming use; stress-neutral only when coupled with free stem e.g. confess -

confessor), -ory (m), -ous (m), -ry, -s, -some, -t (m), -th, -ty, -ure (m), -ward, -ways, -wise, -y

(adjective-forming use, e.g. rain - rainy), -y (m) (noun-forming use; stress-neutral only when

coupled with a non-compound free stem e.g. baker - bakery).

Also a number of derivational prefixes is excluded from the stressable portion, most

notably negative prefixes a-, an-, il-, im-, in-, ir- and un-, as well as the locative prefix a- (e.g.

abroad, astray), reversive prefix dis- and causative prefixes em- and en-. Completing the list

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are prefixes be- (e.g. belittle), co-, de-, ex-, mal-, mis- and re-. Thus if we were to strip the

word unfavourably, singing or friendliness to their SP’s, we would get favourab, sing and

friend.

If a word’s SP is monosyllabic, the single syllable bears the stress. Thus the stress in

the word sing, singing or any other of its forms is always on the first syllable (`singing) just as

it is in the word `friend, `friendly, `friendliness etc. (thus, due to the lack of stress the vowel in

the suffix –ness is always reduced to ə).

If the SP is polysyllabic but contains no prefixes or suffixes, main stress will be placed

as follows:

1) if the SP is disyllabic, stress is usually penultimate (`favour)

2) if the SP is trisyllabic or longer, its stress is either penultimate or antepenultimate

following these rules:

1. if the final syllable is strong, stress falls two syllables back from it, i.e.

three syllables from the end of the SP of the word (e.g. `asterisk)

2. if the final syllable is weak then:

a. if the penultimate syllable is strong, it is stressed

b. if the penultimate syllable is weak, then the syllable before it is

stressed

Points 2.1 and 2.2 deserve further explanation.

For a student to be able to distinguish between weak and strong syllables, they must

first understand the structure of a syllable. A syllable generally consists of a vowel portion

called the peak of the syllable. This portion may sometimes be occupied by a consonant

instead of a vowel, most commonly by a nasal such as m or n (as in sudden, where the “e” is

usually not pronounced in the second syllable [sʌ.dn]) or a liquid such as l or r. Often this

“missing” vowel is present in the spelling of the word and for phonological purposes it is best

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to treat the syllable as if it contained the vowel. Before the peak, there is a string of

consonants within the syllable called the onset. This may include anything from zero (e.g. ice)

to three members (strength) in English. After the peak, there is again a string of consonants

called the coda of the syllable which in English may contain zero to four consonants. It is

important to note that the boundaries of syllables do not necessarily have to represent the

boundaries of words (e.g. “at all” is phonetically transcribed as a single word: [ə.tɔ:l]). Using

the abovementioned terminology, a weak syllable is defined as a syllable with a short vowel

in its peak and no coda or in case of word-final syllables a coda consisting of up to

consonants. All other syllables are strong, i.e. syllables which contain a long vowel in the

peak, or syllables with a short vowel peak but a coda of at least one consonant in non-word-

final syllables, or a coda of two or more consonants in case of word-final syllables. It is

important to emphasize that these distinctions are made on the basis of phonemic

representation. Therefore for example combinations of two letters which represent single

sounds such as ck in “lock” count as single consonants for the purpose of determining syllable

strength. Of course, there are exceptions such as the consonant combination ng which always

counts as two consonants, or r which counts as a consonant even though it may not be

pronounced as one.

Using the abovementioned rules, let us now analyze the word cranberry as an

example: the SP of the word is trisyllabic [kræn.bə.rɪ], thus it falls under the rule 2. The final

syllable of the word is weak because it includes a short vowel in its peak and has an empty

coda, thus it falls under the rule 2.2. Its penultimate syllable is also weak since it contains a

short vowel (shwa) in its peak and has an empty coda, thus it falls under the rule 2.2.a and it

will bear antepenultimate stress: `cranberry.

In longer words, some of the syllables preceding the one with main stress can be more

prominent than neighbouring syllables (same is not the case with syllables after the main

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stress). These carry the secondary stress within a word. If there is only one syllable before the

one bearing main stress, there will be no secondary stress within the word as in be`fore. If

there are two syllables before the one with main stress, the secondary stress is always placed

onto the first one. In case there are three or more syllables before the one which bears main

stress, then the syllable quality must be taken into consideration. If there is a strong syllable

two syllables back from the syllable with main stress, it takes secondary stress. If the syllable

two syllables back from main stress is weak, then the syllable before it takes secondary stress.

4.1 Influence of Suffixes

The presence of suffixes can unfortunately complicate this otherwise quite

straightforward system. If a word’s SP contains one or more suffixes, the last suffix

determines how the main stress is placed. If the SP contains two or more suffixes, the suffix

before the last one often influences the placement of secondary stress, though not always (this

depends on the combination of suffixes used).

From the perspective of stress placement, suffixes can be divided into three groups:

stress-neutral, autostressed and pre-stressed. The stress-neutral suffixes do not affect the

placement of stress, and are usually disregarded in determining the SP of a word. (For a full

list of these see page 12.)

The autostressed suffixes alter the stressing of the word by placing the main stress

onto the syllable they appear in. Therefore while the word `million bears initial stress, the

word ˈmillio`naire bears final stress since the suffix –aire moves the main stress onto itself.

The stress on the first syllable is reduced to secondary. The complete list of autostressed

suffixes and endings consists of the following 28 members: -ade, -aire, -aise, -ate (m) (verb-

forming use; autostressed only in disyllabic SP’s e.g. create, elate), -ee (m), -een, -eer, -elle, -

enne, -esce, -ese, -esque, -esse, -et (m), -ette, -eur, -ier (m), -ine (only autostressed as a noun-

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forming ending pronounced [-i:n] e.g. magazine), -ique, -ise (noun-forming use pronounced

[-i:z] e.g. expertise), -ite (m) (verb-forming use; autostressed only in words of two syllables,

e.g. unite), -ment (m), -ness (in place names, meaning ‘cape’ e.g. Inverness), -oo, -oon, -ose

(m), -otte (m), –teen.

