stress assignment in english

My English Language

English language resources for efl students and teachers.

Syllables and Stress

Syllables and stress are two of the main areas of spoken language. Pronouncing words with the stress on the correct syllables will help you improve your spoken English, make your sentences easier to understand and help you sound more like a native speaker .

English syllables are stress-timed. English is classed as a ‘stress-based’ language, which means the meanings of words can be altered significantly by a change in word stress and sentence stress. This is why it is important to learn how to use word stress in English and develop an understanding of sentence stress and English stress patterns.

The English language is heavily stressed with each word divided into syllables. Here are some examples of English words with different numbers of syllables. These sets of words are followed by a series of examples using the correct stress placement:

Words with one syllable  

The, cold, quite, bed, add, start, hope, clean, trade, green, chair, cat, sign, pea, wish, drive, plant, square, give, wait, law, off, hear, trough, eat, rough, trout, shine, watch, for , out, catch, flight, rain, speech, crab, lion, knot, fixed, slope, reach, trade, light, moon, wash, trend, balm, walk, sew, joke, tribe, brooch

Words with two syllables

Party, special, today, quiet, orange, partner, table, demand, power, retrieve, doctor , engine, diet, transcribe, contain, cabbage , mountain, humour, defend, spatial, special, greedy, exchange, manage, carpet, although, trophy, insist, tremble, balloon, healthy, shower, verbal, business, mortgage, fashion, hover, butcher, magic, broken

Words with three syllables

Fantastic, energy, expensive, wonderful, laughable, badminton, idiot, celery, beautiful, aggression, computer, journalist, horrify , gravity, temptation, dieting, trampoline, industry, financial , distinguished, however, tremendous, justify, inflation, creation, injustice, energise, glittering, tangible, mentalise, laughable, dialect, crustacean, origin

Words are made up of syllables  – image source

Words with four syllables

Understanding, indecisive,  conversation , realistic, moisturising, American , psychology, gregarious, independence, affordable, memorandum, controversial, superior, gymnasium, entrepreneur, traditional, transformation,  remembering , establishment, vegetation, affectionate, acupuncture, invertebrate

Words with five syllables

Organisation, uncontrollable, inspirational, misunderstanding , conversational, opinionated, biological, subordination, determination, sensationalist, refrigerator, haberdashery, hospitality, conservatory, procrastination, disobedience, electrifying, consideration, apologetic, particularly, compartmentalise, hypochondria

Words with six syllables

Responsibility, idiosyncratic, discriminatory, invisibility, capitalisation, extraterrestrial, reliability, autobiography, unimaginable, characteristically, superiority, antibacterial, disciplinarian, environmentalist, materialism, biodiversity, criminalisation, imaginatively, disobediently

Words with seven syllables

Industrialisation, multiculturalism, interdisciplinary, radioactivity, unidentifiable, environmentalism, individuality, vegetarianism , unsatisfactorily, electrocardiogram

English Stress Patterns

When thinking about syllables and stress in English, usually we find that one syllable of a word is stressed more than the others. There are always one or more stressed syllables within a word and this special stress placement helps words and sentences develop their own rhythm .

Syllables and stress patterns in English help to create the sounds , pronunciations and rhythms that we hear all around us.

Word Stress in English

We come to recognise these English syllables and stress patterns in conversations in real life interactions and on the radio and television . Using the correct stressed syllables within a word is an important part of speech and understanding.

Pronouncing words with the right word stress will make your language sound more natural to native speakers. Here are some words from the previous lists with the stressed syllable in bold:

Two syllable words stress patterns:

Qui et,  par ty,  spe cial, to day ,  or ange,  part ner,  ta ble, de mand ,  po wer, re trieve ,  en gine,   di et,  gree dy, ex change , man age, car pet, al though, re lax, com fort

Three syllable words stress patterns:

Fan tas tic,  en ergy, ex pen sive, ag gre sion,  won derful,  laugh able, bad minton,  cel ery, temp ta tion, trampo line,  in dustry, din tin guished, fi nan cial, how ev er, tre men dous, li brary

Four syllable words stress patterns:

Under stand ing, inde cis ive, conver sat ion, rea l is tic,  mois turising, Am er ican, psy cho logy, inde pen dence, entrepren eur, transfor ma tion,  fas cinating, com fortable

Five syllable words stress patterns:

Uncon troll able, inspir at ional, misunder stand ing, conver sat ional, o pin ionated, bio log ical, alpha bet ical, subordi nat ion, re fri gerator,  hab erdashery, hospi tal ity

Six syllable words stress patterns:

Responsi bil ity, idiosyn crat ic, invisi bil ity, capitali sat ion, dis crim inatory or discrimi nat ory, antibac ter ial, superi or ity, autobi og raphy, ma ter ialism, biodi ver sity, criminalis at ion, i mag inatively,

Seven syllable words stress patterns:

Industriali sat ion, multi cul turalism, interdisci plin ary, radioact iv ity, uni den tifiable, environ men talism, individu al ity, vege tar ianism, unsatis fac torily, electro card iogram

Image source

Syllables and Stress Patterns in English Speech

Using clear syllables and stress patterns is an important part of speech. The correct word stress in English is crucial for understanding a word quickly and accurately.

Even if you cannot hear a word well and are not familiar with the context, you can often still work out what the word is, simply from listening to which syllable is stressed.

In the same way, if a learner pronounces a word differently from the accepted norm, it can be hard for a native speaker to understand the word. The word or sentence might be grammatically correct, but if they have used the wrong (or an unexpected) stress pattern or the wrong stressed syllables, it could make it unintelligible to a native.

English Word Stress Rules

Here are some general rules about word stress in English:

• Only vowel sounds are stressed (a,e,i,o,u).
• A general rule is that for two syllable words, nouns and adjectives have the stress on the first syllable, but verbs have the stress on the second syllable.

For example:  ta ble (noun),  spec ial (adjective), de mand  (verb).

• Words ending in ‘ic’, ‘tion’ or ‘sion’ always place their stress on the penultimate (second to last) syllable. (e.g. super son ic, At lan tic, dedi ca tion, at ten tion, transfor ma tion, compre hen sion).
• Words ending in ‘cy’, ‘ty’, ‘gy’ and ‘al’ always place their stress on the third from last syllable. (e.g. acc oun tancy, sin cer ity, chro nol ogy, inspi rat ional, hypo the tical).
• Words ending in ‘sm’ with 3 or fewer syllables have their stress on the first syllable (e.g. pri sm, schi sm, aut ism, bot ulism,  sar casm) unless they are extensions of a stem word. This is often the case with words ending ‘ism’.
• Words ending in ‘ism’ tend to follow the stress rule for the stem word with the ‘ism’ tagged onto the end (e.g. can nibal = can nibalism, ex pre ssion = ex pre ssionism, fem inist = fem inism, oppor tun ist = oppor tun ism).
• Words ending in ‘sm’ with 4 or more syllables tend to have their stress on the second syllable (e.g. en thu siasm, me ta bolism).

Words ending in ‘ous’

• Words ending in ‘ous’ with 2 syllables have their stress on the first syllable (e.g. mon strous, pi ous, an xious, pom pous, zeal ous,  con scious,  fa mous, gra cious, gor geous, jea lous, joy ous).
• English words ending in ‘ous’ with 4 syllables usually have their stress on the second syllable (e.g. gre gar ious, a non ymous, su per fluous, an dro gynous, car niv orous, tem pes tuous, lux ur ious, hil ar ious, con tin uous, cons pic uous). There are some exceptions using different stressed syllables, such as sacri leg ious, which stresses the 3rd syllable.

Words ending in ‘ous’ with 3 or more syllables do not always follow a set stress pattern. Here are some common English words with 3 syllables ending in ‘ous’ and their stress placement:

Words ending in ‘ous’ with stress on first syllable

fab ulous, friv olous, glam orous,  cal culus, du bious, en vious, scan dalous, ser ious, ten uous, chiv alrous, dan gerous, fur ious

Words ending in ‘ous’ with stress on second syllable

e nor mous, au da cious, fa ce tious, di sas trous, fic ti cious, hor ren dous, con ta gious, am bit ious, cou ra geous

Stress can changing the meaning of a word

Remember, where we place the stress in English can change the meaning of a word . This can lead to some funny misunderstandings – and some frustrating conversations!

Words that have the same spelling but a different pronunciation and meaning are called heteronyms . Here are a few examples of words where the stressed syllable changes the meaning of the word:

The word ‘object’ is an example of an English word that can change meaning depending on which syllable is stressed. When the word is pronounced ‘ ob ject’ (with a stress on the first syllable) the word is a noun meaning an ‘item’, ‘purpose’ or ‘person/thing that is the focus’ of a sentence.

For example:

• She handed the lady a rectangular ob ject made of metal
• He was the ob ject of the dog’s affection
• The ring was an ob ject of high value
• The ob ject of the interview was to find the best candidate for the job
• The ob ject was small and shiny – it could have been a diamond ring!

But if the same word is pronounced ‘ob ject ‘ (with the stress on the second syllable) the word is now a verb , meaning ‘to disagree with’ something or someone.

• They ob ject to his constant lateness
• The man ob ject ed to the size of his neighbour’s new conservatory
• She strongly ob jects to being called a liar
• We ob ject to the buildings being demolished
• No one ob ject ed to the proposal for more traffic lights

Original image source

When the word ‘present’ is pronounced ‘ pre sent’ (with the stress on the first syllable) the word is a noun meaning ‘a gift’ or an adjective meaning ‘here / not absent’.

• She handed him a beautifully wrapped pre sent
• The book was a pre sent from their grandparents
• Everyone was pre sent at the meeting

But when the word is pronounced ‘pre sent’ (with the stress on the second syllable) the word is now a verb meaning ‘to introduce’ something or someone, ‘to show’ or ‘to bring to one’s attention’. It can also be used when talking about presenting a TV or radio show (i.e. to be a ‘presenter’).

• May I pre sent Charlotte Smith, our new store manager
• Bruce Forsyth used to pre sent ‘Strictly Come Dancing’
• I’d like to pre sent my research on the breeding habits of frogs
• They pre sent ed the glittering trophy to the winner
• She was pre sent ed with the Oscar
• This new situation pre sents a problem

To present or a present? Image source

Another example of an English word changing meaning depending on where you place the stress is the word ‘project’. This can be the noun when the stressed syllable is at the start – ‘ pro ject’ (a task).

• They started work on the research pro ject immediately
• She looked forward to her next pro ject – repainting the house
• He enjoyed writing restaurant reviews – it was his current passion pro ject

However, this word becomes a verb when the stressed syllables moves to the end – ‘to pro ject ‘ (to throw/launch, to protrude, to cause an image to appear on a surface, or to come across/make an impression).

• The object was pro ject ed into the air at high velocity
• The film will be pro ject ed onto the screen
• The chimney pro jects  3 metres from the roof
• She always pro jects  herself with confidence

Stress patterns in compound words 

Compound words  are single words made up of two distinct parts. They are sometimes hyphenated. Here are examples of stress patterns in compound words in English:

• Compound nouns have the stress on the first part: e.g.  sugar cane,  beet root,  hen house,  trip wire, light house,  news paper, port hole, round about, will power
• Compound adjectives and verbs have the stress on the second part: e.g. whole hearted , green- fingered , old- fashioned , to under stand , to in form , to short- change , to over take

English sentence stress 

Once you understand word stress in English, you need to think about sentence stress . This means deciding which words to stress as part of the sentence as a whole. Stressed syllables can create a distinctive, rhythmic pattern within a sentence. This is how English stress patterns are related to the rhythm of English  and help create the ‘music’ of a language .

English speakers tend to put stress on the most important words in a sentence in order to draw the listener’s attention to them. The most important words are the words that are necessary for the meaning of the sentence. Sentence stress is just as important as word stress for clarity. For example:

‘The cat sat on the mat while eating its favourite food’

The most important words here are: ‘cat’, ‘mat’, ‘eating’ and ‘food’. Even if you only hear those words, you would still be able to understand what is happening in the sentence simply from hearing which words are stressed.

Clearly, it is the nouns and verbs that are the most important parts of the sentence , as these are the ‘content words’ that help with meaning. Content words are usually stressed.

The adjectives , adverbs and conjunctions all add flavour to the sentence, but they are not absolutely necessary to understand the meaning. These ‘helper’ words are usually unstressed.

In our example sentence: ‘The cat sat on the mat while eating its favourite food’ , we have already used the word ‘cat’ so we do not need to emphasise the word ‘its’ (or ‘he/she’ if you want to give the cat a gender), because we already know who is eating the food (i.e. the cat).

English word stress within a sentence

Stress patterns affect words and sentences in English.

The stress on a word (the word stress) is the emphasis placed on that word. In the sentence below, “I never said he ate your chocolate”, the stressed word will change the meaning or implication of the sentence:

Stressing the first word ‘I’ implies that I (the speaker) never said it. It might be true or it might not be true – the point is, I never said it – someone else did.

Stressing the second word ‘never’ emphasises that I never said it. There was never an occasion when I said it (whether it is true or not).

Stressing the third word ‘said’ means that I never  said it. He might have eaten your chocolate, but I didn’t say it. I might have thought it, but I never said it out loud (I may only have implied it).

Stressing the fourth word ‘he’ means I didn’t say it was  him that ate your chocolate, only that someone did.

Stressing the fifth word ‘ate’ means I didn’t say he had eaten it. Perhaps he took it and threw it away or did something else with it.

Stressing the sixth word ‘your’ means it wasn’t your chocolate he ate –  it could have been someone else’s chocolate.

Stressing the seventh word ‘chocolate’ emphases that it was not your chocolate he ate – he ate something else belonging to you.

So the sentence stress in English makes all the difference to the meaning of the whole sentence. The stressed word in the sentence is the one we should pay the most attention to.

Stress placement affects the whole understanding of the English language. This issue is strongly related to the rhythm of English . Getting the right word stress , sentence stress and rhythm leads to the perfect communication of your intended message.

So who ate your chocolate? –  image source

Stressed Vowel Sounds and Weak Vowels in English

The necessary words in an English sentence are stressed more by increasing the length and clarity of the vowel sound .

In contrast, the unnecessary words are stressed less by using a shorter and less clear vowel sound. This is called a ‘weak’ vowel sound .

In fact, sometimes the vowel sound is almost inaudible. For example, the letter ‘a’ in English is often reduced to a muffled ‘uh’ sound. Grammarians call this a ‘shwa’ or /ə/.

You can hear this ‘weak’ vowel sound at the start of the words ‘about’ and ‘attack’ and at the end of the word ‘banana’. They can sound like ‘ubout’, ‘uttack’ and ‘bananuh’ when spoken by a native English speaker. The article ‘a’ as a single word is also unstressed and reduced in this way to a weak ‘uh’ sound.

For example: ‘Is there a shop nearby?’ sounds like ‘Is there-uh shop nearby?’ This shwa can also be heard in other instances, such as in the word ‘and’ when it is used in a sentence. For example: ‘This book is for me and you’ can sound sound like ‘This book is for me un(d) you’.

The reason for this weak stress pattern in English is to help the rhythm and speed of speech . Using this weak ‘uh’ sound for the vowel ‘a’ helps the speaker get ready for the next stressed syllable by keeping the mouth and lips in a neutral position.

To pronounce the ‘a’ more clearly would require a greater opening of the mouth, which would slow the speaker down.

