English Word Stress Research Articles

Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter by Ian Cornelius

Reviewed by: Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter by Ian Cornelius Jordan Zweck Ian Cornelius. Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 234. $99.99. Recent years have seen a flourishing of publications on the subject of medieval English metrics. The Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature series alone has produced, along with Ian Cornelius's Reconstructing Alliterative Verse, books by Geoffrey Russom (2017) and Eric Weiskott (2016) on medieval English alliterative poetry. Like these books, Reconstructing Alliterative Verse operates across a long temporal scale, from the seventh through sixteenth centuries, with occasional forays into comparisons with late antique Latin poetry. And like Weiskott and Russom, Cornelius rejects the idea of the so-called "Alliterative Revival" of the fourteenth century, arguing for a continuous tradition of alliterative meter spanning the English Middle Ages, despite the lack of written evidence of such poetry composed c. 1250–c. 1350. The book asks how alliterative meter arose; how it developed over time; and, finally, why it fell out of favor in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In support of its claims, the book also offers a radical revision of how we theorize alliterative meter. Building on the 2008 dissertation of Nikolay Yakovlev, Cornelius describes a system of Old English alliterative meter constructed not around four stressed syllables per line (as in the Sievers five-type system), but rather around four metrical "positions" per line, which are filled by morphemes. Morphological units are not categorized as stressed and unstressed, but rather "strong" or "weak," depending on the part of speech to which they belong and their position in the line. In Cornelius's example, Beowulf, 54a—"leof leodcyning"—would be scanned according to Yakovlev's morphological system as SSSS, where "S" indicates a strong and "x" a weak position. In more traditional scansion, informed by phonological stress patterns, we would expect leodcyning to have primary stress on leod- and secondary stress on -cyn-, with the suffix -ing unstressed. Yakovlev's theory does away with the distinction between primary and secondary stress in polysyllabic Old English words; positions are strong or not, with no gradations between them. Half lines have a minimum of two strong positions but may have as many as four strong positions, and in some metrical types the number of morphemes in some weak positons can or must be more than one. Yakovlev's system results in eight possible types of meter (61). Stress (or [End Page 458] accent) remains possible in Old English verse (and existed phonologically in the spoken language), but is not the primary determiner of meter. Much of the book's argument about both Old English and Middle English meter relies on the reader accepting Yakovlev's ideas, as presented and retested by Cornelius. Not all will. Yakovlev's theory is gaining interest and attention among metrists—Weiskott and Russom also refer to his work, and it has been reviewed by Thomas Cable—but it is not necessarily widely accepted among early medievalists. Early English medievalists who study vernacular poetry but do not identify as metrists may be surprised to learn of its existence. Reconstructing Alliterative Verse is divided into an introduction, five chapters, and a brief epilogue on Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (1578). Chapter 1 argues that even if an ars poetica for medieval English had survived, we would still need to turn to the poetry itself to recover a full understanding of alliterative verse. Not only does practice always deviate from theorized norms, but also the evidence we have for poetic theory from earlier Latin sources and from medieval Iceland demonstrates that medieval literary theory would not have had the vocabulary to address poetic form sufficiently. This is not a critique of medieval thinkers, but an acknowledgment that poetry is very difficult to write about. As Cornelius notes, "[t]he theorists are still playing catch-up today" (25). Moreover, medieval people did not inherit a useful set of terminology from Latin (or Greek) for alliteration, because alliteration would have functioned differently in English than in Latin and because many authors of Latin treatises either ignored alliteration or saw it as hopelessly old-fashioned. One...

English Word Stress in Polish Learners’ Speech Production and Metacompetence

This paper focuses on the relations between conscious and subconscious aspects of English word stress acquisition. Using two tasks – reading and written word stress identification, we test metacompetence and production accuracy in the pronunciation of Polish learners, first year and third year English studies majors. The analysis of the collected data and correlations between the students’ metalinguistic knowledge and production accuracy, including error patterns and proportions, leads to conclusions concerning the significance of language awareness, learning experience and, indirectly, explicit didactic instruction for English word stress realization. Our results indicate that Polish learners tend to stress the word-initial syllable rather than the penult, typical of their native language. We have also observed a generally large, though smaller in more proficient learners, discrepancy between metacompetence and performance.