Finally, the pre-stressed suffixes are by far the largest group of suffixes. These, as the

name suggests, alter the stress by placing it a certain number of syllables back from the

syllable these suffixes appear in. These can be further subdivided as follows:

Pre-stressed 1 suffixes are suffixes which cause the stress to fall on the syllable

immediately preceding them. This group is quite small, containing only eight suffixes: -erie,

-ic, -id, -ion, -ish (m), -itory, -ity/-ety, -uble.

Pre-stressed 2 suffixes are suffixes which cause the stress to fall two syllables before

the syllable containing the suffix: -able (m), -acy (m), -ast, -ate (m) (verb-forming use; pre-

stressed 2 in words of three or more syllables), -ate (noun-forming use in chemical terms such

as hydrate), -cide, -ene, -er (m) (agent-noun-forming use; pre-stressed 2 only if the stem is not

free e.g. astronomer), -fy, -gon, -ine (noun-forming ending pronounced [-aɪn] e.g. turpentine),

-ise/-ize (m), -ism (m), -ist (m), -ite (m), -ite (m) (noun-forming use in words meaning native

of X or supporter of X; only pre-stressed 2 if the stem is not a free form e.g. Muscovite), -ite

(noun-forming use in chemical terms pronounced [-aɪt] such as in anthracite or graphite), -

ment (m), -oir (m), -ose (m), -tude, -y (m) (noun-forming use; pre-stressed 2 only if the stem

is not a free form or if it is a compound with a weak penultimate syllable e.g. apathy or

geometry).

Finally, there is a large group of so called pre-stressed 1/2 suffixes which place stress

by principles similar to those for SPs of three or more syllables ending with a weak syllable:

1) if the syllable before the one containing the suffix is strong, it is stressed

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2) if the syllable before the one containing the suffix is weak, then the syllable before

it is stressed

This group contains the following 36 suffixes: -ad, -age (m), -al (adjective-forming use), -an,

-ance (m), -ant (adjective-forming use), -ant (noun-forming use; pre-stressed 1/2 only when

the stem is not free e.g. adjutant) (m), -ar, -ary (m), -ate (noun- or adjective-forming use,

usually pronounced [ət]; e.g. climate), -ative, -ature, -ee (m), -ée, -ence, -ent, -ery (m), -ible,

-ide, -ile, -ine (adjective-forming use, pronounced [-aɪn]; e.g. alkaline), -ine (chemical-noun-

forming use, pronounced [-i:n] e.g. morphine), -ine (adjective-, noun-, or verb-forming ending

pronounced [-ɪn], e.g. clandestine, discipline), -is, -ive, -oid, -on, -or (agent-noun-forming

use; only pre-stressed 1/2 if the stem is not a free form, e.g. ambassador) (m), -or (abstract-

noun-forming use e.g. stupor), -or (adjective-forming use e.g. superior), -ory, -our, -ous (m), -

um, -ure (m), -us.

4.2 Influence of Prefixes

As mentioned before, some, quite productive, prefixes do not influence the placement

of stress and are automatically excluded from the word’s SP (for a full list see page 12). These

are the so called stress-neutral prefixes. The important thing to note is that although these

prefixes may not influence the placement of stress, it does not mean that they cannot be

stressed in certain circumstances. For example, if the prefixes are used contrastively (“I bet all

my money on that driver and he lost! And it’s your fault.” “I said his success was highly

UNlikely, not likely!”) they can bear main stress. Also, since these prefixes are removed from

the SP of a word before stress placement is determined, they do not count towards the

syllables of the word as far as stress placement is concerned. Therefore, even though the word

“improper” is trisyllabic and with the last two syllables being weak should bear

antepenultimate stress (`improper), due to the fact that the stress-neutral prefixes are removed

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from the SP, the word is treated as disyllabic and receives penultimate stress instead

(im`proper).

However, there is also another group of prefixes called the stress-repellent prefixes. As

the name suggests, these prefixes resist the stress being placed on them, instead they move the

stress onto the syllable after the one the prefix appears in; however, it is important to

emphasize that they reject only stress placed on them by the basic rules explained on page 13.

If an SP of a word contains suffixes and its stress pattern is thus influenced by their presence,

the stress-repellence of the prefix is negated. The stress-repellent prefixes can usually be

differentiated from stress-neutral prefixes by the fact that they usually appear with bound

stems and are less likely to have a constant meaning in all words they appear in (while for

example the stress-neutral prefix un- always negates the meaning of the stem, while the prefix

com- in compromise or command does not have a fixed meaning). There is generally

speaking no need for a list of stress-repellent prefixes, as stress-repellence and stress-

neutrality are the only possible relations prefixes can have towards stress. Therefore, if a

prefix is not included among stress-neutral prefixes, it is automatically stress-repellent.

Some prefixes behave differently in regards to stress placement depending on whether

they appear in a noun or a verb. For example, in the noun increase, the prefix in- is not stress-

repellent, the word bears penultimate stress and is pronounced `ɪnkɾi:s while in the verb, the

prefix is stress-repellent and the word is final stressed (ɪn`kɾi:s). Usually prefixes which form a

weak syllable are stress repellent in both verbs and nouns; however there is a number of

exceptions to this principle as can be seen in the example of re- in the noun-verb pair refuse

(`refuse in noun but re`fuse in verb form). However, invariably, if the stem bears the stress in

the noun, it will always bear stress in the verb as well (e.g. de`mand). In adjective-verb pairs,

the prefixes in most cases behave the way they do in nouns as can be seen in e.g. ab`stract

(verb) - `abstract (adjective, noun).

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4.3 Stress in Compounds

So far, we have mainly dealt with words in isolation and described how stress is

placed depending on the properties of a word. However, connected speech does not consist of

individual words, but rather uses larger units. While stress within individual words behaves in

a certain way and is regulated by certain rules, the issue becomes more complicated when

words are put next to each other – as is the case with compounds.

While compounds can, technically speaking, be taken as two words (e.g. ice cream),

they in many ways act as a single word not only semantically but also accentually. In English

it can generally be said that words tend to have main stress on one of the first two syllables

(mostly antepenultimate or penultimate stress, rather than final stress). Thus, since

compounds behave as a single word, they tend to bear primary stress on one of their initial

two syllables as well i.e. within the compound’s first component (so called compound initial).