The giraffe on the right holds its mouth and lips in a neutral position, ready to speak again – image source

As English is a stress-timed language , the regular stresses are vital for the rhythm of the language , so the vowel sounds of unstressed words in English often get ‘lost’.

In contrast, syllable-timed languages (such as Spanish) tend to work in the opposite way, stressing the vowel sounds strongly, while the consonants get ‘lost’.

Click on the highlighted text to learn more about how English word stress and sentence stress relates to the  rhythm of English  and intonation in English .

What do you think about syllables and stress in English?

Do you find the syllables and stress patterns a difficult part of learning a new language?

Have you had any funny misunderstandings from stressing the wrong syllable in English? We’d love to hear your stories!

Are there any English words or sentences with odd stressed syllables or difficult stress patterns that you would like advice on?

Can you think of good way to remember or practise correct English word stress and sentence stress?

Do you have any ideas to help EFL students improve their understanding of syllables and stress?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments box.

122 thoughts on “ Syllables and Stress ”

Thank You very Much For this information.. It Helps a lot..

Can you suggest me a song which its lyrics has syllables and pattern?

A good way to practise the syllables and patterns of the English language is to use nursery rhymes and children’s songs. These usually have simple vocabulary so the student can listen to the patterns rather than concentrate on the meaning. http://www.myenglishlanguage.com/2012/08/24/teach-efl-using-nursery-rhymes/

Another useful tool for music fans is pop music from the 1950s and 1960s. Artists like Elvis Presley have simple, effective lyrics that are easy to understand, leaving the listener free to focus on the sounds of the words.

Do any readers have other suggetsions for great listening practice?

Best wishes, Catherine

Thanks so much,its help a lot,now i have cover all the problems on this topic

Hi Utile, I’m really glad you found the article helpful! You might also our articles on Phonology and Speaking/Listening skills 🙂

hi would u tell me how syllables relates to stress , rhythm, and intonation???please

Hi Asmaa, Stress determines which syllable is emphasised the most and the least during speech, rhythm concerns the gaps between syllables during speech and intonation is all about voice pitch (e.g. the voice rises at the end of a sentence to form a question). We will be publishing an article about this topic soon, so watch this space 🙂 Best wishes, Catherine

why is word like nation sounds (sh)?

The ‘tion’ at the end of many English words is thought to have developed from Norman French influence (you can see our History of English section for more about the influence of the Norman Conquest ). English words ending in ‘tion’ are usually pronounced with a ‘sh’ sound but when the letter ‘s’ precedes the ‘tion’, the word is normally pronounced with a ‘ch’ sound. For example, ‘intention’ and ‘position’ have a ‘sh’ sound, but ‘question’ and ‘suggestion’ have a ‘ch’ sound’. I hope this helps 🙂

How would you break procrastination? since I blv the type of English you speak would influence the pronunciation.Which syllable would then be stressed?

Hi Sherin, the word ‘procrastination’ follows the 5 syllable pattern for a word ending in ‘tion’, so the stress comes on the 4th or penultimate syllable – procrastiNAtion (just like the word ‘pronunciAtion’).

thanks for the information.

You’re welcome, Victor. I hope you enjoy the rest of our Phonology section where we have more information on rhythm and intonation in English 🙂 Best wishes, Catherine

Great job here.

Thanks, Dayo. I’m glad you found the article useful.

Hi. which syllable carries the stress in this words? Pronunciation, homogenous, determination, education. Thanks

Hi Olakunle, thanks for your question. These words are pronounced as follows with the stress falling on the letters in bold :

Pronunci a tion, hom o genous, determi na tion, edu ca tion

Ho mo genous (4 syllables) is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable. There is another very similar word, homo gen eous (5 syllables) which is pronounced with the stress on the third syllable. The difference is all in the extra ‘e’.

The words ending in ‘ation’ always have a stress on the penultimate syllable (‘a’)

I hope this helps!

I cant close this page without saying a big thank you. infanct you make me understand this concept to the best of my knowledge.

Thanks for your comment, Idasho – that’s great you found the article so useful. You might also enjoy our Rhythm of English page. 🙂

Thank you so so much. Pls I still need clarity on words ending n with ‘sm” and “ous” Thank you

Thanks for your comment, Amy. We have added a section about words ending in ‘sm’ and ‘ous’ in the English Stress Rules section. I hope this helps.

wow! this is great and really helpful. can there be stress on other parts of speech in a sentence other than nouns and verbs? if yes, examples pls

I’m glad you found the page useful! Normally a sentence stresses the nouns and verbs because these are the most important ‘content’ words. Other words can also be stressed, such as adjectives and adverbs. For example: ‘She bought a big, red car’ – here the adjectives ‘big’ and ‘red’ and the noun ‘car’ would all normally be stressed. In the sentence: ‘They walked quickly to the office’ the adverb ‘quickly’ would also be stressed alongside the verb ‘walked’ and the noun ‘office’.

Structural words, such as conjunctions and prepositions, are rarely stressed. The exception to this is when emphasising a point or correcting information. For example: ‘He cooked chicken and beef for dinner’ – here the most important aspect of the sentence is not that he cooked dinner (that information is expected or already known by the listener), but that he cooked both meats. Stressing the conjunction ‘and’ helps us understand this meaning.

I hope that helps!

hi admin, what about words ending in “ing”. How are they stressed

Hi Ijeoma, the ‘ing’ ending adds another syllable to the word but the ‘ing’ ending is always unstressed. For example: ‘drive’ (1 syllable) becomes ‘ dri ving’ (2 syllables) and ‘ mois turise’ (3 syllables) becomes ‘ mois turising’ (4 syllables).

i really love this. pls what is the stress of the word that end wit MENT example goverment

Thank you very much for this knowledge you imparted on me.. feel like staying here forever

Thanks for your comment, Marcell. I’m really pleased the article helped you! It means a lot to know that learners are benefiting from the content. You might also find our pages on intonation and rhythm of English useful. Good luck with your language learning!

In the word ‘government’ the stress is on the first syllable: gov ernment. This is because ‘ment’ is used here as a suffix and does not change the stress of the original word ( gov ern – gov ernment). ‘Ment’ is often used as a suffix like this to change a verb into a noun, but the new word will always follow its original stress rule – the ‘ment’ is never stressed.

Other examples of this: ‘an nounce ‘ – ‘an nounce ment’, ‘disap point ‘ – ‘disap point ment’, ‘com mit ‘ – ‘com mit ment’, ‘de vel op’ – ‘de vel opment’.

For words ending in ‘ment’ where the ‘ment’ part is not a suffix, the stress can be more difficult to place. Here are some examples: ce ment , fig ment, aug ment , sed iment, par liament, im ped iment, com pliment.

If the word is longer than 2 syllables and the ‘ment’ is not a suffix, the stress will not be on ‘ment’. In words with 2 syllables the stress can be on either the first or last syllable and sometimes this can change the meaning of the word (e.g. ‘ tor ment’ (noun) and ‘to tor ment ‘ (verb).

Can any readers think of any word with more than 2 syllables ending in ‘ment’, where the ‘ment’ is not a suffix and the stress is on the ‘ment’? This is an interesting challenge!

Hope this explanation helps, Abu 🙂

I Really Appreciate These..But According To The Rule,two Syllable Words that is”verb and adjective” Will Have Their stress on the second sylable then why is it GOVern and nt govERN

Hi Ayomide, thanks for your comment! The word ‘govern’ is a verb (‘to govern’) but not an adjective. The related adjective would be ‘governed’. For words with two syllables that are adjectives and verbs the stress will usually be on the second syllable, but this is only a general rule and you will find exceptions.

Some examples of exceptions are: ‘open’ – ‘to open’ (verb) and ‘an open book’ (adjective); ‘better’ – ‘to better’ (verb, ‘to better something’ means to improve on it) and ‘a better book’ (adjective); ‘baby’ – ‘to baby (someone)’ (verb, meaning to pamper/mollycoddle) and ‘a baby sparrow’ (adjective) All these words are also nouns – could this be why they are pronounced on their first syllable? Can anyone think of other two-syllable words that are stressed on the first syllable and are both adjectives and verbs – but are not also nouns?

Thanks……how to divide the word int syllabus

Hi Karima, to divide a word into syllables we break down the word into units of speech. Each syllable contains a vowel sound and the start/end of vowel sounds act as the breaks between syllables. The syllables help in creating the rhythm of the language . It’s worth noting that prefixes and suffixes will always add a syllable (e.g. rewriting = re-writ-ing).

Hi my name is Elizabeth I am confused with the stress placements for these names increase in salary,increase in premium,they contract the dreaded disease at sea,my record was kept in the school,the principal advised the students at assembly

Hi me again can you explain to me about the bound morphemes because i dont understand why they say these words are not examples of bound morphemes . caption,amuse,image

Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for your question. The word ‘increase’ changes its stress placement depending on whether you are using it as as a verb (to in crease ) or a noun (the/an in crease). The verb stresses the second syllable and the noun stresses the first syllable, so this would determine how your first two sentence fragments are stressed. (Incidentally, the stress for the other words here would be sal ary and prem ium) The words ‘contract’ and ‘record’ work in the same way (verbs – ‘to con tract ‘ and ‘to re cord ‘, nouns – ‘a con tract’, ‘a re cord’) In this context, ‘contract’ is a verb, so the stress placement would be: ‘they con tract the dread ed dis ease at sea ‘. In the other sentence, ‘record’ is used as a noun, so the stress placement would be: ‘my re cord was kept at school ‘ The last sentence would have this stress pattern: ‘the prin cipal ad vised the stu dents at as sem bly’. I hope this helps! If you send the full sentences for the first two fragments containing the word ‘increase’ we can determine if they are used as nouns or verbs and therefore the exact stress placement.

Hi again Elizabeth 🙂 A bound morpheme is a word element that cannot stand alone as a word. This includes prefixes and suffixes. Examples of bound morphemes are: ‘re’, ‘pre’, ‘ing’, the pluralising ‘s’, the possessive ‘s’,’er’, est’ and ‘ous’. They can be added to another word to create a new word. For example: pre arrange, re write, copy ing , pencil s , Elizabeth `s , strong er , strong est , danger ous . The words in your question (caption, amuse and image) are not bound morphemes because they can stand alone as words in their own right. I hope this explanation helps!

Thanks so much I have learnt a lot. But how can words such as guarantee, decompose, afternoon, fortunate, inundate, computer, alternate, efficient, galvanize, convocation, habitable, momentary be stressed.

Hi Arinze, I’m glad the page has helped you learn more about syllables and stress 🙂 The words in your list are stressed as follows: guaran tee , decom pose , after noon , for tunate (from the noun ‘ for tune’), in undate, com pu ter, al ternate (verb), al ter nate (adjective), ef fi cient, gal vanize, convo ca tion, ha bitable, mo mentary (from the noun ‘ mo ment’).

How can we stress the words that end with ‘ay’ as in always, ‘lt’ as in result, malt, belt, ‘ce’ as in reproduce, peace, lice, pierce, ‘and’ as in understand, ‘it’ as in permit, vomit …. Hope to hear from you Sir/Ma Thanks

Hi Adebola, Here are the words you requested with the stressed syllable highlighted: al ways, re sult , malt , belt , repro duce , peace , lice , pierce , under stand , per mit (noun), to per mit (verb), vom it. The words with only one syllable (belt, malt, peace, lice, pierce) are irrelevant to the issue of word stress because stress only becomes apparent when there is a contrast with another unstressed syllable within the same word. I hope this helps!

How to stress words or phrases without sending offensive msaage? Please help.

Hi Sara, Are you worried about any words or phrases in particular? If the listener knows you aren’t a native speaker, they will make allowances for any mispronunciations and 99.99% of native speakers won’t be offended if you say something cheeky by mistake, so please don’t worry 🙂

pls help me stress dis words..communicate,investigate,advocate

Hi Taiwo, here is how those words are stressed: com mun icate, in ves tigate, ad vocate

Thanks so much, this really helped me.

I’m glad the page helped, Peace – thanks for taking time to comment 🙂

Please how are words that ends in OR stressed.

Hi Cynthia, Thanks for your question. Words ending in OR usually denote a property of something or someone. For OR words with 2 syllables (e.g. debt or, sail or, auth or, act or, tract or, terr or, error, mirr or, maj or, ten or, don or, sen sor), these nearly always have the stress on the first syllable. One exception is ab hor . It is worth noting that in British English we often have a ‘u’ between the ‘o’ and ‘r’ but American English doesn’t usually have the ‘u’ (e.g. hon our, trem or, pall our, lab our, ard our, glam our, col our).

Words ending in OR that have a root word are stressed the same as the root word. Adding OR to the root is often a way of giving a noun agency. For example: pro ject or, de tect or, gen erator, con duct or, ac cel erator, ad min istrator, rad iator and gov ernor all come from the root verbs: to pro ject , to de tect , to gen erate, to con duct , to ac cel erate, to ad min istrate, to rad iate and to gov ern.

If there is no root word, the stress will often be on the third from last syllable. So if there are 3 syllables in total, it will be on the first syllable e.g. met aphor, mon itor, sen ior). Another example is ‘am bass ador’ with 4 syllables.

You have helped me greatly madam, God bless you

I’m glad you found the page useful – thanks for stopping by!

Thank you so much ..for your very helpful article. Please give us some simple tips on how to perfect the English stress pattern. Almost all the general rules have so many exceptions.

Hi Ralphael, glad you found the page helpful. English is full of exceptions unfortunately, but some simple tips include:

• Stress the most important words in the sentence.
• Modulate your voice to add emotion to important words – don’t keep it flat and monotone.
• Keep stressed syllables slightly longer, higher in pitch and louder than unstressed syllables.
• Identify how many syllables a word has so you can break it up – and remember the stress will fall on a vowel sound.
• Speak clearly and slowly – even without perfect stress patterns, slow and clear voices are much easier to understand.
• Focus on the general rules – you will learn about the exceptions with practice.
• Read and listen to a text at the same time – an audio book with transcript is perfect (also try TV with subtitles) so you can hear how a sentence is pronounced and get used to the sounds and rhythm of English .

God bless you rabbi ..I really wish I am in your college. I have so many questions, some not pertaining to this topic.

Hi, what are relationship between syllables and stress in English language

What is the name of the stress symbol called as in café with the symbol over the (e)? And is it on any keyboard to type? I just noticed it on my sentence above and it was there automatically, how do I get each time I type café?

Hi David, the accent slanting forwards in the word café is called an acute accent (the accent slanting backwards is a grave accent). The right Alt key (sometimes marked Alt Gr) can create this accent when pressed with the e key. The apostrophe key ‘ + e also works in the same way. You can also create the letter e with an acute accent using the shortcut keys Alt + 0233. Let me know if these worked for you!

It didn’t give me what I wanted

I’m sorry you didn’t find the information you needed Felix. Did you have a specific question about syllables and stress you wanted help with?

i have been waiting such an opportunity, thank god it has come; madam, i have been finding it tough to understand stress on my own, though, i got some rules that helps me while dealing with stress like: if a word end with the following; ic, sion, tion, nium, cious, nics, cience, stress mark falls on the second syllable from the end if counting backward eg eduCAtion. stress mark falls on the third syllable from the end if counting backward, these words end with the following; ate, ty, cy, gy. eg, calCUlate. but with all this, i still find it tough to stress most of the polysyllabic words, pls can you help me? words like; educative, agreement,philanthropist, understandable, and several others, i can’t stress them with dictionary aid, pls help me!