Developing a Pronunciation Computer Program for the Acquisition of English Phonemes and Word Stress

This study devised a pronunciation computer program to examine whether mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) could facilitate college students’ acquisition of English phonemes and word stress. Thirty-eight participants enrolled in the remedial English class offered at the language center of a national technological university in central Taiwan. Before the class, they were asked to read a word list. In the following six weeks, they were taught to distinguish and articulate English phonemes and to predict word stress locations using the designed computer program. They were also instructed to review the learning materials using the smart-phone version of the devised program. After the teaching session, each participant was asked again to read the same word list and fill out an assessment questionnaire. The sound analyses show that their readings of English minimal pairs and word stress placement were more accurate than their performances before the instruction. Their responses to the questionnaire indicate that both the given instruction and the designed computer program were satisfactory. In the open-ended questions, some of them said that they have built up a better understanding of phonemes and word stress, and that they would try to predict polysyllabic word stress when reading English articles. The present findings can be further applied to research on MALL-based English pronunciation acquisition.

Acoustic Manifestation of English Lexical Stress Pattern by Native Erei Speakers

Lexical stress is the combination of intensity, fundamental frequency and vowel quality acoustically. Like many other non-segmental features of English, it is very vital for intelligibility, foreign accentedness and comprehensibility since wrong placement of primary and/or secondary stress in English words might lead to different interpretations. The feature is not observable in Erei, which is a tonal language, where all the syllables or vowels in a word are given strong form. Erei language is different from free variable stress system of English, and the difference between the two languages may likely result in the transfer of Erei tonal system in the articulation of English lexical stress by native Erei speakers. The study examined the deployment of English lexical stress in the speech outputs of Erei-English bilingual speakers in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State Nigeria. Eight subjects were selected from four secondary schools. Eight words, selected from Cruttenden’s Gimson’s pronunciation of English, were used for the analysis. The metrical theory, developed by Lieberman (1975), was adopted as the framework for the analysis. Findings indicated that Erei-English bilinguals place stress on the wrong syllables as shown in the native British speaker’s output, and therefore, do not observe English rhythmic alternation rules. All the syllables in a word are almost given equal prominence, a rehash of the tonal nature of Erei, affecting the intelligibility of their spoken English. Based on the findings, the study suggested the availability of well-equipped language laboratories, provision of sophisticated audio-visual aids and computerised speech equipment in Nigeria as well as language teachers in L2 situations should focus instruction on non-segmental features before the individual segments to promote international intelligibility in the speech outputs of L2 users.

Acoustic Realization of English Word Stress Produced by English and Korean Speakers: Suprasegmental and Segmental Differences

This study examines how Korean-speaking learners of English produce English word stress in comparison to native English speakers. Participants were...

The Acquisition of English Word Stress by Mandarin EFL Learners

Compared with the study of acquisition of syntax and morphology, there is a relative lack of research on the acquisition of phonology, the L2 acquisition of word stress in particular. This paper investigates the production of word stress by 70 Chinese college students in their reading aloud. Altogether 350 minutes’ recordings were collected and coded. The result shows that improper assignment of word stress most likely occurs in two-syllable words and three-syllable words and on the first syllable. The factors which account for these problems are learners’ insensitivity to syllabic structure of English words and lack of knowledge of rules on English word stress.

Stress Placement in English Quadri-Syllabic and Five-Syllabic Suffixed Words and Their Roots by Pashto Speakers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan

This research study investigates the pattern of English (primary) word stress in quadri-syllabic and five-syllabic suffixed words and their roots by Pashto speakers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan and the effect of suffixation on stress placements. These suffixes in English language are called shifters which shift strong stress to the antepenultimate (third from the last), penultimate (second from the last), and ultimately (last) syllables, as well as those suffixes that do not shift strong stress to other syllables. The data was collected from sixteen Pashto language native speakers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan, by way of recording their oral-reading of a card that contained the selected words. The findings of this study indicate that primary stress pattern varies among quadri-syllabic, and five-syllabic, suffixed words. The three types of suffixes in English language assert different degrees of effect on subjects stress placement, which can influence the amount of correct productions by the subjects. Actually, the suffixes “cial” or “tial” and “ic” state a great effect on subjects primary stress placement, because the subjects were capable of generating the shift in primary stress in penultimate syllable. Unlike the greater number of incorrect productions in “tory” and “ity” suffixed words, the subjects were sensitive to the change of stress pattern, which assists a great number of correct productions in “cial” or “tial” and “ic” suffixed words. The findings disclose the fact that there was extreme unawareness of the strong stress shifting effect by Pashto speakers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which further needed more attention.