However, since a word can not bear more than one primary stress, the compound initial tends

to bear the primary stress while the second member does not (`ice ˌcream). Same remains true

if the compound becomes even more complex (such as ice cream cone), that is, the primary

stress will still remain within the initial member of the compound. Note, however, that while

the initial member of a compound is the most prominent due to its stress, it is not the most

prominent from the semantic point of view. While the word floorboard does bear primary

stress, it is a type of board, not a certain kind of floor, just as ice cream cone is a kind of cone,

not a kind of ice cream.

Not all words put next to each other are compounds however. Though they both may

signify a single object, a distinction must be made between a compound and a phrase.

Generally speaking, the relationship between words in a phrase is much looser than that

between words in a compound. The individual words of a phrase can quite easily be modified

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and extended as can be for example seen in the noun phrase black board (i.e. a board which is

black). There can be a pitch-black board; there can be a very big, black, broad board, while

there can hardly be a very `blackˌboard (i.e. a board for writing on with chalk). Thus phrases

are not treated as a single word but rather as a sequence of multiple individual words and tend

to bear primary stress within their last component (ˈblack `board).

Unfortunately the distinction between compounds and phrases is sometimes not as

clear as one might hope. There exists a number of constructions which take phrasal stress

patterns while being almost, or indeed completely, indistinguishable syntactically from

compounds. While Christmas cake takes on the usual compound stress pattern (`Christmas

ˌcake), ˈChristmas `pie or ˈChristmas `pudding are stressed as if they were a noun phrase, even

though there is syntactically no difference between the three. Similarly, while proper names

containing the words –gate or Street (such as `London ˌStreet) take stress on the compound

initial, combinations with other words of the kind (such as Avenue or Road) take final stress

as a noun phrase would. It is therefore necessary to draw a certain set of rules when dealing

with the issue:

1) Noun1 + Noun2 = Noun compounds are in the majority of cases initially stressed. The

exceptions to this rule can be categorized into six groups:

a. Noun1 is a location (e.g. ˈkitchen `table) or a time/season (e.g. ˈmorning `rain)

b. Noun1 is a material which Noun2 is made out of e.g. ˈwooden `plank

c. Noun2 is a geographical term, a type of thoroughfare etc. and Noun1 is the

name applied to it (often proper noun) e.g. ˈOhio `Valley

d. Noun1 and Noun2 are two parts of a proper name of a person, place or thing

(e.g. ˈPeter `Parker, ˈBuckingˌham `Palace)

e. Noun1 specifies the value of Noun2 (e.g. ˈdollar `bill)

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f. Noun1 is central from semantic point of view and Noun2 only further specifies

it, which is the opposite of a usual noun + noun compound (e.g. ˈMother

`Superior)

2) Adjective + Noun = Noun constructions normally form a noun phrase and are final

stressed. If the relationship between the two members is so close as to not allow

extension or modification, the unit forms a compound noun with initial stress. This

happens if the compound signifies a person or a thing characterized by having (noun)

which is (adjective). A model example of this would be a `redˌskin (a member of a

race with red skin = Native American) or a `highˌbrow (a person with a high brow =

intellectual). Alternatively, the same relationship can develop if the compound

signifies a person or a thing whose characteristics are specified as or which is

metaphorically related to what the adjective + noun phrase signifies, e.g. tightrope (it

is a tight rope, however it is a one used specifically for walking in circuses and similar

acts).

3) Adjective + Noun = Adjective constructions may sometimes form from adjective +

noun noun phrases. As an adjective compound, they usually bear initial stress (e.g.

`old-ˌtime).

4) Noun1 + s + Noun2 = Noun phrases (final stress) can sometimes be transformed into a

more close-knit compound noun with initial stress. Usually has metaphorical meaning

e.g. `bullsˌeye.

5) Numeral + Noun + -er = Noun compounds (e.g. six-shooter) bear final stress.

6) Adjective + Noun + -er = Noun compounds (e.g. `flat-ˌracer) normally bear the same

stress as the Adjective + Noun combination would on its own (`flat ˌrace). The -er

suffix is stress-neutral.

7) Verb + Noun = Noun combinations bear initial stress (e.g. `runˌway).

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8) Noun + Verb = Noun combinations bear initial stress (e.g. `sunˌset)

9) Noun1 + Noun2 + -ed = Adjective compounds are final stressed (e.g. ˈeagle-`eyed)

10) Numeral + Noun + -ed = Adjective compounds are final stressed (ˈtwo-`headed).

11) Adjective + Noun + -ed = Adjective compounds are final stressed (ˈstrong-`willed).

12) Noun + Adjective = Adjective compounds with the meaning (adjective) to the extent

of (noun) or as (adjective) as (noun) e.g. ˈblood-`red, ˈdirt `cheap are final stressed;

compounds meaning (adjective) with respect to (noun) are initial stressed (e.g. `water

ˈproof, `homeˈsick).

13) Noun + Verb + -ed = Adjective compounds are initial stressed (e.g. `hen-ˌpecked,

`disease-ˌridden) except for all compounds with -made and -plated.

14) Noun + Verb = Verb compounds are initial stressed (e.g. `babyˌsit).

15) Noun1 + Noun2 = Verb compounds without a derivational suffix follow the stressing

of the original compound noun (e.g. ˈstone`wall).

16) Adverb + Verb = Verb compounds are final stressed (e.g. ˈcross-`reference).

17) Perposition + Noun = Adverb compounds are final stressed (e.g. ˈover`board).

18) Preposition + Noun = Adjective compounds derived from the type 17 compounds

above are initial stressed (`downˌstream).

19) Verb + Particle = Noun compounds bear initial stress (`setˌback).

20) Particle + Verb = Noun compounds bear initial stress (`upˌrise).

21) Partice/Adverb + Verb + -er = Noun compounds are initial stressed (`outˌrunner).

22) Noun + like = Adjective compounds are initial stressed (`ladyˌlike).

