Running Head: WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE The American phonology system: Word stress patterns

and their relevance to learners Non-native speakers (NNSs) of English face many struggles when trying to

successfully achieve ultimate attainment in mastering the English language. Depending on the particular goals of individual learners, and the desired uses of the English language for each individual, these struggles may vary in number and degree. Regardless of ability level, proficiency in speaking, or desired use for speaking English, however, word stress is a crucial component in any NNSs development of English mastery. In order to be able to communicate in the target language, NNSs must produce comprehensible output, as indicated by research popularized by Merrill Swain (2000), if they are to be understood in an English speaking communicative context. Celce-Murcia et al (2010) point out that one particularly important aspect of comprehensible output is correct word stress, citing other researchers whove looked into stress and concluding that the correct placement of stress in a word plays a significant role in the overall intelligibility of nonnative-speaker speech. Reinforcing this opinion is the research presented in Teschner and Whitley (2004) which indicates that years of teaching a wide variety of students of English have convinced us that its pronunciation must be approached on the basis of the powerful role of stress in the language. Word stress is an important component of the English language, because as Checklin (2012) describes, citing other research, English, along with other languages such as Russian and Arabic, belongs to a group of languages which are described as stress-timed languages (Abercrombie, 1967). These languages syllables are not equally stressed: some are more prominent, others have less prominence and some have none at all.

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE Once students understand that English is a stress-timed language, it is germane to give them direct instruction about how different syllables do or do not get stressed, and to what extent they get stressed. To some extent, orthoepy (the study of correct pronunciation) falls under the prescriptive view of linguistics, since those concerned with pronunciation have lauded some pronunciations and denounced others. To this end, there are certain pronunciations of words that are deemed tolerable, while others are determined to be incorrect and possibly unacceptable. Still, this highly prescriptive notion of correct versus incorrect pronunciations in the English language is a useful one for ES/FL teachers to familiarize themselves and their students with. Benrabah (1997) cites the 1983 brown and Yule text Discourse Analysis, noting that when the developers of the Communicative Approach first emerged, they flatly rejected teaching pronunciation on the grounds that its proponents aimed at accuracy via meaningless drilling, at the expense of fluency and meaningful interaction. Despite that criticism against teaching it, inaccurate pronunciation can have drastic effects on an individuals ability to communicate articulately, as well as on the social perceptions developed about that speaker in the context of conversations with native speakers (NSs). Celce-Murcia et al (2010) suggest that even though word stress in English may appear to be unsystematic, it is in fact far from random. Because there are specific elements that influence word stress, it is important for language teachers to draw their students attention to these guidelines and ensure that they teach specific pronunciation strategies to ensure their students begin to master correct English stress patterns.

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE This mastery is particularly important for students learning to speak English as a second language, because, as Celce-Murcia et al (2010) point out, difference between stressed and unstressed syllables is greater in English than in most other languages. Teschner and Whitley (2004) agree, with their findings that virtually all aspects of English pronunciation from the vowel system (the languages main bte noire) to the articulation of syllables, words, and sentences are determined by the presence or absence of stress. Because the English language puts prominence on specific syllables and leaves others unstressed, a lot of information can be delivered in the tone of voice, as well as the words that are spoken. Benrabahs (1997) research clearly signifies that native speakers expect pertinent information within a conversation to be emphasized by stress, so if the stress is incorrectly placed it can lead to confusion. He cited such examples as turbine as in look at that wind turbine and found that if the stress was placed to the right of where it should be, i.e. turBINE instead of TURbine, that the speaker was likely to be misunderstood. ELLs need to comprehend, at minimum, and ideally master, the changes in tone of voice associated with word stress if they want to be consistently understood by NSs of English. As discussed in this class, stress on specific syllables is not entirely phonetic. Stress merely exists when a speaker expends more energy to draw her audiences attention to a certain syllable or a certain word. Yava (2006) suggests that stress is a cover term for the prosodic features of duration, intensity, and pitch; (emphasis in original) thus, the prominence of stressed syllables is generally manifested by their characteristics of being longer, louder, and higher in pitch than unstressed syllables. From the speakers point of view, this corresponds to

