208 Tne Sound System of North American English: An Overview

Sentence Stress and Rhythm: What the Teacher

Needs to Know
The previous discussion of word stress provides a useful basis for understanding how stress
functions beyond the word level. In fact, the combination of unstressed, lightly stressed,
and strongly stressed elements in multisyllabic words also characterizes that of English

utterances. Together, they combine to create the rhythm of the language.

To better understand the underlying rhythmic pattern of English, we need first distin-

guish between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages. This basic distinction character-
izes most languages of the world and provides teachers with insights into the challenges
that many of our students face in maintaining a regular rhythmic beat in English. In stress-
timed languages, the family to which English belongs, syllables are grouped into metrical
feet - causing it to sound something like DUM di-di DUM di / di / DUM di di / DUM. 46
Each metrical foot contains one strong-stressed syllable along with lightly stressed and
unstressed ones. Within the stream of discourse, these strongly stressed syllables tend to
occur at regular intervals, causing English to have a regular rhythmic beat. Syllable-timed
languages, on the other hand, have fairly regular stress on each syllable. 47 Figure 5.25 com-
pares the sentence-length utterances in Spanish and French (both syllable-timed languages)
and English (a stress-timed language). 48

• • • • • • •

Spanish Los lib-ros es-tan en la me-sa.

• • • • •
• (•)

French Les livres sont sur la ta-ble.

•
• • © •
• •

English The books are on the ta-ble.

Figure 5.25 Sentence stress differences in Spanish, French,

and English

We should note here that the distinction between stress-timed and syllable-timed lan-
guages is not universally accepted (see for example Cruttenden 1997; Dalton and Seidlhofer
1994). Dauer (1983) suggests that we consider languages more or less stress-based (i.e., rather
than making the black-and-white distinction between stress-based and syllable-based). 49
However, most pronunciation researchers and practitioners agree that stress-timing repre-
sents at least a strong tendency in English and is thus critical to include in the pronunciation
curriculum. As well, stress-timing appears to be a major factor in how native speakers
process incoming speech, as we discuss in more detail in Chapter 10.

To see how the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables functions within sen-
tence-length utterances, we now turn our attention to sentence stress. We use this term to
refer to the various stressed elements of each sentence. The exercise in Figure 5.26 can be

46
Stress-timed languages include Germanic languages (such as Danish and German) and Slavic languages (such
as Czech and Russian).
47
Syllable-timed languages include many Romance languages (e.g., French. Spanish, Italian) along with Arabic
and Hindi. Japanese is also often considered by many to be a syllable-timed language.

48
See Chela-Flores (1998) and Teschner and Whitley (2004) for exhaustive treatments of stress timing in English.
49
She further suggests that differences in syllable structure and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables may be
an even more important distinction than that of stress- vs. syllable-timed languages.
 Connected Speech, Stress, and Rhythm 209

used with students to illustrate the physical similarities in stress patterns that exist in both
words and simple sentences.

Rhythmic Pattern 0 • • 0
word mother attend

sentence Do it. You did?

Pay them. It hurts.

Rhythmic Pattern • 0 • • • 0
word abandon guarantee
sentence I saw you. Have some cake.
We found it. Where’s the beef?

Rhythmic Pattern • • 0 • • • 0 •

word education nationality

sentence Mary saw it. Come to Canada.

John’s a lawyer. Where’s your bicycle?

Rhythmic Pattern 0 • • • • 0 •

word communication electrification

sentence I want a soda. We took a vacation.

I think he’s got it. I went to the station.

Figure 5.26 Rhythm practice comparing word and sentence stress

Word and sentence stress combine to create the rhythm of an English utterance - that
is, the regular, patterned beat of stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses. This rhythmic
pattern is similar to the rhythm of a musical phrase. Just as in music, Englishmoves in
regular, rhythmic beats from - no matter how many unstressed syllables
stress to stress

fall in between. This stress-timed nature of English means that the length of an utterance

depends not on the number of syllables (as it would in a syllable-timed language like Spanish
or Japanese) but rather on the number of stresses.
A famous example of how syllables adjust to the rhythmic beat of the language is
found in the poem “Break, Break, Break” by Tennyson (see Figure 5.27). The first two lines
(containing three syllables and seven syllables, respectively) are considered rhythmically
equivalent since each line contains only three stressed elements.

(pause) 0 / (pause) 0 / (pause) 0 /

Break, break, break

• • • / 0 / •
0 /

On thy cold gray stones, 0 Sea!

Figure 5.27 Adjustment of syllables in English to its

rhythmic beat

This example also exhibits the importance of pauses in English rhythm and how they mark
intervals (just as a rest does in a phrase of music). Stress-timed rhythm is the basis for the
210 Ihe Sound System of North American English: An Overview

metrical foot in English poetry and is also strongly present in chants, nursery rhymes, and
limericks.
The stressed-timed nature of English can be seen even more clearly if we compare the
sentences in Figure 5.28.

• • •
CATS CHASE MICE.
The CATS have CHASED MICE.
The CATS will CHASE the MICE.
The CATS have been CHASing the MICE.
The CATS could have been CHASing the MICE.