4.4 Rhythm and Stress-Timing

Moving further upwards from the level of words and compounds, we arrive at the

sentence/utterance level of the language. Phonetically, the boundaries of individual words

22

may disappear as they are chained together in a rapid succession of syllables. Within this

stream of syllables, the most semantically important words stand out the most (bear sentence

stress) by virtue of the syllables bearing primary stress within the given word becoming more

prominent than those within words which do not bear sentence stress. Or rather, the stressed

syllables of less important words become less prominent or reduced in comparison to those of

the important words. Thus in a sentence “I have not played the guitar this week”, depending

on the context, any one of the words I, not, played, guitar, this or week can bear primary

sentence stress if the circumstances permit it. Words which would not usually bear stress

individually (mostly monosyllabic prepositions, conjunctions, particles (except in phrasal

verbs), forms of the verb “to be”, pronouns and other function words) can bear sentence stress

in the correct context (I’m sure he `was a soldier but he is not anymore) while monosyllabic

words which would bear multiple stresses of varying strength can be so reduced in

prominence that their primary stress can reach the strength of another word’s secondary or

low level stress. (Kingdon, 1958, p. 1)

The stretches between the most prominent stresses within a sentence are called stress

groups (Fudge, 1984, p. 1) or phonetic words. When analyzing an English sentence in this

manner, there is a noticeable tendency for these strong stresses of an utterance to occur at

more or less predictable and regular periods of time, producing a rhythm. The prominent

syllables within a sentence tend to be prolonged, while the less prominent syllables tend to be

shortened and reduced, one being followed by another in a very rapid succession in spoken

language. Thus while the word “him” is in isolation pronounced hɪm, in a sentence in which it

does not bear special importance, it will be pronounced as ɪm due to lack of stress.

The tendency described above makes English one of the stress-timed languages (such

as German or Swedish), since stresses within a sentence occur at approximately equal

intervals of time. Naturally, the English rhythm must not be taken literally, as the regularity of

23

intervals between stressed syllables is only approximate and relative (Roach, 1992, p. 120).

This stands in contrast to the so called syllable-timed languages such as French, Finnish,

Vietnamese or Czech, which instead of basing their timing on stress put emphasis on having

individual syllables occur at approximately even periods of time. Consequently, this stress-

timing tendency makes the already complex studies of stress even more puzzling, since

though words individually do bear stress on always the same syllable (except for contrastive

or otherwise emphatic context) when put together in a sentence their stresses may change not

only depending on their importance but also depending on their surroundings.

Due to the fact that English is a stress-timed language, there is a tendency for strong

stresses not to occur on adjacent syllables but rather be separated by at least one unstressed

syllable. This causes various stress shifts within the spoken language. For example, while the

word nineteen bears main stress on the second syllable (ˈnine`teen), in the phrase “nineteen

feet” the word bears stress on its first syllable (`nineˌteen `feet) since stressing the second

syllable would cause the two strong stresses to neighbour each other. This phenomenon can

quite often be observed on the case of final stressed compounds used as adjectives before a

noun (e.g. ˈblood-`red v. `blood-ˌred `wine).

4.5 Presence v. Absence of Stress and Influence on Vowel Quality

So far we have dealt in depth with the complexities of where stress is placed within a

word and what determines its placement. However, the absence of stress can have as much

impact on the pronunciation of a word or indeed the meaning of a phrase/sentence as can its

presence. “In a strongly stressed language like English, vowel quality is so frequently

influenced by the presence or absence of stress, wrong stressing disguises words far more

effectively than does wrong intonation.” (Kingdon, 1958, p. xi) In Fudge’s (1984) system this

is best explained on the example of three related words: explain, explanatory and explanation

24

(p. 193). When pronouncing these three words, we immediately notice that the vowel of the

root is pronounced differently in each case. In explain and explanatory, it is pronounced as a

full vowel (eɪ and æ respectively) while in explanation, the only one of the three words where

main stress does not fall on the syllable –pla-/-plai-, the syllable is pronounced as reduced (ə).

Also, among the full vowels, explain is pronounced with a long vowel, while explanatory

with a short one. Similarly we can observe a difference in pronunciation of the prefix ex-: in

explain and explanatory, the vowel is pronounced as reduced (ɪ) since secondary stress does

not fall on it due to the fact that the following syllable bears main stress; as said before, due to

the rhythmic nature of English language, strong stresses do not occur next to each other. On

the other hand, in explanation, the main stress is placed on the syllable –na- (expla`nation),

allowing for the secondary stress to appear on the prefix, giving it the pronunciation with a

full vowel [e].

From this example alone it is quite apparent that the absence or presence of strong

stress (main or secondary) greatly influences vowel quality: in the absence of stress, vowels

are reduced; in its presence, they are pronounced as full. In some cases (Fudge, 1984, p. 193),

vowel length is sufficient to prevent reduction regardless of the assignment of secondary

stress as can be seen in the verb advocate (pronounced `ædvəkeɪt). For these reasons, the low

level stress mark ˌ is introduced into the English stress system to indicate vowels which,

though not bearing a strong stress, are prominent enough (by virtue of their length etc.) to

avoid reduction (thus the word is correctly transcribed as `ædvəˌkeɪt). Though this mark is

most commonly used to indicate non-reduced syllables after the main stress, it can generally

be assigned to vowels which are not strongly stressed but do not undergo reduction regardless

of their position (e.g. ˈreˌla`xation). There are several conditions which prevent syllables from

being reduced regardless of the placement of strong stresses within the word:

1) Reduction would cause the distinction between a pair of words disappear.

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In this case, reduction may be prevented in one or both of the words. For example if

the verbs exercise and exorcise would undergo stressing and reduction by the rules

explained, both would be pronounced the same. However, instead the vowel of the

second syllable does not undergo reduction and the distinction between the words is

preserved. Generally it can be said that the less used word of the two is protected from

reduction while the other is reduced as usual by the rules. However, this condition is

not entirely regular, as some word pairs are pronounced the same regardless (e.g. the

adjective dependent and the noun dependant).

2) First syllable of a word is strong.