Thanks for your message Lorkyaa. The pronunciations for the words you mention are: ed ucative (from the verb ‘to ed ucate’), a gree ment (from ‘to a gree ‘), phil an thropist and under stand able (from ‘to under stand ‘). The word ‘calculate’ is pronounced cal culate with the stress on the first syllable, which is indeed the third from the end!

Hi thanks a lot, it really helped me with some issues

Thank you for the knowledge

Academic has a stress on the second syllable and academic has a stress on the second to last symbol. Academic follows the ic rule. How do I explain that the middle syllable of academy is stressed?

Hi Jenna, We can explain the difference in stress pattern between the adjective ‘academic’ (stress on the penultimate syllable) and its related noun ‘academy’ (stress on 2nd syllable) because these words have different roles in a sentence. Adjectives ending in ‘ic’ will stress the penultimate syllable, but it doesn’t follow that their related nouns will follow this stress pattern. Can any other teachers offer insight into this adjective/noun relationship when it comes to word stress?

Thank you so much. It really helped us. Great job

You’re welcome Sunny, thanks for stopping by 🙂

Such an useful article….concepts are explained so clearly and in a easily understandable way…thanks a lot!! could you throw some light on the stress pattern for the words like chairperson,probably,sentence,insurance,disintegrate,impossible ?

Glad you found it useful, Vani! The stress pattern for these words is as follows: chair person, pro bably, sen tence, in sur ance, dis in tegrate and im poss ible.

Thanks,pls what is the stress word for investigation

Hi Vivian, the word ‘investigation’ has 5 syllables and the stress is placed on the 4th syllable: investi ga tion. The root word here is ‘in ves tigate’ which has stress on the 2nd syllable. The ending ‘ion’ in ‘investigation’ moves the stress to the penultimate syllable.

Good job Catherine, I guess the syllable in accommodation falls on ‘DA’, where does it falls in accommodate? Thanks.

Hi Remi, yes the stress falls on ‘da’ in ‘accommo da tion’ but it falls on the second syllable (‘co’) in ‘a cco mmodate’

I thank God I found this on time

Glad you found the page useful, Promise!

Pls, how can departmental, synonym, university, structure and culture be stress.

Hi Michael, these words are stressed as follows (stressed syllables in bold): depart men tal, syn onym, uni ver sity, struc ture, cul ture

I am glad, thanks a million times for this lesson. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks Catherine, glad i found this article. In this article i learnt that words ending with “ment” like government can be stress on its base word i.e GOvern , but what about Bewilderment?

Hello Tope, glad you found the article useful! Bewilderment also follows this pattern – it is stressed on the second syllable (‘wil’) because the base word is be wil der.

Good contribution, Admin!

Where is the stressed syllable in the word “TRIBALISM”? If asked to underline the stressed syllable, where exactly would the underlining begin and end?

Hi Joseph, the word tribalism is stressed on the first syllable: tri balism

I really appreciate you, I learned a lot

Can you please tell me the real relationship between syllable structure and stress I am missing something out

Hi Thimozana, Stressed syllables are normally longer, louder, clearer and slightly higher in pitch than unstressed syllables. The relationship between syllables and stress will usually follow the patterns explored in this page – for example, nouns with 2 syllables normally have their stress on the first syllable. The English language always has exceptions though, so unfortunately there is no one definitive rule that will work every time.

Hey Catherine, Thank you so much for such a nice explanation. You dedication is superb the way you have been answering the queries of the readers on this platform since 2012. I could read this page continuously for 1 hour without even a single moment of boredom. Hats off to your dedication !!!

Regards Mahender.

Thank you for your kind words, Mahender! I love teaching and helping people understand more about English – hopefully my answers and explanations are useful! It’s great to hear you enjoyed the article so much. Good luck in your language journey!

Am grateful because this article is to rich.. I have been strengthen by this article.

Thanks It really helped

How can I make primary stress in a syllable?

I am want to know more on unstressed vowel sounds and stressed sentence

Hi Yusuff, you might find our page on silent letters useful when learning about unstressed sounds.

I wonder why the word “communicative” stresses on the second syllable.Are there any special rules?

Hi Jocelyn, the word ‘communicative’ comes from the root word ‘communicate’ and keeps the same stress. Both are stressed on the second syllable. Most words that are a variation of another word will continue to be stressed in the same way as their root word.

I need more answer on five syllable words and there primary stress

Thank you very much for this. I really find it helpful.

Please admin do we have five syllable words that have their stress on the fifth syllable? And please can you mention some of the words?

pls list polysyllabic words with stress on penultimate syllable

Thank you for this Great Article…it’s very helpful.

Pls Words ending with “ite”, “phy”, “able”, “ment” can be dressed where?

Please I need a list of five syllable words stressed on the fifth syllables

This is so so helpful! However, I noticed that when words become longer the stress shifts or maybe I am wrong here, look at these examples, forbid – forbidden (do you stress for or bid, transformation – transformational (ma is where the stress fall) right? How about /al-ter-na-ting/?

Hi LG, glad you found the page useful! The longer words will usually have the same stress as their root word, though there are exceptions. In your example, ‘for bid ‘ and ‘for bid den’ both have their stress on the second syllable ‘bid’. ‘Transfor ma tion’ and ‘transfor ma tional’ both have their stress on the third syllable ‘ma’. Words ending in ‘ation’ will stress the ‘a’, instead of their root (e.g. here the root ‘trans form ‘ stresses ‘form’). Your third example, ‘ al ternating’ stresses the first syllable ‘al’, the same as its verb root ‘to al ternate’. There is also an adjective version ‘al ter nate’ which stresses the ‘ter’.

Hi I’m from Nigeria Found dis helpful keep it up

Thanks a lot for this now I can focus on other topics for my JAMB

Thanks for inspiration this articles are very helpful I appreciate

There are three boundary markers: {{angbr IPA|.}} for a syllable break, {{angbr IPA||}} for a minor prosodic break and {{angbr IPA|‖}} for a major prosodic break. The tags ‘minor’ and ‘major’ are intentionally ambiguous. Depending on need, ‘minor’ may vary from a [[foot (prosody)|foot]] break to a break in list-intonation to a continuing–prosodic-unit boundary (equivalent to a comma), and while ‘major’ is often any intonation break, it may be restricted to a final–prosodic-unit boundary (equivalent to a period). The ‘major’ symbol may also be doubled, {{angbr IPA|‖}}, for a stronger break.{{#tag:ref|Russian sources commonly use {{unichar|2E3E|WIGGLY VERTICAL LINE}} (approx. ⌇) for less than a minor break, such as list intonation (e.g. the very slight break between digits in a telephone number).Ž.V. Ganiev (2012) ”Sovremennyj ruskij jazyk.” Flinta/Nauka. A dotted line {{unichar|2E3D|VERTICAL SIX DOTS}} is sometimes seen instead.|group=”note”}}

Hi please be so kind to assist me with the following words i need stress pattern for them for example Character-Ooo Remove? Celebrities’? Currency? Killing? Silly? Waste? Product? Action? Figures? Fight? Please I need to be sure hence I am asking please assist

Hi Sasha, the words in your list are stressed as follows (stress in bold): Cha racter, Re move , Ce leb rities, Cur rency, Kil ling, Si lly, W aste, Pro duct, Ac tion, Fi gures, F ight Note the words ‘waste’ and ‘fight’ only have one syllable.

thanks to this. it helps more than you think

Really helpful ! thanks

I think other site proprietors should take this website as an model, very clean and wonderful user genial style and design, let alone the content. You’re an expert in this topic!

Can you give me a list of 2-syllable words that are nouns when stressed on the first syllable and verbs when stressed on the second? example: PROGress and proGRESS.

To my own simple knowledge of syllable and stress, I think when counting where stress is placed in any word we count from right to left not from left to right. For instance : international =should be stressed in NA that’s interNAtional , Now,when counting we will say international is stress in the 3rd syllable that is counting from right hand side to the left hand side. But in your analysis I discovered you counted from left hand side to right hand side which is ought not to be.

Hi Joanne, here are a few more two-syllable words that follow this pattern: record, permit, content, contest, survey, produce, refuse, protest, conflict

Hi Seun, that’s an interesting thought. I think we count from left to right when counting syllables because we read from left to right in English. It would seem counterintuitive to count from right to left for a native English speaker.

My take on compound word stress is that I go by the rule: Stress falls on what you want to point out in context or what defines the compound word

Therefore it is /OLD fashioned/ and /GREEN fingered/ to me as well as /MARIGOLD Avenue/ and /MARIGOLD Street/. This also brings more clarity.

Similar pattern is the /VICE president/, /MASS graves/, /SELF defence/, /GAZA strip/: the first part distinguishes something from a category. So stress falls on part one, unless I want to point out the other part within a specific context (e.g. saying the Gaza Strip has the geographical shape of a strip of land or you want to go to Marigold Avenue, not Marigold Street).

Any idea what rules may be behind doing it differently?

Hi Steve, thanks for your insights. I think the idea of stressing the other way around is to stress the most important part (or the noun) over the extra description (or the adjective). So to take a couple of your examples, the fact that something is a grave or a form of defence is more important than the fact it is a ‘mass’ grave or ‘self’ defence. So the ‘category’ is the most important part because the other part couldn’t exist on its own to describe the subject. It’s such an interesting topic though and people will always disagree on the ‘right’ pronunciation of some words!

thanks alot

Thank you so much. it really helped me, but how do I stress words with tive, able, ry.

This page helped me with a lot of things. I am so glad I found this page, it is clear and detailed. Thank you ma

Hi help me stress this words 1 Beginning 2 Generous 3 Necessary 4 Reasonable 5 Individual 6 Execution 7 Instigation 8 Television

Hi Don, here are the stress patterns for these words: 1 Be gin ning 2 Gen erous 3 Ne cessary 4 Rea sonable 5 Indi vid ual 6 Exe cu tion 7 Insti ga tion 8 Tele vi sion

invaluable resources in this domain, especially non-native learners. I hope in near future to add audio clips!

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Word stress in Eng lish

Six basic rules of word stress, cor rect ly place the ton ic ac cent on mul ti- syl lable words in eng lish..

The six essential rules of word stress or accentuation in English.

3. the "-ion" rule: strong endings. this rule takes priority over all other rules., prefixes .

Mr. William Archer, after a long list of seemingly arbitrary accentuations in the English language ( America To-Day , p. 193), goes on to say: `But the larger our list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter.' It will be the object of the following pages to show that there are principles, and that the `capriciousness' is merely the natural consequences of the fact that there is not one single principle, but several principles working sometimes against each other. (p. 160)

These rules ... are ordered, and apply in a cycle, first to the smallest constituents (that is, lexical morphemes), then to the next larger ones, and so on, until the largest domain of phonetic processes is reached .... essentiallly the same rules apply both inside and outside the word. Thus ... a single cycle of transformational rules ... by repeated application, determines the phonetic structure of a complex form.

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Free English Lessons

Sentence stress – video.

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In this lesson, you can learn about sentence stress in English.

Stress means that you pronounce some syllables more strongly than others. there are many different types of stress in english, and stress is used in many different ways., pronouncing sentence stress correctly will make a big difference to how you pronounce english . you’ll immediately sound clearer and more natural when you speak english., quiz: sentence stress.

Now, test your understanding of the lesson with this 16-question quiz.

You’ll see your score at the end. After you finish, click ‘view questions’ to see the correct answers and explanations.

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1 . Question

Look at a short dialogue:

A: “Most milk comes from horses.” B: “No, most milk comes from cows.”

Which word is likely to have more stress than any other?

• Milk (in A's sentence)
• Milk (in B's sentence)

2 . Question

Imagine that you hear: “Did YOU say that?”

The speaker adds extra stress to the word ‘you’. What does this mean? Choose the best option.

• The speaker is surprised, because s/he thought that someone else said that.
• The speaker is surprised, because s/he thinks that you are too shy to say that.
• The speaker cannot believe that anyone said that.
• The speaker is asking whether you said that or not.

3 . Question

Imagine that you hear: “The train left at nine in the MORNING?” The speaker adds extra stress to the word ‘morning’. What does the speaker mean? Choose the best option.

• The speaker thought that the train left at nine in the evening.
• The speaker thought that the train left earlier than nine in the morning.
• The speaker is unhappy that s/he has missed the train.
• The speaker did not know that the train left at nine.

4 . Question

A: “Here’s your key. Your room is on the 14th floor.” B: “There must be some mistake. I asked for a room on the ground floor.”

Which word is likely to have more stress than the others?

5 . Question

Write one word in the space to complete the sentence.

Sentences contain words, which carry the meaning of the sentence are are usually stressed, and grammar words, which connect the parts of the sentence, and are not usually stressed.

6 . Question

You should pronounce stressed syllables more clearly, more slowly, and more than unstressed syllables.

7 . Question

Pronouncing sentence stress well depends on creating clear between stressed and unstressed syllables.

8 . Question

You can add extra stress to a word if you want to emphasise one particular idea, if you want to contrast two ideas, or if you want to correct or someone else.

9 . Question

True or false: if a sentence is used by different people in different contexts, the same words will always be stressed.

10 . Question

True or false: there are other kinds of stress besides sentence stress.

11 . Question

True or false: ‘grammar’ words in a sentence (articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc.) are never stressed.

12 . Question

True or false: practising sentence stress can improve your listening comprehension in English.

13 . Question

In general, which parts of speech are more likely to be content words? Choose as many answers as you think are right.

• Auxiliary verbs
• Prepositions
• Conjunctions

14 . Question

Which words in the following sentence are likely to be grammar words?

“He told me he would be here at ten.”

Choose as many answers as you think are right.

15 . Question

Which words in the following sentence are likely to be content words?

“We need some fruit for breakfast tomorrow.”

16 . Question

Which words are most likely to be stressed in this sentence?

“My sister hasn’t called me for ages.”

• hasn't

1. Introduction to Sentence Stress

Look at a sentence:

• How about we go for a coffee this afternoon?

In this sentence, there are two kinds of words; let’s call them content words and grammar words.

Content words give you the meaning of the sentence. The content words here are go, coffee, this and afternoon. If you don’t hear these words, you won’t understand the sentence.

Grammar words don’t carry meaning. They’re grammatically necessary; they connect the content words together.

Think about it this way: if someone comes up to you and says, “Go coffee this afternoon?” you can understand what they mean, even if it sounds a bit weird.

If someone comes up to you and says, “How about we for a this?” you’ll have no idea what they’re talking about.

So, why are we talking about this? Aren’t we supposed to be talking about sentence stress?

The difference between content words and grammar words is the foundation of sentence stress.

Content words are usually stressed, and grammar words are usually unstressed.

Listen and try to hear the stress.

Can you read the sentence with the stress?

• how about we GO for a COFFEE THIS AFTERNOON?

Let’s look at one more example sentence:

• My phone’s broken, so I’m going to buy a new one.

Which words do you think are content words, and which words are grammar words?

Before you answer, you should know one important point.

Sentence stress is flexible, and the line between content words and grammar words isn’t fixed, so the answers we show you are just the most probable ones; there are other possibilities.

So, think about your sentence, and which words you think are content words or grammar words. Pause the video if you want more thinking time!

Ready? Here’s our suggestion:

• my PHONE’S BROKEN, so i’m GOING to BUY a NEW ONE.

Again, think about it like this: if you hear the content words, you can understand the meaning of the sentence: “phone broken, going buy new one.”

