28. Functions of Word Stress: recessive retentive rhythmical semantic.

V.A.Vassilyev describes them as follows: 1) recessive tendency; 2) rhythmic tendency; 3) retentive tendency and 4) semantic factor.

Recessive tendency results in placing the word stress on the initial syllable. This is the principal and the oldest tendency originated from the old Germanic tendency to place the accent on the initial syllables which were the roots in the majority of English words, (teacher" "beautiful") When the root of a word stress was preceded by some old prefix, the word stress was shifted to the second syllable, e.g. "forget" believe"become" This tendency accounts for the fact that many two-syllable and three-syllable words borrowed until the 15^th century bear stress on the initial syllable. Rhythmical tendency results in alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. This tendency was originated from the French borrowing which made quite possible for many words to leave the final syllable stressed, e.g.: "machine" Retentive tendency consists in the retention of the primary stress on the parent word, e.g.: person, personal. According to the semantic factor the most important part of the compound is usually stressed. It is usually the first element: "blackface, a "musical box.

Word stress has its own linguistic functions: constitutive, distinctive and recognitive functions. 1.It organizes sounds into words and words into sentences. 2. It helps to recognize words. 3.It helps to distinguish certain grammatical categories of many English words: e.g.: "perfect" ['pɜːfɪkt]adjective and [pə'fekt]- verb. 4. Word-stress determines the literary standard pronunciation of numerous polysyllabic words of the language,e.g.: [lə'bɔrət(ə)rɪ]but not ['ləbɔrət(ə)rɪ]

27. Word Stress. Its Nature, Position and Degree.

Stress is a certain degree of prominence which makes a syllable stand out acoustically above the adjacent syllables. types of word stress are distinguished according to the articulatory means by which it is produced.

Dynamic or expiratory stress is achieved by a greater force of pronunciation of a syllable.

Musical or tonic accent is found in words in which syllables are uttered in different pitch levels. Both dynamic and musical stress may be found in Scandinavian languages. •Oriental languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and some African languages have predominantly musical accent.

In some languages a syllable is made prominent due to the lengthening of its vowel. Such accent is called quantitative.

Some linguists such as, for instance G.P.Torsuyev, distinguish also qualitative accent which means that the accented vowel is preserved unobscured.

It is doubtful, however, that the qualitative and quantitative types of word accent exist separately from dynamic stress.

Word accent in most European languages is considered to be predominantly dynamic (English, Russian, French, German, etc.)

When a word pronounced in isolation has only one stressed syllable the prominence of such syllable is obtained not only by its greater loudness and lengthening but also by some change in the pitch of the voice, usually the fail. R. Kingdon called such type of stress kinetic stress. This type of stress may also be referred to strong or primary stress, e.g. "easy".

When a word has two stresses one of them must be kinetic, the other is usually produced with the steady pitch of the voice. This kind of stress may be called high level static. It occurs before kinetic stress and is usually defined as a pretonic or secondary stress. It is the second degree of stress observed in English words. For instance, "representative".

When static stress occurs after kinetic stress it sounds on the low level and is termed partial static stress, or tertiary, e.g. "organize".

From the linguistic point of view the majority of British phoneticians distinguish 3 degrees of word stress: the strongest degree, called primary stress, the second strongest, called secondary, and all the other degrees, called weak.

American descriptivists, such as N.A.Gleason and others distinguish 4 degrees of stress or even more.

2 types of word accent are distinguished: 1. fixed and 2. free.

In certain languages the place of stress in a word is fixed. In French, for instance, it falls on the last syllable, in Czech and Finnish - on the initial syllable and in Russian - on the penultimate syllable. In Russian and English the word stress is irregular, it is free and may fall practically on any syllable in a word.

e.g. yellow, below, sincerity, similarity.

Within free word accent 2 subtypes are distinguished on morphological grounds:

1) constant; 2) shifting.

A constant accent is one which remains on the same morpheme in different grammatical forms of a word or in different derivatives from one and the same root. For e.g.: attend, attended, attendance. A shifting accent is one which falls on different morphemes in different grammatical forms of a word or in different derivatives from one and the same root, e.g.: active, activity, activization.