In most varieties of English this rule does not apply to stress-repellent prefixes even if

they form a strong syllable. Monosyllabic stress-neutral prefixes, however, do fall

under this rule and are not reduced. Though this rule might appear quite simple and

clear, difficulties arise in cases where syllable boundaries are not entirely obvious. If a

short vowel is followed by an “s” plus one or two consonants, the boundary may fall

either before the s or after it, producing a weak initial syllable in one case and strong

in the other. For example in the word prospective, the syllables are divided as

pro.spec.tive, the initial syllable is weak and undergoes reduction (prəspektɪv) while in

prosperity the division stands as pros.pe.ri.ty, the initial syllable is protected from

reducing and is pronounced with a full vowel (prɑsperɪtɪ).

3) If stress-shift occurs in the noun of a noun-verb pair. The root syllable normally does

not reduce in this case as described in (chapter 4.2)

4) A short vowel is followed by a consonant or consonant cluster of a certain type.

Mostly, unstressed short vowels reduce in open syllables (syllables with an empty

coda) and in syllables ending with m, dental or alveolar consonants and in certain

consonant clusters. However, in other types of syllables, unstressed short vowels

26

maintain full quality unless the preceding syllable is weak and stressed. Thus, for

example, the unstressed final syllable of “syllabub” is pronounced with a full vowel ʌ

since the short vowel is followed by a b which is a bilabial consonant, not a dental or

alveolar one. Nevertheless in cherub, the final vowel of the final syllable is reduced to

ə since it is preceded by a weak stressed syllable.

Returning to the initial example of explain, explanatory and explanation, attention was

drawn to the fact that in explain and explanatory, though the first syllable of the root was

stressed in both cases, they differ in length. While the etymological basis among these words,

explain, contains a long vowel in its root (eɪ), its derivate, explanatory, contains a short one

(æ). The process occurring in this case is known as trisyllabic shortening. The only thing

necessary to take into account when dealing with trisyllabic shortening is the final three

syllables of the SP of the word. As long as the antepenultimate syllable is stressed with empty

coda, the penultimate syllable unstressed with empty coda and the penultimate and the final

syllable have at least one consonant in their onset, the vowel of the antepenultimate syllable

will be shortened. Thus when the suffix –atory is added to the word explain, the

antepenultimate syllable (-na-) will be stressed with empty coda, (-to-) unstressed with empty

coda and (-ry) will have one consonant in its onset, fulfilling the conditions for trisyllabic

shortening and thus transforming the vowel of the penultimate syllable. A similar

phenomenon occurs when the final syllable does not contain a consonant in its onset,

however, it is only limited to the vowels i and y. All other vowels in this context lengthen

instead (vowel lengthening rule number 2).

Secondly, certain suffixes, when added to a word with long vowel in its final syllable

cause the vowel to be shortened: -ative, -atory, -(e)fy, -(i)fy, -ic, -ical, -ics, -itive, -ity, -tude, -

ual, -uant, -uate, -uous. Addition of several of these suffixes in fact fulfils the conditions for

trisyllabic shortening, while in others, shortening happens by virtue of the suffix’ accentual

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properties. However, though trisyllabic shortening does not appear exclusively in suffix

derivates, it is oftentimes faster to analyze a word by its suffix and stem, rather than

investigate the conditions for trisyllabic shortening.

On opposite process may also take place in English. A vowel will be lengthened in

these cases:

1) A stressed vowel precedes another vowel. For example in a word like chaos, the

vowel of the second syllable is pronounced as long since the vowel before it is

stressed.

2) The antepenultimate syllable is stressed with empty coda, the penultimate syllable

unstressed with empty coda and at least one consonant in its onset and the final

syllable contains no consonant in its onset. All vowels except for i and y are

lengthened in this context.

3) Vowels o and u are always long when word-final (e.g. stereo, hero).

4) If the initial open syllable (syllable with empty coda) of a disyllabic word is

stressed, its vowel will be lengthened (e.g. China).

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29

5. Czech Stress System and its Conflicts with English

Having described in depth the stress system of English, we can now proceed to the

description of Czech stress patterns. As discussed in chapter 4.4 Czech belongs among the

languages with stress on a fixed syllable and thus its stress system is rather straightforward:

except for certain words which do not bear stress (prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs

etc.), all Czech words bear stress on their first syllable (Palková, 1994, p. 157). Thus

understanding the Czech system is quite simple, as stress does not have to be learned as the

property of a given new word or determined by a complex system of stress described in the

previous chapter and its subchapters. Furthermore, Czech differs from English in that it is not

a stress-timed language but a syllable-timed one, meaning that the intervals between two

strong stresses are irregular and their length is determined by the number syllables standing in

between. While English has the tendency to elongate the stressed syllables and speed up the

flow of syllables in case of a large number of unstressed syllables occurring one after another,

Czech syllables tend to have approximately the same duration regardless of stress placement.

These fundamental differences between the two languages make acquiring the habits

of correct stress placement in English an especially daunting task for a Czech native speaker,

though the acquisition of correct stress placement in Czech for an English speaker poses a

similar, though not quite as serious a problem; stress in Czech does not influence the quality

of vowels due to the fact that it is always in the same place, thus the incorrect stressing in a

word such as saying Pardu`bice instead of `Pardubice has little effect on its pronunciation and

understandability. The occurrence of the strongest stress at the beginning of a word is not a

phenomenon appearing very commonly in English, thus making for only a minimal overlap

between the two languages. When we analyze Kingdon’s (1958) list of possible stress patterns

within words in English (p. 15) we will notice that of the nineteen stress patterns listed

(monosyllabic words notwithstanding) only four carry the strongest stress on the initial

30

syllable. Moreover, only in disyllabic and trisyllabic words are these a common occurrence; in

words of four or five syllables, primary stress on the initial syllable is not very frequent when

compared with the other possible stress patterns.

This leads to major problems with not only acquiring correct stress placement habits

for students of English (especially those whose mother tongue is as different from English in

its stress system as is for example Czech or French) but also results in major issues with

understandability. Though Jennifer Jenkins (2001) in her book The Phonology of English as

an International Language correctly claims that it is not necessary for a second language

learner to sound as a native speaker in order to be understood (p. 126), in the same book and

in her article on understandability she then makes the, in the author’s opinion, erroneous

claim that word stress is not among the features of the English language that the learner needs

to acquire in order to be understood (Jenkins, 2009, p. 12). Yet within the so called LFC

(Lingua Franca Core), a list of features necessary for intelligibility, she lists vowel length

contrasts and nuclear (or tonic) stress production/placement as two of the four main features,

disregarding the fact that word stress, as explained in chapter 4.5 greatly influences vowel

quality. Furthermore, it is impossible for a student of English to produce the correct nuclear or

tonic stress in a word within a sentence unless the speaker has first mastered correct

placement of stress within the word. Thus, if the rest of the LFC were to be taken as correct,

proper production of word stress is no less than one half of the features necessary for

intelligibility.