If you hear only the grammar words, it doesn’t make any sense at all: “my so I’m to a.”

By the way, this idea can also really help your English listening.

You can see that you don’t need to hear every word to understand the meaning of a sentence.

If you focus on listening to the stressed words, you can understand someone’s meaning, even if you don’t hear the unstressed grammar words.

Anyway, let’s practice this sentence. Can you say the sentence with the stress?

Okay, now you know the basics about sentence stress. Let’s see what you can do!

2. Recognising and Pronouncing Sentence Stress

Look at three sentences:

• Could you get some bread from the bakery on your way here?
• I heard that the weather’s going to be bad tomorrow.
• He has no idea what he wants to do after he graduates.

In this section, you’re going to find the stressed words in these sentences, and then we’ll practice pronouncing them together.

So, first of all, pause the video, and find the stressed words in these three sentences. Take as much time as you need, and start again when you’re ready.

Okay? Let’s look at our suggested answers. Remember that other answers are possible:

• could you GET some BREAD from the BAKERY on your WAY HERE?
• i HEARD that the WEATHER’S going to be BAD TOMORROW.
• he has NO IDEA WHAT he WANTS to DO AFTER he GRADUATES.

Next, let’s try reading the sentences together. Repeat after me, and pay attention to the stress:

Let’s do the next one:

Let’s try the third sentence:

How was that? Easy? Difficult? Remember that you can go back and review this section as many times as you need to.

You can also adjust the video speed to make it easier or more difficult. For example, if you find it difficult, watch this section again at point seven five or point five speed. Practice at a lower speed until you can pronounce the stress easily. Then, try again at full speed!

Now, to pronounce sentence stress well, you also need to pay attention to the unstressed words in a sentence.

Why is this?

3. Stressed vs. Unstressed Contrast

Here’s a very important point about sentence stress, or any stress .

Stress is about contrast.

You heard before that stress means pronouncing some syllables more loudly, more clearly, and more slowly than others.

That means that stress is relative. To pronounce stress clearly, you need a clear contrast between your stressed and unstressed syllables.

So, when you’re practicing sentence stress, you should pay equal attention to the unstressed words.

Let’s look at an example, using a sentence you saw before:

You need to pronounce the stressed words more strongly, and you need to pronounce the unstressed words at a lower volume and a higher speed.

Often, unstressed words have a weak pronunciation. Knowing how to pronounce weak forms is also important if you want to pronounce sentence stress clearly.

Let’s try something. Read the sentence. Make the stressed words as clear as possible. Exaggerate the stress a little bit.

Pronounce the unstressed words as fast as you can. Try to get a really clear contrast between the stressed and unstressed words.

Listen first, then you try:

Let’s do one more example, with a new sentence. Look at the sentence:

• i HAVEN’T HEARD ANYTHING from them SINCE their WEDDING.

Try reading the sentence.

It’s worth spending some time practicing this contrast: if you can pronounce the contrast between stressed and unstressed sounds clearly, your English will sound much better and more natural.

We were exaggerating the contrast slightly, so that you could hear it clearly. It’s fine to do this while you’re practicing!

You can go back and review this section, or review the previous section and focus on contrast in your pronunciation.

What’s next? Well, you heard before that sentence stress is flexible.

Let’s talk more about that!

4. Shifting Stress and Tonic Stress

Mikey: Hello, what can I get you?

Kae: One chocolate and raspberry muffin and a small americano with milk, please.

M: Sorry, you said a CHOCOLATE and raspberry muffin?

K: That’s right!

M: Here you are!

K: I said a chocolate RASPBERRY muffin.

M: Oh, I am sorry! I thought you said chocolate and STRAWBERRY.

K: Also, is there milk in this coffee?

M: Did you want MILK? I thought you said an americano with SUGAR!

K: No, with MILK!

M: I’ll make you a new one. One cappuccino with milk coming up.

K: No, not CAPPUCINO! AMERICANO!

M: Right, right, just a minute.

Sentence stress is flexible. It doesn’t follow strict rules; instead, it depends on the meaning you want to express.

Sometimes, one idea in your sentence is more important than others. You’ll add extra stress to this idea.

Why does this happen?

One reason is to contradict or correct someone. For example:

M: Buenos Aires is the capital of China.

K: No, Mikey. Buenos Aires is the capital of ARGENTINA. BEIJING is the capital of China.

M: Two plus two is five.

K: No, Mikey. Two plus two is FOUR.

M: Carrots are green.

K: No, Mikey. Carrots are ORANGE.

Another reason to add extra stress is that you want to contrast two ideas. For example:

• i didn’t want CAPPUCINO; i wanted an AMERICANO.
• she doesn’t live in PARIS; she lives in ROME.
• the flight left at TEN? but i thought it left at TWELVE!

Finally, you might add extra stress just to emphasise one idea in your sentence, like this:

• ARE you going to london tomorrow? –> Meaning: I’m emphasising the question, because I want a yes or no answer from you.
• are YOU going to london tomorrow? –> Meaning: I know some other people are going to London, but I want to know if you are going. This stress pattern is often used to show surprise.
• are you going to london TOMORROW? –> Meaning: I know you’re going to London on another day, but I want to know specifically about tomorrow. Again, this suggests that I’m surprised.

In all of these cases, you add extra stress to one word in the sentence.

This doesn’t replace ‘regular’ sentence stress. Instead, it’s like an extra layer on top of it.

In the question Are you going to London tomorrow , the content words going, London and tomorrow are stressed. If you want to add stress to emphasise one idea, then you add this on top of the existing stress.

For example:

• are YOU going to london tomorrow?

In this case, you add ‘regular’ sentence stress to going, London and tomorrow, and ‘extra’ sentence stress to you.

The ‘extra’ stress should be stronger than the ‘regular’ stress. Try it! Repeat after me:

Note that this ‘extra’ stress can be anywhere, including on grammar words.

So now, you know the most important points about sentence stress in English.

Thanks for watching!

Keep practicing your pronunciation with another free lesson from Oxford Online English: English Pronunciation Secrets .

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Sentence Stress

Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Like word stress , sentence stress can help you to understand spoken English, even rapid spoken English.

Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or "beat". You remember that word stress is accent on one syllable within a word . Sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence .

Most sentences have two basic types of word:

• content words Content words are the keywords of a sentence. They are the important words that carry the meaning or sense—the real content.
• structure words Structure words are not very important words. They are small, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form—its structure.

If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will probably still understand the sentence.

If you remove the content words from a sentence, you will not understand the sentence. The sentence has no sense or meaning.

Imagine that you receive this telegram message:

This sentence is not complete. It is not a "grammatically correct" sentence. But you probably understand it. These 4 words communicate very well. Somebody wants you to sell their car for them because they have gone to France . We can add a few words:

The new words do not really add any more information. But they make the message more correct grammatically. We can add even more words to make one complete, grammatically correct sentence. But the information is basically the same :

In our sentence, the 4 keywords (sell, car, gone, France) are accentuated or stressed .

Why is this important for pronunciation? It is important because it adds "music" to the language. It is the rhythm of the English language. It changes the speed at which we speak (and listen to) the language. The time between each stressed word is the same.

In our sentence, there is 1 syllable between SELL and CAR and 3 syllables between CAR and GONE. But the time ( t ) between SELL and CAR and between CAR and GONE is the same. We maintain a constant beat on the stressed words. To do this, we say "my" more slowly , and "because I've" more quickly . We change the speed of the small structure words so that the rhythm of the key content words stays the same.

I am a proFESsional phoTOgrapher whose MAIN INterest is to TAKE SPEcial, BLACK and WHITE PHOtographs that exHIBit ABstract MEANings in their photoGRAPHic STRUCture.

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What Is Stress?

Your Body's Response to a Situation That Requires Attention or Action

Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

• Identifying
• Next in How Stress Impacts Your Health Guide How to Recognize Burnout Symptoms

Stress can be defined as any type of change that causes physical , emotional, or psychological strain. Stress is your body's response to anything that requires attention or action. 

Everyone experiences stress to some degree. The way you respond to stress, however, makes a big difference to your overall well-being.

Verywell / Brianna Gilmartin

Sometimes, the best way to manage your stress involves changing your situation. At other times, the best strategy involves changing the way you respond to the situation.

Developing a clear understanding of how stress impacts your physical and mental health is important. It's also important to recognize how your mental and physical health affects your stress level.

Watch Now: 5 Ways Stress Can Cause Weight Gain

Signs of stress.

Stress can be short-term or long-term. Both can lead to a variety of symptoms, but chronic stress can take a serious toll on the body over time and have long-lasting health effects.

Some common signs of stress include:

• Changes in mood
• Clammy or sweaty palms
• Decreased sex drive
• Difficulty sleeping
• Digestive problems
• Feeling anxious
• Frequent sickness
• Grinding teeth
• Muscle tension, especially in the neck and shoulders
• Physical aches and pains
• Racing heartbeat

Identifying Stress

What does stress feel like? What does stress feel like? It often contributes to irritability, fear, overwork, and frustration. You may feel physically exhausted, worn out, and unable to cope.

Stress is not always easy to recognize, but there are some ways to identify some signs that you might be experiencing too much pressure. Sometimes stress can come from an obvious source, but sometimes even small daily stresses from work, school, family, and friends can take a toll on your mind and body.

If you think stress might be affecting you, there are a few things you can watch for:

• Psychological signs such as difficulty concentrating, worrying, anxiety, and trouble remembering
• Emotional signs such as being angry, irritated, moody, or frustrated
• Physical signs such as high blood pressure, changes in weight, frequent colds or infections, and changes in the menstrual cycle and libido
• Behavioral signs such as poor self-care, not having time for the things you enjoy, or relying on drugs and alcohol to cope

Stress vs. Anxiety

Stress can sometimes be mistaken for anxiety, and experiencing a great deal of stress can contribute to feelings of anxiety. Experiencing anxiety can make it more difficult to cope with stress and may contribute to other health issues, including increased depression, susceptibility to illness, and digestive problems.

Stress and anxiety contribute to nervousness, poor sleep, high blood pressure , muscle tension, and excess worry. In most cases, stress is caused by external events, while anxiety is caused by your internal reaction to stress. Stress may go away once the threat or the situation resolves, whereas anxiety may persist even after the original stressor is gone.

Causes of Stress

There are many different things in life that can cause stress. Some of the main sources of stress include work, finances, relationships, parenting, and day-to-day inconveniences.

Stress can trigger the body’s response to a perceived threat or danger, known as the fight-or-flight response .   During this reaction, certain hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released. This speeds the heart rate, slows digestion, shunts blood flow to major muscle groups, and changes various other autonomic nervous functions, giving the body a burst of energy and strength.

Originally named for its ability to enable us to physically fight or run away when faced with danger, the fight-or-flight response is now activated in situations where neither response is appropriate—like in traffic or during a stressful day at work.

When the perceived threat is gone, systems are designed to return to normal function via the relaxation response .   But in cases of chronic stress, the relaxation response doesn't occur often enough, and being in a near-constant state of fight-or-flight can cause damage to the body.

Stress can also lead to some unhealthy habits that have a negative impact on your health. For example, many people cope with stress by eating too much or by smoking. These unhealthy habits damage the body and create bigger problems in the long-term.  

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Types of Stress

Not all types of stress are harmful or even negative. Some of the different types of stress that you might experience include:

• Acute stress : Acute stress is a very short-term type of stress that can either be positive or more distressing; this is the type of stress we most often encounter in day-to-day life.
• Chronic stress : Chronic stress is stress that seems never-ending and inescapable, like the stress of a bad marriage or an extremely taxing job; chronic stress can also stem from traumatic experiences and childhood trauma.
• Episodic acute stress : Episodic acute stress is acute stress that seems to run rampant and be a way of life, creating a life of ongoing distress.
• Eustress : Eustress is fun and exciting. It's known as a positive type of stress that can keep you energized. It's associated with surges of adrenaline, such as when you are skiing or racing to meet a deadline. 

4 Main Types of Stress:

The main harmful types of stress are acute stress, chronic stress, and episodic acute stress. Acute stress is usually brief, chronic stress is prolonged, and episodic acute stress is short-term but frequent. Positive stress, known as eustress, can be fun and exciting, but it can also take a toll.

Impact of Stress

Stress can have several effects on your health and well-being. It can make it more challenging to deal with life's daily hassles, affect your interpersonal relationships, and have detrimental effects on your health. The connection between your mind and body is apparent when you examine stress's impact on your life.

Feeling stressed over a relationship, money, or living situation can create physical health issues. The inverse is also true. Health problems, whether you're dealing with high blood pressure or diabetes , will also affect your stress level and mental health. When your brain experiences high degrees of stress , your body reacts accordingly.

Serious acute stress, like being involved in a natural disaster or getting into a verbal altercation, can trigger heart attacks, arrhythmias, and even sudden death. However, this happens mostly in individuals who already have heart disease.

Stress also takes an emotional toll. While some stress may produce feelings of mild anxiety or frustration, prolonged stress can also lead to burnout , anxiety disorders , and depression.

Chronic stress can have a serious impact on your health as well. If you experience chronic stress, your autonomic nervous system will be overactive, which is likely to damage your body.

Stress-Influenced Conditions

• Heart disease
• Hyperthyroidism
• Sexual dysfunction
• Tooth and gum disease

Treatments for Stress

Stress is not a distinct medical diagnosis and there is no single, specific treatment for it. Treatment for stress focuses on changing the situation, developing stress coping skills , implementing relaxation techniques, and treating symptoms or conditions that may have been caused by chronic stress.

Some interventions that may be helpful include therapy, medication, and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Press Play for Advice On Managing Stress

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast featuring professor Elissa Epel, shares ways to manage stress. Click below to listen now.

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Psychotherapy

Some forms of therapy that may be particularly helpful in addressing symptoms of stress including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) . CBT focuses on helping people identify and change negative thinking patterns, while MBSR utilizes meditation and mindfulness to help reduce stress levels.

Medication may sometimes be prescribed to address some specific symptoms that are related to stress. Such medications may include sleep aids, antacids, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety medications.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Some complementary approaches that may also be helpful for reducing stress include acupuncture, aromatherapy, massage, yoga, and meditation .

Coping With Stress

Although stress is inevitable, it can be manageable. When you understand the toll it takes on you and the steps to combat stress, you can take charge of your health and reduce the impact stress has on your life.

• Learn to recognize the signs of burnout. High levels of stress may place you at a high risk of burnout. Burnout can leave you feeling exhausted and apathetic about your job.   When you start to feel symptoms of emotional exhaustion, it's a sign that you need to find a way to get a handle on your stress.
• Try to get regular exercise. Physical activity has a big impact on your brain and your body . Whether you enjoy Tai Chi or you want to begin jogging, exercise reduces stress and improves many symptoms associated with mental illness.  
• Take care of yourself. Incorporating regular self-care activities into your daily life is essential to stress management. Learn how to take care of your mind, body, and spirit and discover how to equip yourself to live your best life.  
• Practice mindfulness in your life. Mindfulness isn't just something you practice for 10 minutes each day. It can also be a way of life. Discover how to live more mindfully throughout your day so you can become more awake and conscious throughout your life.  

If you or a loved one are struggling with stress, contact the  Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline  at 1-800-662-4357 for information on support and treatment facilities in your area.

For more mental health resources, see our  National Helpline Database .

Cleveland Clinic. Stress .

National institute of Mental Health. I'm so stressed out! Fact sheet .