The role of vowel quality in the perception of English lexical stress for native speakers of Japanese

Vowel quality has been hypothesized to be a cue in determining the location of stress in English words. This study examined the role vowel quality plays in perception by native speakers of Japanese and English using synthesized English words: conflict, contract, and content. Suprasegmental (SP) parameters—F0, duration, and intensity—and vowel quality (VQ) parameters—the frequencies of the first two formants, were independently manipulated to make varying versions of the stimuli. Results of the perception experiment showed that native speakers of Japanese identified the stress location more accurately in the SP-driven stimuli, in which the stress pattern was generated using SP parameters, than in the VQ-driven stimuli, in which the stress pattern was generated using VQ parameters. In contrast, native speakers of English did not differentiate between SP-driven stimuli and VQ-driven stimuli. Furthermore, for the stimuli that SP parameters and VQ parameters indicated incongruent syllable, Japanese speakers id...

Revisiting English word stress and rhythm in the post-nuclear domain

In English, grammatical category and word stress are often highly correlated: disyllabic nouns and verbs frequently occur with trochaic and iambic stress, respectively. Kelly and colleagues (1988,1992) suggest that this relationship was shaped by rhythm but may also be subverted by rhythm. We revisit a 1978 production study by Huss, who argued that the usual stress correlation is neutralized in postnuclear position and that acoustic differences are subject to effects of sentence rhythm. Twelve pairs of homophones were embedded in full sentences preceded by a possessive or plural noun with ultimate or penultimate stress: e.g. farms produce, farm’s produce, farmers produce, farmer’s produce. A postnuclear environment was elicited by prepending a contrastive sentence (e.g., Some say that only supermarket produce may vary in quality but also a farmer’s produce may vary in quality.) Results suggest, contra Huss, that prosodic differences between nouns and verbs persist in the postnuclear environment, despite effects of rhythm. In a mixed-effects logistic regression (N = 18), acoustic cues of syllable duration and maximum intensity were significant predictors of part of speech in nuclear and postnuclear position. We also discuss results of a perception experiment in progress using the production stimuli.

English Pronunciation Errors by Jordanian University Students

This paper presents some of the major English pronunciation errors made by Jordanian students at the University of Jordan. The corpus is designed to investigate the production of English consonants, vowels, consonant clusters, and word stress by informants. The tested consonants are /p - v - ʧ - ʤ - ŋ - ɹ - ƚ/. The tested vowels are /ɪ - ɛ - ɑ - ɔ: - oʊ - ə /. Words containing consonant clusters; square - explain or across words; best friend - ride and swim are tested for epenthetic vowels. The stress pattern is investigated in words such as isn’t- unfortunately. It is found that informants frequently confuse the following phonemes /p - ŋ - ɹ - ƚ/ with /b - nɡ - ɾ - l/ respectively. Moreover, informants frequently insert an epenthetic /ɛ/or /ɪ/ in consonant clusters whether within words; /sɪkɾi:m/ for /skɹi:m/ or across words; /bɛst ɪ fɾɛnd/ for /bɛst fɹɛnd/. Regarding vowels, informants commonly confuse the KIT-DRESS vowels produceing both as /e/. The realization of the schwa /ə/ is greatly influenced by spelling. The LOT vowel is produced similar to its RP /ɒ/ realization as [ɞ]even though most informants adopt a General American accent and should therefore produce the vowel as /ɑ/. The THOUGHT-GOAT vowel distinction is missing; both vowels are often merged as [o:]. Finally, the informants very often shift the stress pattern from its trochaic English stress pattern; /ɪ'zɪnt/ for /'ɪzɪnt/.