To support this statement, Hill, Kingdon, Fudge and Tibbitts all make assertions to the

same effect. To name a few:

I was therefore led to the conclusion (which is contrary to opinions that have been

expressed by some authorities) that a foreigners’ intelligibility may depend quite as

much on correct stressing as on correct intonation. (Kingdon, 1958, xi)

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Because English rhythm is stress-timed, a wrong stressing will lead to a wrong and

misleading rhythm, even if the principle of stress-timing is correctly handled by the

speaker. Comprehensibility depends on rhythm, and therefore the placing of stress

within words can play a large part in determining how well a native English hearer

will understand the foreign speaker. (Fudge, 1984, p. 4)

We gather that command of stressing and accentuation is imperative: a command of

the usual habits of intonation may be desirable. People can often put up with quirks of

human temperament, but both speaker and listener tend to get frustrated, impatient and

out of humour if what is uttered cannot be understood. The safer course for foreigners

is to concentrate on stress and accentuation patterns rather than intonation, in order to

ensure as high a degree of intelligibility as possible. If the ‘rhythm’ is right, the

speaker has a fair chance of using an appropriate intonation. (Tibbitts, 1967, p. 14)

An interesting point made by these authors, as well as mentioned above in relation to

the LFC, is the fact that stress is inseparably linked to multiple aspects of the English

language. Thus, should a student not master the correct stress placement, the resulting errors

will impact not only stressing within words, but also placement of nuclear or tonic stress

within a sentence, pronunciation, intonation as well as vowel quality which may result in loss

of distinctions between words (e.g. peach/pitch).

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6. Grammar School Survey Analysis

Since correct stress placement is such a fundamental feature of language, intertwined

with most of the basic abilities necessary for a speaker to be understood, and since the main

purpose of second language acquisition is to teach the student the ability to communicate in

the given language, it should come as self-evident that teaching English stress system to

second language students should be one of the main goals. Yet when browsing through

frequently used English textbooks such as Headway, Opportunities, Project or Destination,

exercises dedicated exclusively to English stress placement are sporadic at best, in fact often

missing completely from even the more advanced level books. In the occasional exercises or

vocabulary lists with phonetic transcriptions of words, stress marks are generally missing. In

other words, the issue of stress is mostly or completely ignored in favour of grammar,

vocabulary and pronunciation, with the hope that stressing habits will be acquired through

listening to the teacher’s speech as well as to recordings provided with the textbooks to the

teacher.

The question arising is then, whether the Czech system of second language acquisition

indeed teaches students how to correctly deal with English stress placement. In order to

answer this question, a survey was undertaken on one of the major grammar schools in Brno.

The students were presented with two recordings (Appendix 2) of the following text:

How I lost my job

My boss invited me to a company skiing trip to the Alps last month. I really dislike

him so I didn’t want to go, but one of my older colleagues warned me that the boss doesn’t

like it when people refuse his invitations. In fact, he said, most people who decline his

invitation get fired within a year. I took his advice and accepted the offer. After all, I thought,

33

a little exercise won’t do me any harm. Also I didn’t want such a silly thing to ruin my career.

Unfortunately, my decision didn’t have the desired effect.

On our way to the chalet, we stopped in a hotel for the night. As it happened, there

was a wild party going on and all the guests were invited to join. From what I’ve been told, I

drank three bottles of wine in record time during the event and got into a horrific argument

with the boss. By the end of it, I punched him in the face and ran away. Needless to say, I was

fired before I even saw the first sign of snow.

The first of the recordings contained a total of ten errors in stress placement: `invited

(twice), co`lleagues, `refuse (pronounced ɾefju:s), `advice, `career, `hotel, re`cord (pronounced

ɾɪkɑ:d), `event and `horrific, while the other recording used correct stress. The students were

presented with a questionnaire (Appendix 1) containing the full text and a single question: the

students’ task was to recognize which one of the recordings used correct stress. A total of 137

students were presented with the questionnaire, ranging from the first year to fourth year of

secondary education. The results were as follows (Table 1):

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Table 1

Survey Results

Class Correct answers Incorrect answers

Total students Success rate

1.D 16 9 25 64%

1.C 6 3 9 66.66%

3.C (group 1)1 10 6 16 62.5%

3.B 7 5 12 58.33%

2.B 17 9 26 65.38%

4.C 14 9 23 60.86%

3.A 10 2 12 83,33%

3.C (group 2) 8 6 14 57.14%

Total 88 49 137 64.23%

Most of the classes made use of the opportunity to listen to both recordings again

before filling in their answers. Also, most of the classes first had to be told what the phrase

“English stress” means, indicating that they have never heard it mentioned in class before, or

infrequently enough not to remember. With the exception of class 3.A which overall scored

particularly well, classes did not know the correct translation of the term after it was

explained to them (most either did not know the translation at all or translated the term as

“přízvuk”, while a much better and accurate translation is “důraz”). Looking at the results we

will notice several trends among the classes:

1) With the exception of 3.A only one class scored over 65%, that being the first year

class 1.D. Considering the fact that the questionnaire contained only two questions,

there was a 50% chance that students choose the correct answer simply by guessing.

The total average of the classes surveyed was 64.23%. In theory, if from the 137 1 Group 1 was a less advanced group of students.

35

students ca 19 could tell the correct answer from the recordings and the remaining 118

were merely guessing, the result would have been the same.

2) There is no particular correspondence between the length of study and success rate.

Indeed the first year classes scored slightly better than most of their older schoolmates.

Regardless of how long the students have been studying English there seems to be no

improvement in recognition of stress patterns. Even among the classes which scored

relatively well when compared to the other classes, stress recognition seemed to be

largely passive, as during the remainder of the lesson, a large number of quite

common words such as technology have been pronounced with typically Czech stress

(`technology) and have been left uncorrected by the teacher. The length of second

language education with the current education system seems to have no effect on the

student’s ability to recognize stress.