Goldstein DS. Adrenal responses to stress .  Cell Mol Neurobiol . 2010;30(8):1433–1440. doi:10.1007/s10571-010-9606-9

Stahl JE, Dossett ML, LaJoie AS, et al. Relaxation response and resiliency training and its effect on healthcare resource utilization [published correction appears in PLoS One . 2017 Feb 21;12 (2):e0172874].  PLoS One . 2015;10(10):e0140212. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0140212

American Heart Association. Stress and Heart Health.

Chi JS, Kloner RA. Stress and myocardial infarction .  Heart . 2003;89(5):475–476. doi:10.1136/heart.89.5.475

Salvagioni DAJ, Melanda FN, Mesas AE, González AD, Gabani FL, Andrade SM. Physical, psychological and occupational consequences of job burnout: A systematic review of prospective studies .  PLoS One . 2017;12(10):e0185781. Published 2017 Oct 4. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0185781

Bitonte RA, DeSanto DJ 2nd. Mandatory physical exercise for the prevention of mental illness in medical students .  Ment Illn . 2014;6(2):5549. doi:10.4081/mi.2014.5549

Ayala EE, Winseman JS, Johnsen RD, Mason HRC. U.S. medical students who engage in self-care report less stress and higher quality of life .  BMC Med Educ . 2018;18(1):189. doi:10.1186/s12909-018-1296-x

Richards KC, Campenni CE, Muse-Burke JL. Self-care and well-being in mental health professionals: The mediating effects of self-awareness and mindfulness .  J Ment Health Couns . 2010;32(3):247. doi:10.17744/mehc.32.3.0n31v88304423806.

American Psychological Association. 2015 Stress in America .

Krantz DS, Whittaker KS, Sheps DS.  Psychosocial risk factors for coronary heart disease: Pathophysiologic mechanisms .  In R. Allan & J. Fisher,  Heart and mind: The practice of cardiac psychology. American Psychological Association; 2011:91-113. doi:10.1037/13086-004

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

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Testing hypotheses about compound stress assignment in English: a corpus-based investigation

• Ingo Plag , Gero Kunter and Sabine Lappe

This paper tests three factors that have been held to be responsible for the variable stress behavior of noun-noun constructs in English: argument structure, semantics, and analogy. In a large-scale investigation of some 4500 compounds extracted from the CELEX lexical database (Baayen et al. 1995), we show that traditional claims about noun-noun stress cannot be upheld. Argument structure plays a role only with synthetic compounds ending in the agentive suffix - er . The semantic categories and relations assumed in the literature to trigger rightward stress do not show the expected effects. As an alternative to the rule-based approaches, the data were modeled computationally and probabilistically using a memory-based analogical algorithm (TiMBL 5.1) and logistic regression, respectively. It turns out that probabilistic models and the analogical algorithm are more successful in predicting stress assignment correctly than any of the rules proposed in the literature. Furthermore, the results of the analogical modeling suggest that the left and right constituent are the most important factor in compound stress assignment. This is in line with recent findings on the semi-regular behavior of compounds in other languages.

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5 Is Word Structure Relevant for Stress Assignment?

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This chapter compares two different positions with respect to the relevance of structure in terms of stress assignment in English derived words: the “classic derivational” and the optimality theory (OT) approach. The central issue is how to account for the preservation of stress (and vowel quality) in English affixation and whether the structure of derived words plays any role in the process. The first view presented in this chapter is couched in the framework of Distributed Morphology.

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Lexical stress assignment preferences in L2 German

Mary grantham o’brien.

School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

Ross Sundberg

Writing Centre, McGill University, Montréal, Canada

Assigning stress to the appropriate syllable is consequential for being understood. Despite the importance, second language (L2) learners’ stress assignment is often incorrect, being affected by their first language (L1). Beyond the L1, learners’ lexical stress assignment may depend on analogy with other words in their lexicon. The current study investigates the respective roles of the L1 (English, French) and analogy in L2 German lexical stress assignment. Because English, like German, has variable stress assignment and French does not, participants included English- and French-speaking German L2 learners who assigned stress to German nonsense words in a perceptual preference and a production task. Results suggest a role of the L1, with English-speaking German L2 learners performing more like L1 German speakers. While French-speaking German L2 learners’ performance could not be predicted by other factors, L2 German proficiency and the ability to produce analogous words were predictive of English-speaking German L2 learners’ production performance.

1. Introduction

Stress assignment distinguishes pairs of English words like ˈimport (a noun) and imˈport (a verb). English speakers often lengthen stressed syllables and reduce the vowels in unstressed syllables to indicate which syllable receives the emphasis in a given word, which, in turn, constrains lexical access for the listener ( Cooper et al. 2002 ). Lexical stress also distinguishes words in other languages including Spanish (e.g., Soto-Faraco et al. 2001 ), Dutch ( Donselaar et al. 2005 ) and German (e.g., Wiese 2000 ). For learners of a second language (L2), incorrect stress assignment can present challenges to being understood ( Bond and Small 1983 ; van Heuven 2008 ), especially when coupled with a foreign accent ( Caspers 2010 ).

Researchers often attribute L2 stress assignment difficulties to a speaker’s first language (L1). That is, speakers of languages that exploit stress to distinguish meaning (e.g., Spanish, English, German) are better able to perceive stress than those whose L1s (e.g., French, Finnish, Hungarian) do not rely on stress for meaning (e.g., Dupoux et al. 1997 ). L1 differences may carry over to production, with speakers sometimes using stress assignment cues and patterns from their L1s (e.g., Yoon and Heschuk 2011 ; Zhang et al. 2008 ). In the current study we investigate whether participants whose L1s differ in the extent to which stress is contrastive, English and French, diverge in their perception and production of L2 German stress. Specifically, we examine stress assignment preferences among Canadian English and Canadian French learners of L2 German and compare them to those of L1 German speakers. Whereas lexical stress assignment in English and German is variable and rule-governed, with stress distinguishing meaning and falling on one of the last three syllables (e.g., Wiese 2000 ), French words are not distinguished on the basis of stress assignment, and stress always falls on the last syllable ( Walker 1984 ). Acoustically, lexical stress in English and German is realized via a number of possible cues including duration, pitch, and intensity (e.g., Fry 1958 ). In French, final syllables are longer in duration than other syllables in a word ( Walker 1984 ). We might, therefore, expect that L1 English and French speakers would assign stress differently from one another in their L2 German.

Because stress assignment is a lexical phenomenon, it is quite possible that factors related to the lexicon play a role in an L2 learners’ ability to assign stress. While it may be possible for L2 learners to store and / or assign lexical stress to each word independently, they may rely on similarities across words in the L2. As such, they may assign stress similarly to analogous words within the L2. Participants across a range of L1s and L2s have been shown to rely on analogy in the assignment of lexical stress (e.g., Aske 1990 ; Bullock and Lord 2003 ). Because German lexical stress is morphophonologically governed, relying on analogy may be an effective means of assigning lexical stress.

Guion (2005) notes that research into L2 lexical stress assignment falls into three main areas: the role of syllable structure (e.g., heavy syllables may attract stress), the importance of lexical class (e.g., stress may assigned differently to nouns and verbs), and analogical extension on the basis of phonological similarity (i.e., words that rhyme tend to be stressed similarly). Unlike these previous studies, the current research investigates the role of analogical extension on the basis of morphological similarity (i.e., the presence of particular suffixes that govern lexical stress assignment). In this study we use nonsense words as a window into the larger stress assignment system for participants from three L1 backgrounds: English, French, and German. We compare how English-speaking and French-speaking learners of German assign stress to real German words in a perceptual task. By extension, their preferences about where stress should fall in nonsense words – both in a perceptual task and in a production task – provide insights into learners’ stress assignment systems. In doing so, we can also investigate whether learners assign stress systematically, to groups of words that share features (e.g., suffixes), or lexically. If learners assign stress lexically, they will show variability within words containing the same suffix. For example, the following words ending in -ung should be stressed on the penultimate syllable: Faktu ˈ rierung (‘billing’) , Etiket ˈ tierung (‘labeling’) , Fokus ˈ sierung (‘convergence’) , Digitali ˈ sierung (‘digitization’). Learners who assign stress to syllables other than the penultimate syllable in any of these words are not making use of analogy and are instead assigning stress to the words lexically. By examining additional factors including German proficiency, age of learning, and the length of residence in a German speaking country, we can probe the role of experience in lexical stress assignment.

2. Literature review

2.1. perceiving l2 lexical stress.

Much of the research into the perception of L2 prosody (i.e., lexical and sentential stress, rhythm, and intonation) has demonstrated that participants’ perception is shaped by the L1 prosodic system. Recent studies have shown that L2 learners differ in their abilities to perceive prosodic cues that are not contrastive in their L1 (e.g., tones in Braun et al. 2014 ; Braun and Johnson, 2011 ; So and Best 2014 ; consonant length in Hayes-Harb and Masuda 2008 ). Like other prosodic features, lexical stress perception may be shaped by the L1. Research by Archibald (1992 , 1993 , 1998 demonstrated that native speakers of Polish, Spanish, and Hungarian perceive L2 English stress differently on the basis of the features (e.g., vowel quality, duration) that are relevant to lexical stress assignment in their L1s. Some research has shown relative success among L2 learners when lexical stress is assigned similarly across the L1 and the L2. Cooper et al. (2002) found that Dutch learners of English perceived English stress similarly to native English speakers, as stress is contrastive in Dutch and is signaled via similar acoustic cues.

Some speakers may be unable to perceive lexical stress when it is not contrastive in their L1. This has been referred to as “stress deafness” ( Dupoux et al. 1997 ; Dupoux et al. 2008 ; Peperkamp and Dupoux, 2002 ). Participants in these studies have carried out tasks (i.e., AX and ABX tasks) requiring them to determine whether two words are different on the basis of lexical stress assignment. The French listeners in Dupoux et al. (1997) were less accurate than Spanish listeners in their ability to perceive lexical stress in Dutch nonsense words in an ABX task. Similarly, French listeners in Dupoux et al. (2008) were unable to perceive differences in lexical stress assignment in their L2 Spanish, causing the researchers to conclude that native French speakers cannot encode word stress in short-term memory. Speakers of other languages also have difficulty perceiving lexical stress. For example, the Mandarin – but not the Korean – learners of English in Lin et al. (2014) were able to use acoustic cues to lexical stress assignment in a lexical decision task. Like English, Mandarin makes use of acoustic cues (pitch) to distinguish meaning.

It may be that what appears to be an inability to perceive lexical is affected by the task that listeners perform. Tremblay (2009) demonstrated task effects in her study investigating Canadian French speakers’ ability to perceive English lexical stress. Performance varied depending on whether the tokens were spoken by a single speaker vs. multiple speakers. Whereas Dupoux et al. (2008) used tasks that required a relatively high processing load (i.e., multiple voices for stimuli) without investigating participants’ improvement over the course of the study, Tremblay (2009) manipulated processing load by making use of phonetically variable (i.e., three different speakers for each token) and phonetically invariable tokens (i.e., three tokens spoken by one speaker) and tracked participants’ performance over time. The Canadian French listeners were successful in encoding lexical stress in an AXB task in which the tokens did not contain phonetic variability; however, when variability was added, participants responded more slowly and less accurately. Performance improved as the number of trials increased.

2.2. Producing L2 lexical stress

Lexical stress assignment errors are common in production, and a few studies have demonstrated evidence of direct L1 transfer. The single native speaker of French in Yoon and Heshuk (2011) produced three-, four-, and five-syllable L2 English words with a French-like stress pattern (i.e., stress on the final syllable) regardless of the frequency of the word being produced. Nonetheless, other studies have demonstrated a relative lack of L1 effects, such as learners producing stress on a default syllable, regardless of their L1 stress assignment patterns. For example, the L2 learners of Dutch in Caspers and Kepinska (2011) who spoke French, Mandarin, Polish and Hungarian as their L1s, produced stress on the same default syllable when assigning stress in their L2 Dutch. Other studies are less straightforward. In his investigation into French-English bilinguals’ production of lexical stress in English nonsense words, Pater (1997) found little evidence of systematicity. Participants showed stress assignment patterns that were different from those of their L1 and L2. Similarly, the German-speaking English L2 participants in Erdmann (1973) and the Spanish-speaking English L2 learners in Mairs (1989) produced stress in English words in ways that were neither predicted by their L1 (i.e., German or Spanish) nor by their L2 English.

2.3. Modelling L2 stress perception and production

Models including the Stress Typology Model ( Altmann 2006 ) and the Stress Parameter Model ( Peperkamp and Dupoux 2002 ) both the predict a strong influence of the L1 in the assignment of L2 lexical stress. Increasingly, studies have investigated learners’ perception and production of lexical stress assignment together. Chen (2013) and Chung and Jarmulowicz (2017) found relatively high accuracy in both perception and production of English lexical stress among L1 speakers of the tonal languages Mandarin and Cantonese. Both languages, like English, make use of pitch in the assignment of meaning. The Mandarin speakers in Chung and Jarmulowicz (2017) assigned stress to derived English pseudowords in both a perceptual judgment task and a production task. The participants in Chen (2013) perceived and produced real and nonsense English words that were presented as verbs “I’d like to … ” or nouns “I’d like a … ” While the participants achieved high accuracy in the perception and production of lexical stress in real words, they were much less accurate on nonsense words.

Nonetheless, participants’ performance on perceptual tasks does not always align with their performance on production tasks. Altmann (2006) investigated whether speakers from six distinct L1 groups (i.e., Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Turkish) could perceive and produce English lexical stress. He found that participants who spoke L1s with predictable stress (i.e., Arabic, French, Turkish) had difficulty perceiving – but not producing – lexical stress. Those participants in the study who spoke L1s either without word-level stress (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean) or those with unpredictable stress (Spanish) performed well in perception but not production.

Tremblay (2008) looked at whether native speakers of Quebec French could use lexical stress to identify English words. A perceptual task required participants to make use of cues to lexical stress to determine which truncated word was produced in sentence-final position (e.g., whether they heard ˈmystery or misˈtake when they were presented with the syllable [ˈmɪs]). Participants only heard the first syllable of the word and had to determine, on the basis of acoustic cues, which of the two words had been cut off. Although they were significantly less accurate, the French listeners in this study, like the L1 English listeners, performed better on the task when the first syllable was stressed (i.e.,  ˈmystery ) than when it was unstressed (i.e.,  misˈtake ). The production task in the same study showed that French-speaking participants were more accurate in their production of two- and three-syllable words containing first-syllable stress than those requiring second-syllable stress. Because the participants did not rely on a final-syllable default stress assignment pattern, the author argues that the participants did not transfer their L1 stress assignment patterns to their L2 English.