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE the amount of effort expended, while it is the perceptual prominence from the hearers point of view In other words, this increase in energy can be recognized as a syllable that is stressed when a speaker uses intonation contours to draw specific attention to that syllable. McMahon (2002) adds an interesting bit of information worth keeping in mind, formulating the theory that the interaction of these phonetic factors produces an effect which is clearly audible, but critically relative: that is, we cannot distinguish a stressed from an unstressed syllable if each is spoken in isolation, but only by comparing the syllables of a word, or a longer string, to see which are picked out as more prominent. Despite the fact that this occurrence is not purely phonetic, it certainly has a place in a language teachers communicative classroom. Just as language teachers have a responsibility to teach slang, connected speech, and reductions, they must also teach word stress. This is a common and naturally occurring phenomenon among native speakers, so in order to understand, and be understood by, them in conversation, learners must be familiar with these structures. It is helpful at this juncture to borrow from Yava (2006). Though this is an extensive quotation, it is a concise and user-friendly overview of syllable stress. Before we start our account of English stress, it will be useful to remember the conditions of a stressable syllable. Syllable weight is an important factor in stress assignment in that heavy syllables attract stress. The weight of a syllable is

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE determined by its rhyme structure. If the rhyme is non-branching (a short vowel, and no coda), the syllable is light. If, on the other hand, the rhyme is branching (has a short vowel, except [] which is weightless and cannot carry stress, followed by a coda (simple or complex), or has a long vowel or a diphthong with or without a following coda), the syllable is heavy. The weight of the syllable strongly affects the way it is stressed, in that the rules which can be generally applied to help predict stress placement are dependent upon a syllables weight. McMahon (2002) elaborates, English nouns typically have stress on the penultimate syllable, so long as that syllable is heavy, which it is in aroma and in agenda. However, in discipline the penultimate syllable is light it fails to attract stress by the Noun Rule, and the stress instead falls on the previous, initial syllable. Because the rules are so dependent upon the weight of a syllable, it is more appropriate to teach students these tendencies, so that they dont make mistakes by over-applying the traits of the rules. Like other structures in English, word stress can be difficult to teach and frustrating for ELLs to learn, because it isnt easy or straightforward. However, there are a few rules that govern a majority of instances for determining appropriate word stress. Primarily, students should be taught that a words origin is a crucial component of how it gets stressed. Celce-Murcia et al (2010) details that historically, English is an Anglo-Saxon language of Germanic origin, and according to the Anglo-Saxon root rule, these words are stressed on the first syllable of the words root. This is true for Old English words, such as FATHer or SUMMer, and those that have been borrowed from other languages but integrated into English for many hundreds of years, since as Celce-

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE Murcia et al (2010) notes the longer a borrowed word has been in English, the more likely it is that word stress will be shifted forward (i.e. to the first syllable of the root, as in the typical English stress pattern.) This accounts for a vast majority of frequently used English words, however there are still myriad words that have retained their original pronunciation in the language they were borrowed from. McMahon (2002) cites this as her explanation for the dichotomy of English stress class, namely that English does not fall fully within either class: it is neither a wholly fixed-stress, nor a wholly free-stress language. This is in large part a result of its peculiar history. English inherited from Germanic a system with fixed stress falling on the first syllable of the stem; but it has subsequently been strongly influenced by Latin, French and other Romance languages, because of the sheer number of words it has borrowed. It has therefore ended up with a mixture of the Germanic and Romance stress systems. Another general rule that governs word stress is the addition of affixes, and these are useful to teach to learners for two reasons. It is always valuable to teach ELLs the function of affixes because knowing that information can greatly increase their potential working vocabulary. As it pertains specifically to word stress, affixation can give helpful clues to ELLs about pronunciation. Because of the tendency in English to allow affixation to affect stress patterns, English stress is said to be mobile. This can be shown in the morphologically related words in which the stress shifts onto different syllables, according to Yava (2006). In the second chapter of Pronouncing English, Strong Stresses and Weak: How to Know Where They Go, Teschner and Whitley (2004) discuss prefixes. The subheading

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE of the section about prefixes The shiftless, stress-free life of the prefix is productive or especially widely used both hilarious and accurate: for the most part, prefixes are always unstressed or only lightly stressed. Teschner and Whitley (2004) determine that roughly 90 percent of all the corpus words that begin with a prefix do not stress it, and most prefixes do not shift stress within a word. Celce-Murcia et al (2010) articulates the ways in which prefix pronunciation can vary, showing a variety of lightly stressed Germanic-origin prefixes and unstressed Latinate-origin prefixes, and also paraphrasing an exception to the unstressed prefix rule when a prefix attaches to a noun such that the combined units function as a noun compound. In this case, the prefix or its first syllable tends to be strongly stressed, with the noun receiving only light stress. One example of this exception provided is overload in its verb form the stress falls on the verb, i.e. college professors overLOAD their students with work, as opposed to the noun form of the word, when he stress falls on the prefix (in this case the first syllable of the prefix) as in I feel completely Overloaded. Teschner and Whitley (2004) also claimed this exception, affirming that it is nonetheless the case that about ten atypical prefixes including some that are not especially productive or widely used take strong stress in many instances. Despite this exception, Celce-Murcia et al (2010) insists the most important information to communicate to learners concerning prefixes is that they are never strongly stressed. Instead, learners should be directed to place the strong stress on the first syllable of the root word. When a suffix is added to a word, it can similarly affect the stress and thus the pronunciation of that word. There are three main types of suffixes, as outlined in CelceMurcia et al (2010) and each type impacts stress in different ways. They describe the multiple suffix types as being stress-neutral, stress-demanding, or stress-changing. For the

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE most part, Germanic suffixes are stress-neutral, that is their addition to a word does not affect its pronunciation. This is evident when looking at the suffix -ful as in thankful. Thank is pronounced identically in that case as it is in isolation. Celce-Murcia et al (2010) goes on to suggest that the stress-demanding or stress-bearing, as they are called by Yava (2006) suffixes, those that change the words pronunciation so that the heavy stress falls on the suffix itself, are typically directly from French, for the most part. An example of a French stress-demanding suffix is -ique as in critIQUE. Notice the shift in stress from words like CRITical or CRITicism. Yava (2006) points out that stress-bearing suffixes always constitute heavy syllables. Stress-changing suffixes will undoubtedly be more difficult for ELLs to master. For one thing, they do in fact change the pronunciation of the words they are affixed to, but they do not shift the stress to themselves, instead their addition shifts the stress to one of two syllables within a word. Some stress-changing suffixes shift the stress to the second-to-last syllable, called the penultimate syllable, while others shift the emphasis to the third-to-last syllable, or the antepenultimate syllable. An example of the latter can be seen in the addition of -tion to evolve. The word without the suffix is pronounced eVOLVE, whereas the addition of the suffix shifts that stress to be evoLUtion. For an example of the latter, look at abnormality. With the suffix the emphasis is abnorMALity, but without it the emphasis is abNORmal. Regardless of what type of suffixes students are working with, the crucial thing to note is that when the suffix and the base word it gets attached to are from different historical origins, it is the suffix that determines the English stress pattern, according to Celce-Murcia et al (2010). It is worth noting that Celce-Murcia et al (2010) cite Teschner and Whitley (2004) as a source for all of the above stated rules, and that text does indeed echo the information