3) In the case where the advanced and the less advanced groups of students were not

examined together (3.C), the less advanced group scored better than the more

advanced one. Though this has only been a singular occurrence, it would seem that

regardless of whether a particular group of students was deemed inferior in terms of

their English language skills or not, there was no correspondence between the success

rate and the level of language skills. Though between different classes and different

years of study the disparities in language skills could be accounted for simply by the

language level at the time of arrival on the grammar school (a group of 1st year

students could have had better previous second language education than a group of 3rd

year students and are thus slightly more advanced in comparison), one of the groups

from the same class was clearly marked as possessing worse language skills than the

other, yet the results of the survey do not correspond with this assessment.

36

4) The class of the oldest students (4.C) achieved the 3rd worst score, even though they

were told the correct stressing of the word hotel by their teacher before the recordings

were played (the only class to be given such an advantage), and regardless of the fact

that ten students, i.e. slightly less than half of the class, have been preparing for the

English graduation exams for the majority of this school year. Thus it would appear

that regardless of the special preparation the students have undergone during their

studies for the graduation exams (which by the time the survey was done were only a

few weeks away) had no effect on the success rate of the class. Moreover, even though

the class was told beforehand which stressing of the word hotel was correct and had

therefore only to identify the stressing within this one word in the recordings in order

to recognize which one uses correct stress, the success rate of the class did not

improve.

After the results have been evaluated, 3.A, which did above average when compared

to other groups, was further interviewed on their experience with the English language and

specifically stress. Though responses could not be obtained from all the students who

participated in the survey, feedback was acquired from the majority. All of the students study

English ten to eleven years and none of them was exposed to exercises dedicated to stress

recognition in a larger scale during their studies; only one of them actually remembers doing

an exercise focused on stress. There was, however, a number of factors which could have

influenced the students’ performance: One of the students was born in the United States of

America and is a native speaker of English. Two other students spent a week in the United

Kingdom. While one of them claimed that the experience had no effect on his ability to speak

English, the other emphasized the fact that it was the first time he ever had to communicate

with native speakers and felt that the opportunity benefited his English language skills. One

other student attends Spanish courses. She especially highlighted the fact that in Spanish,

37

word stress is clearly indicated in the written word as well (e.g. the spelling of español

indicates that the syllable containing the ñ is stressed; similarly the spelling of the name José

symbolizes that the second syllable of the word bears the main stress) which helps her

recognize stress better in languages. Another student has attended English classes outside of

school for the entirety of his English studies, i.e. for ca ten years. The classes were focused

not only on grammar, but also on communication; nevertheless, he does not feel that the

lessons greatly impacted his ability to recognize stress. However, almost universally, the

students mentioned the fact that they watch sitcoms in English regularly in their free time and

are thus regularly exposed to native speaker English for extended periods of time. Also, as is

the trend with films and other types of series as well, the goal of the sitcom is to convey

emotion and humour and thus pronunciation and word and sentence stress are oftentimes

exaggerated to better express and emphasize the character’s emotions.

It would consequently appear, if the overall results were to be generalized and expanded,

that the Czech system of secondary education is wholly insufficient in regards to stress

recognition in spoken text alone. Naturally, it can be presumed that the resulting ability of

students to produce correct stress will by similarly, if not more impacted. Yet more substantial

is the fact that the basic supposition on which the education system is founded, that being that

students will acquire stress placement habits through exposure to spoken text (Hill, 1965, p.

vi), is fundamentally flawed due to the fact that, as the survey proves, a large portion of the

students is in fact unable to correctly recognize stress in a spoken text even when presented

with the most common examples such as hotel or record. On the other hand, students which

regularly and voluntarily expose themselves to the English language or another strongly

stressed language for extended periods of time outside of school seem to acquire the ability to

recognize stress better than their schoolmates. While this data was acquired from only a small

portion of the students surveyed, and thus might not be universally applicable, it would appear

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that while in-class exposure to the spoken word is wholly insufficient, it is possible for the

students to acquire correct stress placement habits simply by listening to the English

language, if done at a large enough scale, just as a native English speaker acquires stress

placement habits from childhood simply by constant exposure to the English language used

around them without being taught the rules of English stressing.

It is therefore necessary, in order to correctly teach English stress placement and

consequently improve the students’ ability to produce speech easily intelligible to a native

speaker, to try to teach stress by practice and to incorporate stress teaching into the very basis

of the second language acquisition system from the very beginning, since, as is apparent from

the survey, advanced study of the language does not provide the learner with the ability to

recognize correct stress placement independently unless specifically tutored to do so. Since

English stress placement is marked by such complexity, it is necessary to introduce

simplification into the system (Hill, 1965, p. vi) for easier teachability, and preferably employ

stress exercises throughout the entirety of second language education, i.e. from the earliest

stages, through practical exercises such as clapping or drumming (Tibbitts, 1967, p. 9) in

order for the students to acquire the rhythm of the language physically.

Alternatively, or preferably in addition to the abovementioned improvements in

teaching, students’ exposure to the English language should be greatly expanded in the form

of film or series presentations or homework, in order for the students to listen to the English

spoken word from native speakers for longer periods of time. Doing so in an entertaining

form, such as popular films or series, would greatly influence the students’ interest in

understanding the spoken word as much as possible, and thus the acquisition of stress

placement within the English language would become much more intuitive.

Also, workbooks, textbooks and vocabulary books should include stress patterns of

new words, or exercises where students mark the stress themselves. Overall, stress teaching

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should become one of the main goals of second language acquisition and should be

incorporated into lessons regularly, since “little and often is better than a lot at rare intervals”

(Hill, 1965, p. vii). Textbooks with only sporadic stress exercises or worse yet textbooks with

no exercises of such kind should be abandoned in favour of books making frequent use of

such exercises or even dedicated textbooks focused on stress placement or overall phonetics

alone. Both Tibbitts, Hill as well as authors not cited in this thesis have produced textbooks of

this kind yet are being ignored by second language teaching on secondary schools where they

could be of most use, since the basic knowledge of the language has already been acquired at

that point, and refinements and corrections to one’s understandability can thus be successfully

made. Moreover, the ability to correctly place stress based on the properties of a word will

then greatly improve the students’ ability to correctly pronounce new and previously

unknown words.