2.4. The role of analogy in lexical stress assignment

While the studies reviewed above do show some differences along L1 lines, it may be wise to consider the role of additional factors, especially those related to participants’ experience with particular lexical items. Recent research supports the idea that both L1 speakers and L2 learners have difficulty producing metalinguistic rules regarding lexical stress assignment (e.g., Lord 2007 ; O’Brien 2019 ; Wrembel 2015 ). While this does not mean that learners are not relying on rules in assigning stress, it does show that it is difficult to tap into L2 learners’ explicit awareness of the L2 stress assignment system. An alternative to a reliance on the L1 system or rules is that learners make use of analogy (i.e., “a relation between surface forms”, Bullock and Lord, 2003 , p. 281) in assigning stress to unknown words. Thus, even if they are unable to produce rules, it may be possible to determine if their system is based on regularities: they should assign stress in the same way to tokens (i.e., both real and nonsense) that are similar ( Lord 2007 ). According to Skousen’s (1989) Analogical Model of Language, speakers’ linguistic behaviours are based on relevant stored exemplars, or the “most similar instances” ( Skousen 2002 , p. 11). Thus, speakers may use analogy to predict the pronunciation of an unknown form on the basis of a known similar form. Skousen notes that performance is based on individual occurrences in the case of analogy (p. 23). In general, research has demonstrated that analogy can be an effective way to learn to pronounce unknown words (e.g., He et al. 2005 ; Moustafa 1995 ; Woore 2007 ).

In both perceptual and production tasks, a comparison of participants’ lexical stress assignment in real and nonsense words provides insights into their reliance on analogy. If they assign stress in similar ways across words with similar forms (i.e., those that rhyme or that are morphologically similar), it is quite likely that participants rely on analogy. Bullock and Lord (2003) argued that the beginner level learners of L2 Spanish in their study produced lexical stress in nonsense words on the basis of analogical extension. That is to say, they assigned stress to these words analogously to those of similar real words, which further supports Aske’s (1990) findings that Spanish speakers are more likely to rely on analogy (i.e., based on stress assignment probabilities in the lexicon as a whole) than a rule when assigning stress.

Tight (2007) investigated stress assignment preferences of English-speaking Spanish L2 learners when they were provided with nonsense nouns and adjectives in a perceptual task. The nonsense words under investigation do not conform to the default rules of Spanish stress assignment. For example, although words ending in vowels are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable as in parˈlero (‘talkative’), there are exceptions for words ending in particular suffixes. Those ending in - ico /- ica are stressed on the antepenultimate syllable as in ˈmusica (‘music’). The more advanced L2 learners in the study demonstrated a reliance on analogy in that they preferred the pronunciations of the target items that could be predicted on the basis of similarity with real words.

Chen (2013) provided less clear support for reliance on analogy among Cantonese-speaking English L2 learners. In addition to reading words aloud, participants also completed a task that required them to produce real words that were phonologically similar to nonsense words. Chen determined that participants’ production of nonsense words in the carrier phrase were marginally correlated with their performance on the analogy task. When taken together with the finding regarding more accurate performance on real than on nonsense words overall, the author concluded that participants in the study may have relied more on lexical storage than analogy.

In the current study, participants’ use of analogy in L2 nonsense word stress assignment is determined in the following ways:

• a. in perception, through participants’ perception preferences for real words with the same suffixes; and
• b. in production, through participants’ ability to produce similar real words.

2.5. Individual factors affecting lexical stress assignment

There is a range of individual factors influencing learners’ ability to perceive and produce L2 lexical stress. One is proficiency. Although some research has demonstrated variability in perceiving stress within a given proficiency level (e.g., Tremblay 2008 , 2009 ; Tremblay and Owens 2010 ) or only insignificant differences between participants’ perceptual abilities on the basis of target language proficiency (e.g., Archibald 1992 ; Dupoux et al. 2008 ), other research has shown that those with advanced proficiency may indeed perceive and produce lexical stress most accurately (e.g., Lord 2001 , 2007 ; Maczuga et al. 2017 ). Ou (2010) found differences in Taiwanese participants’ ability to perceive English lexical stress on the basis of how long they had been learning English, with those learning English for 10 or more years performing differently from those who had been learning English for three or fewer years.

One final factor that may affect learners’ performance is lexical familiarity: participants tend to assign lexical stress more accurately to words they know well than to words with which they are less familiar (e.g., Lord 2007 ; Maczuga et al. 2017 ). Researchers who investigate lexical stress assignment have tried to mitigate the role of familiarity by relying on nonsense words. It is assumed that encountering nonsense words is similar to encountering new words and L2 learners may rely on rules or analogy with similar L2 words to assign stress (e.g., Guion 2005 ; Guion et al. 2003 ).

2.6. Methodological considerations

Studies investigating lexical stress perception use a range of methods, which may play a role in the outcomes of laboratory experiments. These include, but are not limited to, the context (e.g., individual or paired tokens vs. tokens in a sentential context), the ways in which acoustic cues are manipulated (e.g., micro manipulations of individual cues along a continuum vs. robust acoustic cues occurring in tandem), and the tasks employed (e.g., auditory discrimination vs. tasks requiring lexical encoding). For example, in spite of the evidence provided by Lin et al. (2014) demonstrating that Mandarin speakers are able to encode stress in an auditory lexical decision task with single word tokens, the results of Ou (2010) , which presented tokens in a sentential context, are less straightforward. Within a sentential context, cues to lexical stress assignment co-occur with, for example, cues to sentence structure. This may make the task of perceiving lexical stress more difficult. In Ou’s (2010) study, which investigated whether Mandarin speakers could use pitch as a cue to lexical stress in L2 English nonsense words, participants could rely on high pitch to identify stressed syllables when they occurred in statements (i.e., with a falling intonation contour), but they were unable to explicitly identify stressed syllables that appeared in questions (i.e., within a low rising intonation contour). If the primary goal of a study is to investigate the L2 lexical stress system, it may be wise to begin by determining whether L2 learners are able to assign stress in the absence of context. Moreover, if we are ultimately interested in whether learners make use of lexical stress to encode meaning, it is wise to make use of tokens containing robust acoustic cues as well as those whose lexical stress can be determined on the basis of morphophonological information.

3. The current study

3.1. assigning lexical stress in french, german, and english.

Lexical stress assignment in German takes place at the interface of morphology and phonology. By default, stress is assigned to the penultimate syllable ( Wiese 2000 ). This is true of many word types including those ending in schwa. Acoustic cues to German lexical stress include pitch, duration and intensity. Stress assignment in complex words depends on a word’s suffix: some suffixes attract stress, and others do not ( Wiese 2000 ). Thus, although the stress assignment system of German is complex, it is rule-governed and highly predictable. As noted in the introduction, English lexical stress assignment, although different from that of German, makes use of the same set of acoustic cues and is also complex and rule-governed ( Fry 1958 ). Lexical stress is not distinctive in French, and French words are stressed on the final syllable ( Walker 1984 ). By relying on participants from both L1 groups in the current study, it is possible to examine L1 effects.

The current study investigates the role of the L1 and participants’ reliance on analogy in determining how L1 English and French speakers assign stress to nonsense words in their L2 German. Specifically, it seeks to answer the following research questions:

• How do French-speaking and English-speaking German L2 learners and L1 German speakers assign stress to complex nonsense German words in a perceptual preference (SPP) task?
• How do French-speaking and English-speaking German L2 learners and L1 German speakers assign stress to complex nonsense German words in a production task?

Models including the Stress Typology Model ( Altmann 2006 ) and the Stress Parameter Model ( Peperkamp and Dupoux 2002 ) predict differences between the two groups of L2 learners based on their L1s, with L1 French speakers demonstrating difficulty with stress assignment, as lexical stress is not encoded in French. It may be that participants’ performance can further be predicted on the basis of their ability to assign lexical stress to similar real words. By appealing to Skousen’s (1989) Analogical Model of Language, we may predict that participants’ ability to assign lexical stress to nonsense words is best predicted by their ability to assign lexical stress to similar real words.

4.1. Participants

Three groups of participants took part in the current study. The experimental participants from Canada consisted of one group of French-speaking German L2 learners and one group of English-speaking German L2 learners. The third group consisted of L1 German speakers who acted as controls. All participants were recruited from the student populations at their universities, which were in French-speaking Canada, English-speaking western Canada, and northern Germany. All participants were paid for their involvement ($40 or €15). The first group ( n  = 13) was composed of seven female and six male L1 French speakers from 18 to 30 years old (mean age 23.15), and the second group ( n  = 14) consisted of l0 female and four male L1 English speakers between the ages of 18 and 27 (mean age 21.71). Thirteen L1 German speakers acted as a control group. There were 12 females and one male, and they ranged from 19 to 26 years old (mean age 22.62).

The L1 speakers of French and English completed a 30-cloze question German language proficiency exam ( Goethe Institut 2004 ). Participants in the French group, who had been learning German for an average of 3.58 years, scored an average of 16.62 on the proficiency test. The L1 English speakers, who had been learning German for an average of 2.93 years, scored an average of 14.5. None of the differences between the two groups of German learners were significant. These include proficiency ( t (25) = 1.97, p  = 0.06), age at the time of the study ( t (25) = 1.15, p  = 0.26), age of learning German ( t (25) = 1.19, p  = 0.90), time spent learning German ( t (25) = 1.10, p  = 0.28), and time in a German-speaking country ( t (25) = 1.45, p  = 0.16).

4.2. Tokens

Experimental tokens were three-syllable German nonsense words, which are common in studies investigating L2 stress assignment (e.g., Bullock and Lord 2003 ; Guion et al. 2003 ; Lord 2007 ; Pater 1997 ; Tight 2007 ; Tremblay 2009 ). Using nonsense words guarantees that performance on the task is not due to a token’s frequency or a participant’s familiarity with it. Researchers can therefore investigate issues related to the overall stress assignment system as opposed to factors related to individual lexical items. A total of 32 three-syllable complex nonsense words containing morphological cues to lexical stress assignment (i.e., suffixes) served as tokens in the current study. The eight tokens containing the suffixes -schaft , -heit, - iker and -tum (two per suffix) should be stressed on the first syllable, the eight tokens with the suffixes -er, -ik, -ung and -or (two per suffix) should be stressed on the second syllable, and the eight tokens with the suffixes -ant / -ent, -ie, -ei, and -ion (two per suffix) should be stressed on the final syllable. An additional eight nonsense tokens ending in a suffix containing schwa ( -ade, -el, -ette, or -e ) and stressed on the second syllable were also used. These are considered the baseline, as words ending in schwa are always stressed on the penultimate syllable, which is the default syllable for stress assignment in German. Before arriving at the final set of nonsense words, the first author created a superset set of written nonsense words that conformed to the requirements of the study (i.e., three syllables, containing the appropriate suffixes). Nine L1 speakers of German were asked to provide goodness ratings for the nonsense words on a scale from 1 (“This is a bad German ‘word.’ I could not imagine ever hearing this ‘word.’”) to 5 (“This is a good German ‘word.’ I could imagine actually hearing this ‘word.’”). The two nonsense words that received the highest ratings for each suffix were chosen as tokens for the current study. The final set of experimental tokens and their goodness ratings are provided in Appendix A . A total of 32 real-word fillers that conformed to the specifications of the nonsense words served as controls.

4.3.1. Stress preference perception task

The first task, a stress preference perception (SPP) task, was based on Guion et al. (2003) and Guion (2005) . Its purpose was to determine the lexical stress assignment preferences of French-speaking and English-speaking German L2 learners. Participants indicated their preferences by choosing which stressed syllable they prefer (e.g., three versions of a three-syllable word: one with stress on the first syllable, one with stress on the second syllable and one with stress on the final syllable). Guion (2005) notes that this task places relatively low processing demands on participants. In the current study, the task consisted of 32 experimental nonsense words, 32 real word controls, and 102 filler items. For each trial, as exemplified in (1), the participants were presented with the orthography of a word in the center of the computer screen. There were three circles below the word, each of which corresponded to a potential production of the word they saw. For the experimental and real word tokens, the three possible productions were as follows: one with stress on the first syllable (i.e., ˈDockenheit ), one with stress on the second syllable (i.e.,  Doˈckenheit ), and one with stress on the third syllable (i.e.,  Dockenˈheit ).

The participants were told that they would “see a series of possible German words and decide how they should be pronounced,” which they did by clicking on the rectangle under the correct production. The participants could listen to each of the tokens as often as they wished within a 3,000-ms time window, and the number of times they listened to each of the three tokens was recorded. A correct response required choosing the token with the stress placed on the correct syllable. The number of times participants listened to the choices for a given item can be taken as evidence of their difficulty with their choices. For example, if participants from a given group listen more frequently to words that should be stressed on the third syllable, it may be a sign that they have difficulty distinguishing between stress on that and another syllable.

A female L1 German speaker recorded all of the words used in the experiment. The experimental tokens were acoustically analyzed to ensure that they contained robust cues to lexical stress assignment. A one-way between-groups ANOVA was conducted to ensure that the relevant acoustic cues (i.e., duration of the stressed syllable, mean intensity of the stressed syllable, and mean frequency of the stressed syllable) to lexical stress assignment were indeed present in the intended syllables. We expect, for example, that a word stressed on the first syllable would have a longer first syllable than a second and third syllable and that its mean intensity and mean F0 would be higher than those on the second and third syllables. Overall, the acoustic cues to lexical stress assignment were robust, as shown in Table 1 .

Table 1:

Acoustic cues to lexical stress assignment in the experimental tokens.

The filler items differed from the experimental and control tokens in that they consisted of two-, three-, and four-syllable real German words. Eighty-four of the words were segmentally modified, such that either vowels or consonants were replaced. The remaining 18 filler items were three-syllable simplex words (e.g., Vagabund , Diplomat ) in which the stress was modified as with the real word controls. Simplex words were chosen to balance out the experimental tokens in terms of morphological complexity. The experimental task, which was designed in Experiment Builder , was preceded by three practice trials, so that participants could become accustomed to the timing of the experiment and ask any questions before beginning the task. Trials and the order of the three versions of each token were randomized for each participant.

4.3.2. Nonsense word production task

The second task was a production task whereby participants were required to read a word in the carrier phrase Wenn ich an ________ denke, denke ich an … (“When I think of _______, I think of … ”) and produce as many associated words as possible within 10 seconds. The nonsense words and the analogous words were in the stressed position of a carrier phrase as is common in studies investigating lexical stress assignment (e.g., Chen 2013 ; Tremblay 2008 ). The task was based on the word similarity task in Guion et al. (2003) and Chen (2013) . Its purpose was to determine stress assignment preferences in production for French-speaking and English-speaking German L2 learners. Moreover, in addition to producing the target items, participants were required to produce any similar German words they could come up with, thereby encouraging them to rely on analogy. Specifically, they were told that “similar” words should have a similar ending and be emphasized in a similar way.

The participants read each sentence aloud, and the audio for each trial was recorded. The same set of nonsense words were chosen for the perceptual and production tasks to enable comparison across the two tasks. In addition to the same 32 three-syllable nonsense words that were used as in the SPP task, participants produced 45 nonsense filler words. These filler nonsense words were all created to resemble real simplex words. Thirty-seven of them contained three syllables, and the remainder were bisyllabic. Participants were presented with the sample recording of the text provided in (2) before proceeding to two practice trials.

The target nonsense word, Gameneur, is provided in bold, and the underlined words are examples of real words that have the same suffix and thus could serve as examples for how the target item should be stressed. Participants had the opportunity to ask any questions before beginning the task.

4.4. Procedure

For both tasks, the participants met the research assistant in the laboratory. Instructions were provided by the research assistant in each participant’s L1. Two versions of the experiment were created: one for English and one for French L1 speakers. After they signed the consent form and completed the language background questionnaire, participants completed the experiment as follows: SPP task, proficiency test, production task. Participants could take up to three scheduled breaks during each experiment, and they were encouraged to take a longer break between tasks. Each session typically lasted between one-and-a-half and 2 h.