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE found in Teaching Pronunciation. However, because of the nature of this textbook to help prepare future teachers of English language learners, the Celce-Murcia et al (2010) book is much more fleshed out, with useful details and examples that provide additional information to someone who wants to convey knowledge of English stress patterns to NNSs. The third element of a word that affects its stress patterns, as stipulated by CelceMurcia et al (2010) is that words grammatical function within an utterance. There is no definite rule for how this grammatical function governs stress patterns, but there are general guidelines that teachers can provide to their students that will likely prove useful. For instance, Celce-Murcia et al (2004) implies that reflexive pronouns such as herself always receive stress on the second syllable. Not every grammatical function has rules this clear cut governing stress, but there are patterns. Numbers follow one two patterns, taking stress on either the first or the last syllable, as is the case with TWENtyfive and fifty-TWO respectively. Similarly, Celce-Murcia et al (2010) express two patterns governing stress of adjective compounds. Most of the time adjective compounds take stress on the accented syllable of the first element in the compound. However, if the adjective compound occurs in utterance-final position, strong stress falls on the accented syllable of the second element in the compound. Examples of these two are provided with the example sentences Hes a WELL-trained dog, and That dog is well-TRAINED. Besides the numbers and adjective compounds which follow two separate and distinct patterns of stress, students can be taught a rule for the stress pattern of noun compounds. Celce-Murcia et al (2010) acknowledge that in English noun compounds, the first element of the compound is strongly stressed, whether the compound is simple or complex This is true of noun compounds

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE created by joining a noun + a noun or those created by joining an adjective + a noun. Other compounds (e.g. verb or adjective compounds) follow the same stress pattern receiving strong stress on the first syllable. It is of particular interest to compare these factors contributing to stress placement, namely word origin, affixation, and grammatical function, with those identified in Guion et al (2003) In this study, the researchers sought to determine language users knowledge of English stress patterns, and the results indicate that phonological theories of English word stress need to allow for multiple, competing, probabilistic factors in accounts of main stress placement including syllabic structure (most notably vowel length), lexical class, and stress patterns of phonologically similar words. While teachers explain stress patterns and rules associated with words and affixes from other languages (including, for the purposes of the paper, Old English) to help ELLs learn how and why to accurately use stress to help them communicate, it is also interesting to see where intuition tells speakers to place stress. In many ways intuition can affect usage that leads to shifts in languages, so it is up to a teacher to ensure students know that language users productions dont match rules for Standardization all the time, and syllable stress is no exception. On the flip side, knowing that users will not always follow the rules nor will the rules always apply to every word can help learners see the need to pay close attention to stress, both in input and in output. Though much of the focus for those studying to be ES/FL teachers is on how to establish a communicative classroom, ensuring that students feel comfortable and confident to use the language, there are still times when language should be explicitly

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WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE taught and practiced for mastery. Despite the importance of natural, authentic communication, it is imperative that language teachers draw learners attention to the importance of syllable stress to appropriate pronunciation. With just a handful of rules, much of the vocabulary that learners will come across and have reason to use frequently can be fitted into a pattern of stress. Knowing, and practicing using, these patterns of stress will lead to learners ability to communicate in English more clearly and effectively, which of course is the goal that learners and teachers of English aim to achieve.

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WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE References

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Benrabah, M. (1997). Word stress A source of unintelligibility in English. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 35 (3), 157-165. Celce-Murcia, M. (2010) Teaching pronunciation: A course book and reference guide (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Checklin, M. (2012) What in the world do we know about word stress? A review of what it is and how to teach it. TESOL in Context, 22 (3), 1-13. Guion, S. G. et al. (2003) Factors affecting stress placement for English nonwords include syllabic structure, lexical class, and stress patterns of phonologically similar words. Language and Speech, 46 (4), 403-427 McMahon, A. (2002). An introduction to English phonology. George Square, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Swain, M. (2000). The output hypothesis and beyond: Mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. In James P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning (pp. 97-114). Great Clarendon Street, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

WORD STRESS PATTERNS AND THEIR RELEVANCE Teschner, R. V. and Whitley, M. S. (2004). Pronouncing English: A stress-based approach. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Yava, M. (2006). Applied English phonology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing

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