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Conclusion

Due to the incongruence between the stress systems of Czech and English, special

attention must be paid to stress in secondary language teaching. The current system as has

been evidenced above does not help students improve their stress recognition in spoken word

and by extension fails to teach students the correct stress production as well. Especially the

supposition that students will acquire correct stress placement habits through listening has

been proven as fundamentally flawed. The resulting lack of the ability to correctly produce

stress within the English language greatly affects the students’ ability to be understood, since

it is closely linked to such basic features of language as rhythm, intonation, nuclear or tonic

stress and pronunciation – all of which are necessary for understanding the spoken word.

The complexity of the English stress system has always greatly hindered the ability to

teach English word stress and has thus forced the education system to resort to a less direct

approach. However, this approach appears to be wholly insufficient for the needs of the

student, as it forces them to learn the correct stress placement for each individual word instead

of providing a set of rules by which to abide. The stress system introduced in this thesis must

therefore be simplified and shaped into a more accessible form (such as Tibbitts’ rhythmic

exercises) and be presented to students repeatedly and frequently in order for the students to

acquire the ability to sense English stress almost physically. Such practices will then result

not only in increased ability to produce understandable speech, but also to improve the

student’s pronunciation of unknown words and thus increase the efficiency of independent

study and reading.

Though one of the main purposes of this work was to clearly and concisely present the

word stress system of English for students as well as other interested parties, it is the author’s

hope for the results of this effort to not be limited to this task alone. On the contrary, the use

of the data and evidence presented in the survey to inspire a new initiative on the field of

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second language teaching as well as textbook production is encouraged in order to better

accommodate the needs of the students to acquire the habits of correct stress placement in

English speech. The benefits resulting from this initiative would, in the author’s opinion,

greatly improve the quality of second language education and improve the students’ ability to

communicate on an international level, thus opening new opportunities for future.

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Works Cited

Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.

Fudge, E. C. (1984). English word-stress. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Hill, L. (1965). Stress and intonation step by step. London: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, J. (2001). The phonology of English as an international language. Honk Kong:

Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, J. (2009). (Un)pleasant? (In)correct? (Un)intelligible? ELF speaker’s perceptions of

their accent. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Eds.), English as a lingua franca: Studies

and findings (pp. 10-36). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Kingdon, R. (1958). The groundwork of English stress. London: Longmans, Green.

Palková, Z. (1994). Fonetika a fonologie češtiny. Praha: Karolinum.

Roach, P. (1992). English phonetics and phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tibbitts, E. (1967). English stress patterns: Practice material. Cambridge: W. Heffer.

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Appendix 1

Listen to the two recordings of the text below; then determine which of the recordings

uses the correct stress placement.

How I lost my job

My boss invited me to a company skiing trip to the Alps last month. I really dislike

him so I didn’t want to go, but one of my older colleagues warned me that the boss doesn’t

like it when people refuse his invitations. In fact, he said, most people who decline his

invitation get fired within a year. I took his advice and accepted the offer. After all, I thought,

a little exercise won’t do me any harm. Also I didn’t want such a silly thing to ruin my career.

Unfortunately, my decision didn’t have the desired effect.

On our way to the chalet, we stopped in a hotel for the night. As it happened, there

was a wild party going on and all the guests were invited to join. From what I’ve been told, I

drank three bottles of wine in record time during the event and got into a horrific argument

with the boss. By the end of it, I punched him in the face and ran away. Needless to say, I was

fired before I even saw the first sign of snow.

Underline which of the recordings uses the correct stress:

a) Recording 1

b) Recording 2

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Resumé

The thesis deals with the issue of the English word stress and the rules it follows. Its

main purpose is to clearly and concisely explain the complex and often misunderstood system

of English word stress to the reader, and then contrast it with the Czech system to expose

problems arising between the two languages. Then a survey is conducted to analyze whether

the Czech second language education system properly compensates for the differences

between the two languages.

Eric Fudge’s English word-stress (1984) is used as the main source for the description

of the English stress system. The description is divided into subchapters, each dedicated to a

different phenomenon: simple roots, prefixes, suffixes, compounds, rhythm within a sentence

and the effects of stress on the quality of vowels are all discussed in depth. A concise

description of the Czech stress system follows, highlighting the differences between the two

languages. Especially emphasized is the impact of English word stress on intelligibility, a

phenomenon not shared between the two languages.

The practical section of the thesis focuses on investigating the quality of second

language education on secondary schools in relation to English stress. The results of the

survey are then thoroughly analyzed and adjustments to the current education system are

proposed.

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Tato práce se zabývá problematikou anglického slovního přízvuku a pravidly, kterými

se řídí. Jejím hlavním účelem je srozumitelně a stručně čtenáři popsat komplexní a často

špatně pochopený systém anglického slovního přízvuku, a poté jej porovnat se systémem

českým ve snaze odhalit problémy vznikající mezi těmito dvěma jazyky. Poté je proveden

průzkum za účelem zjistit zda systém české výuky cizích jazyků dostatečně vyvažuje rozdíly

mezi angličtinou a češtinou.

English word-stress (1984) od Erica Fudge je používán jako hlavní zdroj pro popis

anglického systému slovního přízvuku. Tento popis je rozdělen do podkapitol, z nichž každá

se zabývá jiným jevem: jednoduché slovní základy, předpony, přípony, složeniny, rytmus ve

větě a účinky přízvuku na vlastnosti samohlásek jsou důkladně popsány. Následuje stručný

popis českého systému přízvuku, s vyzdvižením rozdílů mezi těmito dvěma jazyky. Obzvláště

se zdůrazňuje účinek slovního přízvuku v angličtině na srozumitelnost, což je jev, který tyto

dva jazyky nesdílejí.

Praktická část práce se zaměřuje na výzkum kvality výuky cizích jazyků na středních

školách ve vztahu k anglickému přízvuku. Výsledky průzkumu jsou následně důkladně

rozebrány a jsou navrženy úpravy stávajícího výukového systému.

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