4.5. Data analysis

Responses from the SPP task were analyzed for correctness and for number of listens. Correctness was determined based on the responses provided by L1 German listeners, as in Lord (2007) . That is to say, if at least 12 of the 13 L1 listeners agreed on a given token and if stress was assigned according to German lexical stress assignment rules, it was considered correct. L1 German listeners agreed 100% of the time on 24 of the 32 words overall, and they achieved agreement of 92% (i.e., agreement by 12 of 13 listeners) for six of the remaining target items ( Gulator, Hollerei, Kellentum, Lowine, Silument, Tickerei ). They did not achieve the 92% threshold for two items ( Paffessor, Pakapter ). As such, these were removed from analysis, and correctness for a total of 30 target items served as the dependent variable in the analyses of the SPP data. In addition, the total number of times participants listened to each production of an individual nonsense word was also considered in the analyses as evidence of the relative difficulty participants had in assigning stress to a given token.

Production accuracy was determined in a similar way to accuracy on the perceptual task. That is, when 92% of L1 German speakers produced lexical stress on the same syllable and if that production aligned with German stress assignment rules, that pronunciation was considered the correct response. L1 German speaker responses were in complete alignment with the expected production of 26 of the 32 target items, and they reached the 92% threshold for four of the remaining items ( Holade, Hollerei, Kassiker, Robistik ). There were only two target items for which the productions of at least 12 L1 speakers did not align ( Fotation, Tillusion ). As such, the total number of target items for the production task was 30. All tokens were independently evaluated for the location of the stressed syllable (first, second or third) by both authors, both L1 speakers of English with advanced to near-native proficiency in German and with proficiency in French. After they completed the initial analysis of the data, responses were compared. Agreement on the location of the stressed syllable was reached on 89.1% of the productions. Those that differed were discussed, and a decision was reached for all but 5% of those words. A total of 1185 target items were analyzed for the production task. The total number of analogous words participants produced was also analyzed as evidence of participants’ reliance on analogy in the production of the nonsense words. Although we also expected to analyze the accuracy of lexical stress assignment in these similar words, this was not possible. Instead of producing analogous words with the appropriate lexical stress assignment, participants tended to produce contrastive lexical stress in their productions, most probably as a way of distinguishing these from the target items themselves.

All data were analyzed using an unbalanced repeated-measures design using a Generalized Estimating Equation (i.e., GEE under Genlin procedures in SPSS v. 25) to determine the extent to which English-speaking and French-speaking German L2 learners were able to accurately assign stress in perception and production. Analyses were also run to determine the respective role of speaker characteristics (i.e., speaker L1, L2 proficiency, age of learning German, and time spent in a German-speaking country) in the accuracy of lexical stress assignment in the perception and production of German nonsense words. GEE analyses are preferred over other analyses in instances in which there are potential correlations among data points. It is likely that a participant’s accuracy on any given token in this study is correlated with their accuracy on any other token. In addition, the model allows for the addition of predictor variables including speaker and lexical factors. The data from this study met the basic assumptions of GEE analyses: normal distribution and correlated and unbalanced outcomes. An alpha level of 0.05 was applied to all analyses.

5.1. Perception

First, the extent to which participants correctly assigned stress to real word tokens as opposed to the target nonsense word tokens was determined. A summary of performance by group is provided in Table 2 . The number of listens listed in the table corresponds to the total number of times participants clicked on items during a single trial. Because participants were required to listen to each of the three potential productions at least once, the minimum number of listens is always three. A participant who listened to one of the three productions a second time would thus have a listen score of four.

Table 2:

Accuracy of perception and number of listens to real and nonsense words by group.

Only French-speaking learners performed differently in their perception of primary stress in real and nonsense words, with significantly more nativelike performance in their perception of real words ( B  = −0.215, SE  = 0.0962, χ 2 (1) = 4.982, p  = 0.026). English-speaking learners did not differ in the nativelikeness of their stress assignment preferences for real and nonsense words.

The results of the test of model effects indicate a significant effect of group. In terms of perceptual performance on target items (i.e., the nonsense words), French-speaking learners ( B  = −4.24, SE  = 0.5562, χ 2 (1) = 58.111, p  < 0.001) and English-speaking learners ( B  = −3.777, SE  = 0.563, χ 2 (1) = 45.063, p  < 0.001) differed significantly from L1 German listeners. The results of pairwise comparisons demonstrate that English-speaking learners performed significantly more like L1 German speakers than did French-speaking learners ( p  = 0.005). Looking at the number of times listeners in each of the three groups listened to tokens overall, we again see an effect of group with French-speaking learners ( B  = 0.522, SE  = 0.1523, χ 2 (1) = 11.726, p  = 0.001) and English-speaking learners ( B  = 0.329, SE  = 0.1477, χ 2 (1) = 4.952, p  = 0.026) listening to the tokens significantly more than L1 listeners of German before making their choices. There were no differences in the number of listens for the experimental groups.

Next, we analyzed participants’ stress preferences for the target items according to the stressed syllable: the first syllable in items ending in -schaft , -heit, - iker and -tum ; the second syllable in items with the suffixes -er, -ik, -ung and -or ; the final syllable in items ending in -ant , -ent, -ie, -ei, and -ion . Performance on these items was compared to that of tokens ending in a schwa suffix ( -ade, -el, -ette, or -e ). A summary of performance by group and stressed syllable is provided in Table 3 .

Table 3:

Correctness of perception by stressed syllable and group.

The results of a test of model effects indicate an effect of group and syllable stressed as well as an interaction between group and syllable stress. The effect of group is similar to the overall results, with French- ( B  = −0.436, SE  = 0.0679, χ 2 (1) = 41.274, p  < 0.001) and English-speaking learners’ ( B  = −0.190, SE  = 0.0605, χ 2 (1) = 9.85, p  = 0.002) performance on the perception of primary stress different from that of L1 German speakers. The results of pairwise comparisons indicate that English-speaking learners performed significantly more like L1 German listeners in their perceptual preferences as compared to French-speaking learners ( p  = 0.004).

The results of pairwise comparisons indicate that participants were, overall, more nativelike in their preferences for tokens stressed on the first syllable than those stressed on the second ( p  = 0.005) and third syllables ( p  = 0.003). In addition, participants were more accurate in their perception of tokens ending in schwa as compared to those stressed on the second ( p  = 0.02) and third syllables ( p  = 0.02). When compared to their performance in the perception of primary stress in tokens ending in schwa, French-speaking learners did not perform significantly differently based on the syllable being stressed in a given word, although the difference neared significance in the perception of words stressed on the first syllable ( B  = 0.169, SE  = 0.0892, χ 2 (1) = 3.61, p  = 0.057). English-speaking learners were significantly more nativelike in their perceptual preferences for words ending in schwa than those stressed on both the second ( B  = −0.215, SE  = 0.0813, χ 2 (1) = 6.993, p  = 0.008) and third syllables ( B  = −0.227, SE  = 0.0901, χ 2 (1) = 6.355, p  = 0.012). Their perceptual preferences for words stressed on the first syllable did not differ from those ending in schwa in terms of nativelikeness. In addition, English-speaking learners were significantly more nativelike in their perception of tokens stressed on the first than on the third syllable ( p  = 0.016). A comparison of French- and English-speaking learners in terms of the nativelikeness of their preferences shows significant performance differences for tokens stressed on the second syllable ( p  = 0.047) and for tokens containing a schwa syllable ( p  = 0.006), with English-speaking learners showing more nativelike perceptual performance than French-speaking learners.

With regards to the number of times participants listened to words that were stressed on the first, second, third, and schwa syllables, the test of model effects indicates a significant effect of group and an effect nearing significance of stressed syllable. There was no interaction of group and syllable stressed. The mean number of listens by syllable stressed is provided in Table 4 .

Table 4:

Mean number of listens by word type.

The results of parameter estimates indicate that L1 German listeners listened significantly fewer times overall than both French- ( B  = 0.445, SE  = 0.1278, χ 2 (1) = 12.12, p  < 0.001) and English-speaking learners ( B  = 0.281, SE  = 0.1256, χ 2 (1) = 4.986, p  = 0.026). Participants listened more overall to tokens stressed on the first syllable than those ending in schwa ( B  = 0.123, SE  = 0.0557, χ 2 (1) = 4.86, p  = 0.027). French-speaking learners listened more often to words stressed on the first syllable than did English-speaking learners ( p  = 0.044) and L1 German listeners ( p  = 0.012). Both French- ( p  = 0.014) and English-speaking learners ( p  = 0.027) listened more often to words stressed on the second syllable than did L1 German listeners. A similar pattern held for words stressed on the third syllable, with French- ( p  = 0.025) and English-speaking learners ( p  = 0.033) listening more often than L1 German listeners. The same pattern was demonstrated for words ending in schwa, with French- ( p  = 0.001) and English-speaking learners ( p  = 0.05) listening more to these tokens than L1 German listeners.

French-speaking learners’ nativelike performance on target items could be predicted by their performance on analogous real words ( B  = −0.939, SE  = 0.3417, χ 2 (1) = 7.555, p  = 0.006), participants’ age when learning German ( B  = 0.071, SE  = 0.0342, χ 2 (1) = 4.371, p  = 0.037) as well as time spent immersed in a German-speaking environment ( B  = −0.517, SE  = 0.1608, χ 2 (1) = 0.109, p  = 0.001). Given the directionality of the parameter estimates (i.e., a positive estimate for age of learning and a negative estimate for time spent in Germany), older participants and those who had spent less time in a German-speaking environment performed in a more nativelike manner in the perception of stress in nonsense words. In addition, the negative parameter estimate for performance on analogous real words demonstrates that participants with the most nativelike performance on real word tokens did not exhibit the most nativelike performance on analogous nonsense word tokens. For participants in this group, other factors including the total number of listens, their proficiency in German, the time they had been learning German, and their listening motivation did not predict the nativelikeness of their performance on the target items.

Nativelike preferences on nonsense words for English-speaking learners could be predicted by their performance on analogous real words ( B  = −2.392., SE  = 0.5311, χ 2 (1) = 20.287, p  < 0.001) the total number of listens ( B  = 0.232, SE  = 0.1171, χ 2 (1) = 3.918, p  = 0.048) and their German proficiency ( B  = −0.229, SE  = 0.0932, χ 2 (1) = 6.054, p  = 0.014). English-speaking learners who listened to the items more frequently as well as those who were less proficient performed in a more nativelike manner in the stress perception task. As with French-speaking learners, those English-speaking learners whose assignment preferences for real words most aligned with those of L1 German speakers performed less nativelike on the nonsense word tokens. No other factors predicted English-speaking learners’ performance on the SPP task.

5.2. Production

To begin, we determined the extent to which participants correctly assigned stress to nonsense tokens overall. A summary of performance by group is provided in Table 5 .

Table 5:

Target item production performance and number of analogous words produced by group.

The results of the test of parameter estimates indicate a significant effect of group. Both French- ( B  = −0.281, SE  = 0.0242, χ 2 (1) = 134.909, p  < 0.001) and English-speaking learners ( B  = −0.194, SE  = 0.0249, χ 2 (1) = 60.577, p  < 0.001) produced lexical stress assignment significantly differently from L1 speakers of German. The results of pairwise comparisons demonstrate that English-speaking learners performed significantly more like L1 German speakers in the production of primary stress than did French-speaking learners ( p  = 0.009). If we look at the number of analogous real words produced overall, we again see an effect of group with French-speaking learners producing significantly fewer analogous words that L1 German speakers ( B  = −0.119, SE  = 0.0411, χ 2 (1) = 8.355, p  = 0.004). There were no differences in the number of analogous words produced by English-speaking learners and L1 German speakers. Participants in the two learner groups also did not differ from one another in the number of analogous words they produced.

As a next step we sought to analyze participants’ production accuracy for the target items according to the syllable that was stressed: the first syllable in items ending in -schaft , -heit, - iker and -tum ; the second syllable in items with the suffixes -er, -ik, -ung and -or ; the final syllable in items ending in -ant / -ent, -ie, -ei, and -ion . Because words ending in schwa are always stressed in the second syllable and are considered the default case, performance on the target items was compared to that of tokens ending in a schwa suffix ( -ade, -el, -ette, or -e ). A summary of production performance by group and stressed syllable is provided in Table 6 .

Table 6:

Correctness of production by stressed syllable and group.

The results of a test of model effects indicate an effect of group and syllable stressed as well as an interaction between group and syllable stressed. French-speaking learners differed significantly in their production from L1 German speakers overall ( B  = −0.108, SE  = 0.0414, χ 2 (1) = 6.808, p  = 0.009). The results of pairwise comparisons indicate that English-speaking learners were significantly more nativelike in their production of primary stress than French-speaking learners ( p  = 0.011). The results of pairwise comparisons indicate that participants were, overall, more nativelike in their production of tokens ending in schwa than those stressed on the first ( p  = 0.001), second ( p  < 0.001) and third syllables ( p  < 0.001).

The results of parameter estimates investigating the interaction of group and stressed syllable indicate a significant interaction. French-speaking learners were significantly more accurate in producing tokens ending in schwa as compared to those stressed on the second syllable ( B  = −0.203, SE  = 0.0561, χ 2 (1) = 13.085, p  < 0.001) and on the third syllable ( B  = −0.365, SE  = 0.0850, χ 2 (1) = 18.493, p  < 0.001). English-speaking learners pronounced the schwa tokens significantly more accurately than tokens stressed on the first ( B  = −0.174, SE  = 0.0486, χ 2 (1) = 12.871, p  < 0.001), second ( B  = −0.249, SE  = 0.0484, χ 2 (1) = 26.461, p  < 0.001), and on the third syllable ( B  = −0.175, SE  = 0.0795, χ 2 (1) = 4.832, p  = 0.028). A comparison of French- and English-speaking learners in terms of the nativelikeness of their production of tokens indicates that English-speaking learners were significantly more nativelike than French-speaking learners in their production of tokens that were stressed on the final syllable ( p  = 0.027).

In order to investigate the extent to which participants were explicitly relying on analogous forms in their production of the nonsense target words, we investigated the number of analogous words participants produced that were similar to those stressed on the first, second, and third syllables as well as for words that ended in schwa syllables. The number of analogous words produced by syllable stressed is provided in Table 7 .

Table 7:

Number of analogous words produced by target word stressed syllable.

The test of model effects indicates a significant interaction of group and syllable stressed. L1 German speakers produced more analogous words stressed on the second syllable ( p  = 0.006) and ending in schwa ( p =  0.014) than did French-speaking learners. L1 German speakers also produced significantly more analogous words ending in schwa than did English-speaking learners ( p  = 0.014). The interaction of group by syllable stressed was significant. French-speaking learners produced significantly more analogous real words for target items stressed on the third syllable than they did for words ending in schwa ( B  = 0.198, SE  = 0.0745, χ 2 (1) = 7.061, p  = 0.008). English-speaking learners produced significantly more analogous real words for target items stressed on the first syllable than those ending in schwa ( B  = 0.271, SE  = 0.0983, χ 2 (1) = 7.611, p  = 0.006).

An analysis of predictor variables indicates that French-speaking learners’ production performance could not be predicted by any single variable. This includes number of analogous words produced ( B  = −0.245, SE  = 0.2275, χ 2 (1) = 1.16, p  = 0.282), proficiency in German ( B  = 0.015, SE  = 0.0085, χ 2 (1) = 3.184, p  = 0.074), age of learning German ( B  = −0.012, SE  = 0.0087, χ 2 (1) = 1.856, p  = 0.173), and time spent in a German speaking country ( B  = 0.012, SE  = 0.0467, χ 2 (1) = 0.071, p  = 0.790). English-speaking learners’ performance on the production of primary stress in the target items could be predicted by the number of analogous words they were able to produce ( B  = 0.026, SE  = 0.0095, χ 2 (1) = 7.391, p  = 0.007) and their proficiency ( B  = 0.033, SE  = 0.0168, χ 2 (1) = 3.861, p  = 0.049). Thus, English-speaking learners who were able to produce more analogous words as well as those who were more proficient were more likely to accurately assign lexical stress in the production task.

As a final step, to determine the extent to which participants’ perception and production are related, we used participants’ scores on the perceptual task as a predictor of their production performance (as supported by a large body of work, see, for example Escudero 2006 ; Saito and Kim 2018 for discussion). Performance in the production of primary stress could be predicted by perceptual performance for both French-speaking learners ( B  = 0.159, SE  = 0.0633, χ 2 (1) = 6.314, p  = 0.012) and English-speaking learners ( B  = 0.247, SE  = 0.0535, χ 2 (1) = 21.253, p  < 0.001). That is to say, for both groups of participants, their performance on one task was predictive of their performance on the other. To illustrate, Figure 1 below shows that, in general, as participants’ scores on perception tasks increased, so did their production scores. It also demonstrates higher overall accuracy for English-speaking learners and performance at ceiling for L1 German speakers.

Participants’ scores on perception and production tasks.

6. Discussion

The results of the current study demonstrate that intermediate proficiency L1 English and French speakers differ significantly from one another and from L1 German speakers in their assignment of lexical stress to nonsense German words in both perception and production. English-speaking learners performed more like L1 German speakers overall. In the perceptual task, English-speaking learners performed in an equally nativelike manner on real and nonsense words, whereas French-speaking learners perceived real words more in a more nativelike manner as compared to nonsense words. French-speaking learners did not differ significantly in their perception of primary stress in nonsense words depending on the syllable being stressed. Nonetheless, their performance approached significance in the perception of primary stress on nonsense words stressed on the first syllable. That is, they were more likely to perceive nonsense words that were stressed on the first syllable similarly to L1 German listeners. In addition, they listened to tokens stressed on the first syllable significantly more often than those stressed on the other syllables. English-speaking learners were significantly more nativelike in their perception of German nonsense words that were stressed on the second syllable and those ending in schwa than nonsense words stressed on the first or third syllables.

The finding that French-speaking learners were less able than English-speaking learners to perceive L2 German lexical stress in a nativelike manner is not surprising on the basis of previous research that has shown that listeners tend to make use of features that are distinctive in their L1 (e.g., Archibald 1992 , 1993 , 1998 ). Because lexical stress is not contrastive in French, it has been proposed that L1 French speakers—unlike L1 English speakers—are less able to attend to lexical stress (e.g., Dupoux et al. 1997 , 2008 ). The participants in the current study performed above chance (i.e., 33.3%). Their ability to encode lexical stress may have been affected by the task, in which they heard lexical stress on each of the syllables and were required to determine which assignment was appropriate. Like the participants in Tremblay (2008) , L1 French speakers showed a tendency to perceive words stressed on the first syllable more similarly to L1 speakers when compared to words stressed on the other syllables. The processing load may have been reduced enough for participants to perceive differences in lexical stress assignment, along the lines of participants in Tremblay (2009) . Nonetheless, in their perception of lexical stress on words stressed on the second and third syllables, French-speaking learners’ performance was at 40 and 46%, respectively. As such, the present findings support previous studies positing that lexical stress assignment poses difficulty for L1 French listeners.

In terms of the production of primary stress, the French-speaking learners were significantly less nativelike in their performance than were English-speaking learners overall. Whereas French-speaking learners produced significantly fewer analogous words than did L1 German speakers, English-speaking learners did not differ from L1 German speakers in terms of number of analogous words produced. When it comes to the accuracy according to syllable stressed, French-speaking learners – like English-speaking learners – were most accurate in their production of the default stress pattern in words ending in schwa. French-speaking learners produced the most analogous words for words stressed on the third syllable. Unlike the French learners of English in Yoon and Heshuk (2011) or the French learners of Dutch in Caspers and Kepinska (2011) , who relied on a default strategy of assigning stress to the same syllable in English and Dutch words, respectively, the participants in the current study assigned stress to all of the syllables. If anything, the French-speaking learners in the current study did not make use of a French-like strategy in assigning lexical stress to the final syllable of German words, as their performance on nonsense words with final-syllable stress was significantly less nativelike than that on words ending in schwa.

In terms of differences across participants, French-speaking learners who were older as well as those who had spent less time immersed in a German-speaking location performed better on the perceptual task. For English-speaking learners, those who listened more to the tokens as well as those who were less proficient performed better overall on the perceptual task. Participants in both groups who perceived real words in a most nativelike manner were less likely to do so for nonsense words. While it is not surprising that English-speaking learners who listened more often to the tokens performed better on the perceptual task, the other predictors of perceptual performance are somewhat surprising, especially in light of literature that demonstrates enhanced perceptual performance with increasing proficiency and/or language use (e.g., Tremblay 2008 , 2009 ). The fact that participants’ performance in the perceptual task for real and nonsense words did not align may provide evidence that participants may rely more on lexical storage than on analogy when they make decisions about lexical stress assignment, as proposed by Chen (2013) . These somewhat surprising effects may be the sign of a perceptual system that is still very much under development. Although no participant variable predicted French-speaking learners’ performance on the production of primary stress, English-speaking learners’ production performance on the target items was predicted by both the number of analogous words they were able to produce and their proficiency in German. Neither of these predictor variables is surprising, and the effects align well with those of other lexical stress assignment studies (e.g., Lord 2007 ).

Requiring participants in this study to produce analogous words provided insights into the larger stress assignment system without requiring learners to produce rules or reflect on their productions. The finding that English-speaking learners who produced more analogous words overall were more accurate in their production of the target items aligns well with the predictions of Skousen’s Analogical Model of Language ( Skousen 1989 ). That is, participants who were able to draw more on known similar words were also able to predict how to assign lexical stress to unknown words like the nonsense words in the current study as has been demonstrated for L2 learners from a range of L1 backgrounds (e.g., Aske 1990 ; Bullock and Lord 2003 ; Chen 2013 ; Tight 2007 ). On the basis of the results of the current study as well as those of O’Brien (2019) , who demonstrated that participants were rarely able to produce stress assignment rules, analogy may be a better predictor of English-speaking learners’ production of L2 German lexical stress than are measures of metaphonological awareness including the production of German lexical stress rules or an explicit statement regarding where stress should be assigned in a given word. The finding that the production of analogous words did not predict the production performance of French-speaking learners is somewhat surprising, but when taken together with the finding these participants produced significantly fewer analogous words, this may provide further evidence that the French-speaking learners’ lexical stress assignment is less systematic overall.

That L1 English speakers performed in a more nativelike manner than L1 French speakers is not surprising on the basis of previous studies that have demonstrated that participants with variable L1 lexical stress systems are significantly more likely to acquire an L2 system with variable lexical stress. This finding is also in alignment with predictions made by models including the Stress Typology Model ( Altmann 2006 ) and the Stress Parameter Model ( Peperkamp and Dupoux 2002 ), which predict L1 effects in the acquisition of L2 stress. The French-speaking learners did not directly transfer their L1 patterns to their L2 German system, and they showed variability in their nativelikeness in lexical stress assignment depending on the syllable that was to be stressed in a given word. The findings of the current study are also supported by the Speech Learning Model ( Flege 1995 ), which predicts a close alignment between perception and production. The production accuracy for participants in both groups was significantly predicted by their perceptual accuracy.

It is not surprising that participants’ performance on the perceptual task was strongly associated with their performance on the production task. Nonetheless, the L2 learners in this study demonstrated variability across the two tasks according to their first languages. Because this study made use of decontextualized nonsense words, we cannot say for certain whether performance on these tasks would generalize to the real world. An interesting avenue for subsequent research, especially on L2 German, is the association between lexical stress assignment and derivation. Future studies should investigate the extent to which L2 learners assign lexical stress in derived words in which lexical stress assignment switches syllables as a result of the process of derivation along the lines of Wade-Woolley and Heggie (2015) . This will provide important insights into the lexical stress assignment system at the interface of morphology and phonology. Moreover, research methodologies that investigate the role of analogy in pronunciation – and especially stress assignment – should take steps to discourage participants from making use of contrastive stress in their production of analogous words. Encouraging participants to find words that rhyme with target words, for example, may be one way to ensure that participants assign stress appropriately to both target items and analogous words. Ultimately, a better understanding of developing L2 lexical stress systems will enable classroom practitioners to develop and test classroom and computer-mediated tasks that more effectively target this essential component of L2 comprehensibility.

Appendix A. 

Nonsense tokens and goodness ratings.

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Guest Essay

The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth’

By Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven

Mr. Byrne is a philosopher and the author of “Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions.” Ms. Hooven is an evolutionary biologist and the author of “T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us.”

As you may have noticed, “sex” is out, and “sex assigned at birth” is in. Instead of asking for a person’s sex, some medical and camp forms these days ask for “sex assigned at birth” or “assigned sex” (often in addition to gender identity). The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association endorse this terminology; its use has also exploded in academic articles. The Cleveland Clinic’s online glossary of diseases and conditions tells us that the “inability to achieve or maintain an erection” is a symptom of sexual dysfunction, not in “males,” but in “people assigned male at birth.”

This trend began around a decade ago, part of an increasing emphasis in society on emotional comfort and insulation from offense — what some have called “ safetyism .” “Sex” is now often seen as a biased or insensitive word because it may fail to reflect how people identify themselves. One reason for the adoption of “assigned sex,” therefore, is that it supplies respectful euphemisms, softening what to some nonbinary and transgender people, among others, can feel like a harsh biological reality. Saying that someone was “assigned female at birth” is taken to be an indirect and more polite way of communicating that the person is biologically female. The terminology can also function to signal solidarity with trans and nonbinary people, as well as convey the radical idea that our traditional understanding of sex is outdated.

The shift to “sex assigned at birth” may be well intentioned, but it is not progress. We are not against politeness or expressions of solidarity, but “sex assigned at birth” can confuse people and creates doubt about a biological fact when there shouldn’t be any. Nor is the phrase called for because our traditional understanding of sex needs correcting — it doesn’t.

This matters because sex matters. Sex is a fundamental biological feature with significant consequences for our species, so there are costs to encouraging misconceptions about it.

Sex matters for health, safety and social policy and interacts in complicated ways with culture. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to experience harmful side effects from drugs, a problem that may be ameliorated by reducing drug doses for females. Males, meanwhile, are more likely to die from Covid-19 and cancer, and commit the vast majority of homicides and sexual assaults . We aren’t suggesting that “assigned sex” will increase the death toll. However, terminology about important matters should be as clear as possible.

More generally, the interaction between sex and human culture is crucial to understanding psychological and physical differences between boys and girls, men and women. We cannot have such understanding unless we know what sex is, which means having the linguistic tools necessary to discuss it. The Associated Press cautions journalists that describing women as “female” may be objectionable because “it can be seen as emphasizing biology,” but sometimes biology is highly relevant. The heated debate about transgender women participating in female sports is an example ; whatever view one takes on the matter, biologically driven athletic differences between the sexes are real.

When influential organizations and individuals promote “sex assigned at birth,” they are encouraging a culture in which citizens can be shamed for using words like “sex,” “male” and “female” that are familiar to everyone in society, as well as necessary to discuss the implications of sex. This is not the usual kind of censoriousness, which discourages the public endorsement of certain opinions. It is more subtle, repressing the very vocabulary needed to discuss the opinions in the first place.

A proponent of the new language may object, arguing that sex is not being avoided, but merely addressed and described with greater empathy. The introduction of euphemisms to ease uncomfortable associations with old words happens all the time — for instance “plus sized” as a replacement for “overweight.” Admittedly, the effects may be short-lived , because euphemisms themselves often become offensive, and indeed “larger-bodied” is now often preferred to “plus sized.” But what’s the harm? No one gets confused, and the euphemisms allow us to express extra sensitivity. Some see “sex assigned at birth” in the same positive light: It’s a way of talking about sex that is gender-affirming and inclusive .

The problem is that “sex assigned at birth”— unlike “larger-bodied”— is very misleading. Saying that someone was “assigned female at birth” suggests that the person’s sex is at best a matter of educated guesswork. “Assigned” can connote arbitrariness — as in “assigned classroom seating” — and so “sex assigned at birth” can also suggest that there is no objective reality behind “male” and “female,” no biological categories to which the words refer.

Contrary to what we might assume, avoiding “sex” doesn’t serve the cause of inclusivity: not speaking plainly about males and females is patronizing. We sometimes sugarcoat the biological facts for children, but competent adults deserve straight talk. Nor are circumlocutions needed to secure personal protections and rights, including transgender rights. In the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision in 2020, which outlawed workplace discrimination against gay and transgender people, Justice Neil Gorsuch used “sex,” not “sex assigned at birth.”

A more radical proponent of “assigned sex” will object that the very idea of sex as a biological fact is suspect. According to this view — associated with the French philosopher Michel Foucault and, more recently, the American philosopher Judith Butler — sex is somehow a cultural production, the result of labeling babies male or female. “Sex assigned at birth” should therefore be preferred over “sex,” not because it is more polite, but because it is more accurate.

This position tacitly assumes that humans are exempt from the natural order. If only! Alas, we are animals. Sexed organisms were present on Earth at least a billion years ago, and males and females would have been around even if humans had never evolved. Sex is not in any sense the result of linguistic ceremonies in the delivery room or other cultural practices. Lonesome George, the long-lived Galápagos giant tortoise , was male. He was not assigned male at birth — or rather, in George’s case, at hatching. A baby abandoned at birth may not have been assigned male or female by anyone, yet the baby still has a sex. Despite the confusion sown by some scholars, we can be confident that the sex binary is not a human invention.

Another downside of “assigned sex” is that it biases the conversation away from established biological facts and infuses it with a sociopolitical agenda, which only serves to intensify social and political divisions. We need shared language that can help us clearly state opinions and develop the best policies on medical, social and legal issues. That shared language is the starting point for mutual understanding and democratic deliberation, even if strong disagreement remains.

What can be done? The ascendance of “sex assigned at birth” is not an example of unhurried and organic linguistic change. As recently as 2012 The New York Times reported on the new fashion for gender-reveal parties, “during which expectant parents share the moment they discover their baby’s sex.” In the intervening decade, sex has gone from being “discovered” to “assigned” because so many authorities insisted on the new usage. In the face of organic change, resistance is usually futile. Fortunately, a trend that is imposed top-down is often easier to reverse.

Admittedly, no one individual, or even a small group, can turn the lumbering ship of English around. But if professional organizations change their style guides and glossaries, we can expect that their members will largely follow suit. And organizations in turn respond to lobbying from their members. Journalists, medical professionals, academics and others have the collective power to restore language that more faithfully reflects reality. We will have to wait for them to do that.

Meanwhile, we can each apply Strunk and White’s famous advice in “The Elements of Style” to “sex assigned at birth”: omit needless words.

Alex Byrne is a professor of philosophy at M.I.T. and the author of “Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions.” Carole K. Hooven is an evolutionary biologist, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an associate in the Harvard psychology department, and the author of “T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us.”

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