Stress in English

Syllable Stress
What is a Syllable?

A syllable is unit of sound made from a single vowel, or single vowel/consonant

combination – note that syllables never have more then one vowel sound in
them.
Eg: bit; a; un; as; dog; re; ist; bi
Monosyllable / monosyllabic – words with one syllable
Disyllable / disyllabic – words with two syllables, also called bisyllablic by some
Trisyllable / trisyllabic – words with three syllables
Polysyllable / polysyllabic – words with four or more syllables, however often
people will refer to word with three or more syllables as polysyllabic.

Understanding Syllables
To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables .
Every word is made from syllables.
Each word has one, two, three or more syllables.

number of
Word
syllables

dog Dog 1

green Green 1

quite Quite 1

quiet qui-et 2

orange or-ange 2

Stress in English – BY: B. Balaji Reddy, Associate Professor, SVPCET, PUTTUR. Page 1
table ta-ble 2

expensive ex-pen-sive 3

interesting in-ter-est-ing 4

realistic re-al-is-tic 4

unexceptional un-ex-cep-tion-al 5

Notice that (with a few rare exceptions) every syllable contains at least one
vowel (a, e, i, o or u) or vowel sound.

Feeling the Beat

The easiest way to determine how many syllables are in a particular word is to
sound it out – or even better clap it out. Clap along while you try the following
words:

Monosyllabic: dog there bike he walk bounce

Dysyllabic: doc/tor Fri/day o/ver yel/low chick/en

Trisyllabic: hos/pit/al yes/ter/day de/tec/tive am/bi/ence

Polysyllabic: un/wa/ver/ing no/tif/ica/tion re/an/i/ma/tion pri/va/ti/zation

Syllable Stress:
Syllables break our words up into sections which can be stressed, or
unstressed. Which syllable is stressed, alters the pronunciation of the word. Try
saying the following words aloud while stressing the first syllable:

doc/tor Fri/day o/ver mis/take pur/ple

Now try it again putting the stress on the second syllable.

doc/tor Fri/day o/ver mis/take pur/ple

Stress in English – BY: B. Balaji Reddy, Associate Professor, SVPCET, PUTTUR. Page 2
Which one sounds better? If you thought the fist set sounded better you are
correct. All of the above words should have their first syllable stressed.

Here are some more examples. The bold O will show you which syllable should
be stressed in each word:

monosyllabic O: bike cat black

disyllabic O o: prob/lem en/gine yel/low

disyllabic o O: be/side di/vide un/do

trisyllablic O o o: dif/fi/cult hos/pit/al of/fi/cer

triyllablic o O o: de/tec/tive pro/fess/or re/dun/dant

Phonology:rules for stress in english

Rules for stress

When a word has more than one syllable, one of the syllables is always a little
louder than the others. The syllable with the louder stress is the accented
syllable. It may seem that the placement of accents in words is often random or
accidental, but these are some rules that usually work.

1. Accents are often on the first syllable. Examples: ba'/sic, pro'/gram.

2. In words that have suffixes or prefixes, the accent is usually on the main root
word. Examples: 'box/es, un/'tie.

3. If de-, re-, ex-, in-,po-, pro-, or a- is the first syllable in a word, it is usually
not accented. Examples: de/'lay, ex/'plore.

4. Two vowel letters together in the last syllable of a word often indicates an
accented last syllable. Examples: com/'plain, con/'ceal.

Stress in English – BY: B. Balaji Reddy, Associate Professor, SVPCET, PUTTUR. Page 3
5. When there are two like consonant letters within a word, the syllable before
the double consonants is usually accented. Examples: be/'gin/ner, 'let/ter.

6. The accent is usually on the syllable before the suffixes -ion, ity, -ic, -ical,
-ian, -ial, or -ious, and on the second syllable before the suffix -ate. Examples:
af/fec/'ta/tion, dif/fer/'en/ti/ate.

7. In words of three or more syllables, one of the first two syllables is usually
accented. Examples: 'ac/ci/dent, de/'ter/mine.

8. Stress on penultimate syllable (penultimate = second from end)

Rule example

Words ending in -ic GRAPHic, geoGRAPHic, geoLOGic

Words ending in -sion and -tion teleVIsion, reveLAtion

9. Stress on ante-penultimate syllable (ante-penultimate = third from end)

Rule example

Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy deMOcracy, dependaBIlity,

phoTOgraphy, geOLogy

Words ending in -al CRItical, geoLOGical

10. Compound words (words with two parts)

Rule example

For compound nouns, the stress is on the first part BLACKbird,

GREENhouse

For compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part bad-TEMpered,

old-FASHioned

****
Stress in English – BY: B. Balaji Reddy, Associate Professor, SVPCET, PUTTUR. