Sentence stress and intonation
Szilárd Szentgyörgyi
English and American Studies Institute - EASI
University of Pannonia
Veszprém, Hungary
Veszprém (65,000)
• County seat 10 miles north of
Lake Balaton, an hour’s drive
southwest of Budapest;
University of Pannonia
(10,000)
• Faculties of
• Engineering
• Information Technology
• Agriculture
• Business and Economy
• Modern Philologies and
Social Sciences
English B.A., English M.A.,
TEFL MA, joint American
Studies M.A. with Nazareth
College (Rochester, N.Y.)
Phonological demonstration to the name problem:
/ /
/t/, a coronal consonant drops out between two consonants
 
the alvolar nasal /n/ assimilates in place of articulation to the
following palatal stop // resulting in //
[ ]
’Constantine of Saint George’
The topic of today’s talk is sentence stress and intonation in
English. However, we must always bear in mind that:
• there is always dialectal variation;
• there is always individual, idiolectal (inter-speaker) variation;
• there may even be intra-speaker variation, i.e. the same
speaker might use different pronunciation on different
occasions.
The variety described: RP, BBC English, Queen’s English…
• Overview
– Basic notions of sentence stress
– Rhythmic stress deletion
– Tonic placement
– Basic notions of intonation
– Basic tones and sentence types
• fall
• low rise
• high rise
• fall-rise
1. Basic notions of sentence stress
Stress at sentence level:
• In isolation, every word has a primary stressed syllable.
In a sentence, many words will have no stressed syllable
at all, i.e., they occur in their weak forms, e.g., can is
realized as /kn/ instead of //.
• Stressed syllables follow one another in equal distances
creating a typical iambic rhythm – as English is a
stressed-timed language.
This is the car that I bought /      /.
• Lexical/content words vs. function words.
The former include the four basic categories (N, V, Adj,
Adv) while the latter include the rest of the categories, (e.g.
Prep, Pron, Aux, Conj).
• Word-level stress vs. Sentence-level stress
In English words, it is always the last major (i.e. primary or
secondary) stress that is the strongest – a principle dubbed
Prominence of the Right Edge.
dècontàminátion – stress pattern: 202010
Àppalàchicóla
• In phrases and sentences it is also the last stress that
is the strongest – see compounds vs phrases:
black bird vs blackbird - 2 1 vs 1 3
big head vs bighead
• That is, the strongest stress of a sentence falls on
the last stressed syllable - the tonic (also: accent,
nucleus or sentence stress) indicated by
underlining.
• Intonation = a falling or rising melody starting on
the tonic.
• Speech is divided into tone-units – or tone groups or
intonation phrases –, which are parts of connected speech
ending in a tonic.
• Tone-unit: starts after a tonic and ends in a tonic – it is
normally a clause or a longer phrase.
She wanted to face the problems on Tuesday.
He felt uneasy but the others were enjoying themselves.
I didn't really want to come but here I am.
No way!
At five o'clock.
No, only at the meeting.
• Parts of the tone unit
– tail – the unstressed syllables following the tonic;
– pre-head – the unstressed syllables before the first stress;
– head – starting with the first stressed syllable and ending
with the last unstressed syllable before the tonic.
She wanted to face the problems on Tues day.
Pre-head Head Tonic Tail
• The tone unit may also be divided into feet playing a very
important role in determining the rhythm of the sentence.
• Foot: the sequence of a stressed syllable and all the
unstressed syllables following it up to the next stress.
She wanted to face the problems on Tuesday.
foot0 foot1 foot2 foot3 foot4
• Foot0 is an incomplete foot as it only contains unstressed
syllables – a pre-head is always an incomplete foot.
2. Rhythmic Stress Deletion
Three stressed syllables with zero or one unstressed syllable
between them - the rhythm would become jerky, staccato-like.
To avoid such stress clusters the middle one of the three
stresses is deleted and the syllable is pronounced as
unstressed.
good old days → good old days
very brave soldier → very brave soldier
Stress Shift – the Thirteen Men Rule
• When a word with a secondary and a primary stress (e.g., thìrtéen) forms a
phrase with another one (e.g., mén), the following should happen:
– the final stress should be the strongest,
– all the others are expected to reduce their stress degree by one
– something like thirtèen mén, with a 321 stress pattern should be
produced.
• Instead, the stress levels switch positions in the first element of the
phrase:
thìrteen mén
• Stress degrees are shifted to move rhythmic beats away from each other
and thus facilitate the iambic rhythm of the phrase.It occurs
automatically in all phrases where the first element has at least one
secondary stress, e.g.
àfternoon téa, Jàpanese lánguage, Tènnessee Válley, the Bèrlin Wáll
3. Tonic placement.
• Neutral tonic placement / neutral tonicity
The neutral, unmarked or default type: it does not express
emphasis or contrast.
• The neutral tonic is normally placed on the last content
word but in some exceptional cases it may fall on an earlier
content word or on a function word.
Tonic on last content word:
We didn't want to talk about the details.
He was finally admitted to university.
• Tonic on an earlier content word
– No tonic on 2nd part of initially stressed compound.
He bought a new mountain bike.
– No tonic on afterthoughts, appended remarks.
It was nice, I think.
– No tonic on common adverbs.
We'll just stay here.
– No tonic on "obvious predicates".
That's what the book says.
• Tonic on a function-word
– Tonic on an auxiliary if no other stressable word.
No, you can't.
– Tonic on Prep in short sentences without main verb.
Where are you from?
– Tonic on possessive pronoun.
This is mine
• Dislocated tonic: the speaker wishes to emphasize
some part of the utterance, contrast a part with
something else or focus on some new information,
which may be achieved by placing the tonic at a
different place from where it would normally appear.
Jim was there. vs. Jim was there.
• Contrast
Tonic is placed on an earlier content word to express contrast
between what has been said and the word/expression bearing
the tonic.
I gave JACK a book on history yesterday. (... and not somebody else).
We visited a lot of MUSEUMS in London.(... and not night-clubs).
I HAVE seen the film earlier. (... contrary to what you think/claim).
I DID pass the test. (... although that's not what you expected).
• New information
If the end of the sentence contains information the speaker
thinks is known by the listener as old information, then the
words describing this old information will be de-stressed and
stress (and the tonic) will be shifted leftwards to a word thought
to carry new information.
It most typically happens in answering questions repeating some
words from the question – the old information skipped by tonic
assignment is italicized.
Is the book interesting? It is very interesting.
Do you want to have lunch? But I already had lunch.
I'm from the Czech Republic. Oh, my fiancée is Czech, too.
4. Basic notions of intonation
• The intonation or melody of a sentence is the varying
voice-height, or pitch.
• Pitch depends on:
– what kind of intonation is used in a particular sentence;
– age;
– sex;
– the emotional state of the speaker.
• Pitch range: upper and lower limits one’s voice –
dependent on speaker but it does not influence the
understandability of their speech: it is not the absolute but
the relative pitch height that matters.
• Pitch differences do not only occur between speakers but also
between languages.
– Hungarians are said to have a much narrower pitch range
in general than English speakers; that is, the highest pitch
of an average native English speaker is higher than that of
an average native Hungarian speaker, while the lowest
pitch of an English speaker is generally lower than that of
a Hungarian speaker.
– This is even noticed by the untrained ear. Hungarian
speakers often report that they find English speech too
emotional, excited and affected;
– English speakers find the speech of the average Hungarian
too flat, monotonous or boring.
• Intonation is the way the pitch changes in the tone-unit.
This change always takes place on the tonic, i.e. the speakers'
voice will either rise or fall on the tonic syllable.
• This change associated with the tonic syllable is the tone. The
melody of the tone is always continued in the tail of the
tone-unit.
• Tune / intonation pattern: the pitch changes occurring
throughout the whole tone-unit.
• Pre-head: normally starts at a relatively low pitch which
normally jumps high up on the first stressed syllable, i.e. on
the beginning of the head.
• Head: the pitch usually gradually falls throughout the head,
called downdrift. It does not count as falling intonation, it is
just a natural consequence of the fact that speakers are
normally running out of air – the velocity of the outflowing
air drops, which results in a lower pitch.
• Tail: normally a simple continuation of the pitch change of
the tonic.
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5. Basic tones
• The falling tone
– the most common, neutral tone used in English,
suggesting that the speaker is simply conveying
information.
– often used in plain statements and real, serious commands
– as it expresses finality and definiteness –, in exclamations
– expressing that the speakers are sure of what they are
saying –, and in Wh-questions, i.e., questions starting with
a question word (who, what, where, why, how, etc.).
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• The low rising tone
Always used to respond to something that somebody said, it
often expresses indifference – an "I-don't-care attitude" –, it
is used in apologies, greetings and when saying thanks, and
also in cases of expressing encouragement.
• The high rising tone
The high rising tone is
– either a high rise on the tonic, if there is no tail, or
– it is accomplished on the tonic and the tail, if there is one.
If there is no tail, i.e., the whole high rise is realized on the
tonic syllable, then language learners tend to have serious
problems with the height: the high rise produced by a
foreigner may simply not be high enough for an English
speaker; instead, it will sound as a low rise, and will
consequently express indifference or boredom.
• If there is a tail, then the high rise continues from the
tonic throughout the tail and is evenly distributed
over the syllables of the tonic and the tail.
• This is also a serious difficulty, for language learners
as such tonic+tail combinations may not be
pronounced with a steady high rise in other languages.
• The high rise is most often used in Yes/No questions,
which do not start with a question word. If
something is said with a high rising intonation, it is
always a real question.
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• The fall-rise tone
The fall-rise is a combination of a fall from high or mid tone
to low followed by a low rise, i.e., a rise from low to mid.
It is often identified as one of the tones that make English
speech sound too theatrical or affected for the foreigner.
A fall-rise is used to indicate:
– that the speaker is not telling everything, but a part of the message
is only implied, the listener has to find it out from the context;
– or it is used to indicate the end of old information and the
beginning of new information within the sentence.
Thank you very much for your attention!
Questions and comments are welcome both here and now
and at the address below.
Szilárd Szentgyörgyi
szentsz@almos.uni-pannon.hu