Figure 5.28 “Cats chase mice” rhythm drill

Even though these sentences differ in the number of actual syllables, they are equivalent in
their number of stressed elements. Therefore, the time needed to say each sentence is roughly
equivalent. An obvious consequence of this is that syllable length varies. In the first sentence,
which has the fewest syllables, each syllable is longer. In the subsequent sentences, however,
there are increasingly more unstressed syllables, which are much shorter than the stressed
ones. In addition, the stressed syllables of these sentences are also slightly shorter than the
stressed syllables of the first sentence in order to accommodate the extra unstressed syllables.

Note to Teachers
Maintaining a regular beat from stressed element to stressed element and reducing
the intervening unstressed syllables can be very difficult for students whose native
tongue has syllable-timed rhythm patterns. In these syllable-timed languages (such as
French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and many African languages), rhythm is a function
of the number of syllables in a given phrase, not the number of stressed elements.
Thus, unlike English, phrases with an equal number of syllables take roughly the same
time to produce, and the stress received by each syllable is much more even than in

English. As a result of these differences in stress level and syllable length, learners from
syllable-timed language backgrounds tend to stress syllables in English more equally,
without giving sufficient stress to the main words and without sufficiently reducing
unstressed syllables.

Table 5.13 categorizes content words (i.e., words that carry information) and func-
tion words (i.e., words that signify grammatical relationships) and illustrates which words
in a sentence or utterance tend to receive stress and which do not. Words that carry the
most information are usually stressed - generally the nouns, main verbs, and adjectives.
We also stress interrogatives (words that begin information questions), such as who, what,
when, and where, and demonstrative pronouns - words that point or emphasize (this, that,
50
these, those ). Possessive pronouns (mine, yours, etc.), adverbs (always, very, almost, etc.),

adverbial particles following phrasal verbs (take off, do away with ) and negative contractions
(cant, isn’t), and even the negative particle not when uncontracted usually receive stress
because of their semantic as well as syntactic salience. See Appendix 8 for a useful list of
common phrases that contain unstressed function words.

50
Remember that demonstrative pronouns, which generally are stressed, do not modify a head noun. They
substitute for an entire noun phrase: Whose hooks are these ? That’s a bad idea.
 1

Connected Speech, Stress, and Rhythm 211

On the other hand, the function words that modify the lexically important nouns and
verbs (such as articles and auxiliary verbs) tend not to be stressed. Likewise, words that
signal information previously mentioned (e.g., personal pronouns, relative pronouns, pos-
sessive and demonstrative adjectives) are usually unstressed. In these unstressed sentence
elements, the vowels also tend to be reduced. We discuss this in more detail in Chapter 10.

Figure 5.29 contains the transcript of an authentic speech sample of a college instructor
to his students on the first day of class. It illustrates how, even in formal academic speech,
the majority of function words occur in their unstressed form.

Context: Explanation of course syllabus, required college composition course

Speaker: University composition instructor (male)

Line 1 regular and timely attendance

/on/
Line 2 genuine participation in activities included [sic] edit groups

Line 3 don’t come to class and keep your mouth shut

/to/ /on/ /yo r /
Line 4 come to class and participate
/to/ /on/
Line 5 people that participate end up getting better grades in this class

/on/
Line 6 I don’t you know I . . .

#
/yo/
Line 7 it just works out that way

Line 8 it has a way of kind of generating its own energy

/o/ /ov/ /o/

Line 9 I really um suggest

Line 10 I know that some people are more shy than others
/dot / /or/ /don/
Line 1 But do what you can to um engage
/yo/
Line 12 first in your group
/on//yo r /
Line 13 and eventually um in class

Line 14 because by articulating your own ideas

/yo r /
Line 15 they become

Line 16 doing it in public

/on/
Line 17 they become more clear to you
/to/

Line 18 and vou’re better able to write about them later

/to/ /dom/
Line 19 so don’t be afraid to speak up
/to/

Line 20 Okay

Figure 5.29 First day of class: Transcript of academic discourse

212 The Sound System of North American English: An Overview

TABLE 5.13 CONTENT WORDS VERSUS FUNCTION WORDS

Content / information words Function words (usually unstressed, unless

(often stressed) in final position or when used emphatically)
nouns articles

main verbs auxiliary verbs

adjectives personal pronouns

possessive pronouns possessive adjectives

demonstrative pronouns demonstrative adjectives

interrogatives prepositions

not / negative contractions conjunctions

adverbs
adverbial particles

Teaching Sentence Stress and Rhythm to Students

Teachers should build upon students’ knowledge of word stress to help them begin to
understand sentence stress in English. In addition, students should understand that there
is a basic hierarchy in correctly determining stress placement within an utterance. This
involves knowing the stress patterns for the individual multisyllabic words in an utterance
and deciding which words in an utterance would normally be stressed.
It is a major priority in the pronunciation classroom to explain and illustrate for students f
the stress-timed nature and rhythm of English. When learners (particularly those whose first

language is syllable timed) obscure the distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables
in English, native speakers may either fail to comprehend or they may grow impatient at

the lack of selective stress on key words. In the beginning, teachers may find that their ESL
or EFL learners believe that they are most clearly understood when they pronounce each
word and syllable distinctly. In fact, students are usually quite surprised to find that giving
all syllables equal stress actually hinders native speakers’ comprehension.
In addition, you need to provide learners with clear guidelines concerning which words
(i.e., function or content words) in a sentence tend to receive stress. Table 5.13 provides
useful guidance in this area.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The bridge between word and sentence stress can be illustrated by comparing the stress
pattern of some example words with utterances containing equal numbers of syllables and
similar stress patterns, as in Figure 5.30.