Phonological Adaptation and Morphosyntactic Integration in Igbo-English Insertional Codeswitching

In African-European language insertional codeswitching, the African language is usually the matrix language that provides the morphosyntactic frame into which elements of the embedded language (a European language) are inserted. Morphosyntactic integration, especially of inserted verbs and verbal expressions, is a defining feature of such codeswitching. The study describes insertional codeswitching in the speech of Igbo-English bilinguals. Igbo, a West-Congo language, is the matrix language, and English, an Indo-European language is the embedded language. It notes that as a result of major phonological differences (segmental and suprasegmental) between Igbo and English, namely, a harmony vs. non-harmony vowel system and a tone vs. stress system, English verbs often lack the requisite phonological features for morphosyntactic integration into Igbo. The phonological features of English verbs are, therefore, adapted in such a way that English vowel segments fit into the Igbo vowel system, and English word stress fits into the Igbo tonal system. English verbs with phonologically adapted features are thus enabled to achieve full morphosyntactic integration into Igbo and to function like Igbo verbs in terms of selection of inflectional affixes and subject pronouns on the basis of tone and vowel harmony. The study describes Igbo-English insertional codeswitching as a highly rule-governed linguistic phenomenon.

Accounting for L2 learners’ errors in word stress placement

Stress placement in English words is governed by highly complicated rules. Thus, assigning stress correctly in English words has been a challenging task for L2 learners, especially Indonesian learners since their L1 does not recognize such stress system. This study explores the production of English word stress by 30 university students. The method used for this study is immediate repetition task. Participants are instructed to identify the stress placement of 80 English words which are auditorily presented as stimuli and immediately repeat the words with correct stress placement. The objectives of this study are to find out whether English word stress placement is problematic for L2 learners and to investigate the phonological factors which account for these problems. Research reveals that L2 learners have different ability in producing the stress, but three-syllable words are more problematic than two-syllable words. Moreover, misplacement of stress is caused by, among others, the influence of vowel lenght and vowel height.

Word Stress Contribution in Second Language Acquisition

Possessing native-like pronunciation is one of the main goals that non-native speakers of English would like to accomplish. Besides the ability to pronounce English sounds correctly, using the proper English word stress also plays an important role in achieving that goal.This paper first specifies the nature of word stress in English and its contribution on successful English language learning. Secondly, it addresses the problems that are commonly encountered by the Indonesian learners in using correct word stress in their speech. Finally, it also proposes some ways that English learners can use to learn English word stress better. Hopefully these proposed ways will be able to help the learners to speak in English more fluently with not only accurate pronunciation but also with correct word stress.

Classification of lexical stress using spectral and prosodic features for computer-assisted language learning systems

We present a system for detection of lexical stress in English words spoken by English learners. This system was designed to be part of the EduSpeak® computer-assisted language learning (CALL) software. The system uses both prosodic and spectral features to detect the level of stress (unstressed, primary or secondary) for each syllable in a word. Features are computed on the vowels and include normalized energy, pitch, spectral tilt, and duration measurements, as well as log-posterior probabilities obtained from the frame-level mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) are used to represent the distribution of these features for each stress class. The system is trained on utterances by L1-English children and tested on English speech from L1-English children and L1-Japanese children with variable levels of English proficiency. Since it is trained on data from L1-English speakers, the system can be used on English utterances spoken by speakers of any L1 without retraining. Furthermore, automatically determined stress patterns are used as the intended target; therefore, hand-labeling of training data is not required. This allows us to use a large amount of data for training the system. Our algorithm results in an error rate of approximately 11% on English utterances from L1-English speakers and 20% on English utterances from L1-Japanese speakers. We show that all features, both spectral and prosodic, are necessary for achievement of optimal performance on the data from L1-English speakers; MFCC log-posterior probability features are the single best set of features, followed by duration, energy, pitch and finally, spectral tilt features. For English utterances from L1-Japanese speakers, energy, MFCC log-posterior probabilities and duration are the most important features.

Comparison on the Word Stress Patterns and Functions between English and Sichuan Dialect

Word stress is one of the most important elements in phonology, accompanied by segmental phonemes to express certain meaning of vocabulary, grammar, etc. Although both English and Chinese belong to free stress languages, most of the English words are polysyllabic, and their compositions are complicated, besides, its vocabulary is mixed with a large number of foreign words, thereby causing the complexity and irregularity of the English word stress patterns. In contrast, most words in Sichuan dialect are disyllabic and only some are trisyllabic or more than three syllables, thus the word stress patterns in Sichuan dialect are much simpler than English. In addition, judging from the functions of word stress, it plays a more important role in English than in Sichuan dialect, which can not only distinguish meanings, differentiate compound words from adjective phrases, but also discriminate the part of speech of some disyllabic words with the same spelling. This article will make a comparative study on the word stress between English and Sichuan dialect from their natures, patterns and functions, and summarize the similarities and differences of them. It aims to be of helpful to students in dialect area in learning English pronunciation and help them avoid misplacing word stress in communication.

Acoustic Correlates of Word Stress as a Cue to Accent Strength

Due to the clear interference of their mother tongue prosody, many Czech learners produce their English with a conspicuous foreign accent. The goal of the present study is to investigate the acoustic cues that differentiate stressed and unstressed syllabic nuclei and identify individual details concerning their contribution to the specific sound of Czech English. Speech production of sixteen female non-professional Czech and British speakers was analysed with the sounds segmented on a word and phone level and with both canonical and actual stress positions manually marked. Prior to analyses the strength of the foreign accent was assessed in a perception test. Subsequently, stressed and unstressed vowels were measured with respect to their duration, amplitude, fundamental frequency and spectral slope. Our results show that, in general, Czech speakers use much less acoustic marking of stress than the British subjects. The difference is most prominent in the domains of fundamental frequency and amplitude. The Czech speakers also deviate from the canonical placement of stress, shifting it frequently to the first syllable. On the other hand, they seem to approximate the needed durational difference quite successfully. These outcomes support the concept of language interference since they correspond with the existing linguistic knowledge about Czech and English word stress. The study adds specific details concerning the extent of this interference in four acoustic dimensions.

The Influence of Chinese Stress on English Pronunciation Teaching and Learning

Stress is one of the key suprasegmentals in English sound system. It plays an important role in intelligibility and comprehensibility. However, stress often poses problems for Chinese EFL Learners. Chinese learners of English often misplace the stress in English words and sentences which subsequently may interrupt the flow of communication and lead to unintelligibility. Therefore, the correct placement of stress is a main concern in EFL speech intelligibility and training, and it is particularly important for Chinese learners of English because they have a drastically different stress system in their native language. There is evidence to suggest that the transfer of native language sound systems is one of the major reasons for foreign language pronunciation errors. This paper examines the differences between Chinese and English stress. Based on such contrastive analysis of English and Chinese stress, experiments are conducted to investigate the reasons for Chinese EFL learners’ pronunciation difficulties in English stress, and finally implications for English pronunciation teaching are drawn.

Chinese learners’ acquisition of English word stress and factors affecting stress assignment

This study explores Chinese ESL learners’ acquisition of English word stress and compares the factors affecting their stress assignment with Guion et al.’s (2003) findings of three factors (syllable structure, lexical class, and phonologically similar words) affecting English speakers’ stress placement. Twenty Hong Kong advanced learners produced and perceived 40 real words and 40 pseudowords of varying syllable structures in noun and verb sentence frames. They also indicated words they considered to be phonologically similar to the pseudoword. The results show that the participants performed well in the tasks with real words, but there were asymmetrical abilities in the tasks involving pseudowords. Regarding the factors affecting the stress assignment, different from the findings by Guion et al., stress assignment was not significantly influenced by syllable structure or the stress patterns of phonologically similar real words. Only lexical class had an effect on main stress assignment.

Comparison of Slovak and English Word Stress

The paper defines and describes the basic stress characteristics in general and shows its functioning in Slovak and English language. It also implies that its wrong perception contributes to Slovak-English language interference.

THE ROLE OF EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH WORD STRESS PATTERNS IN AN EFL ARAB UNIVERSITY CONTEXT

This study presents the results of an investigation into the extent to which explicit instruction in English word stress patterns correlates with better word stress assignment performance by Palestinian EFL university students. The students received three weeks of explicit instruction in the main English word stress rules. In analyzing the differences in the pre- and post-treatment test scores, the researchers found significant increases on the post-treatment test scores which indicate a correlation between explicit instruction in word stress rules and students' performance in word stress assignment. Teaching suggestions and activities are provided to improve learners' word stress assignment performance. The results of this study are of great value to Palestinian linguists, EFL teachers and curricula developers who need to pay special attention to this often overlooked area and, therefore, to ensure that pedagogical materials and teaching activities on word stress become an integral part of EFL curricula.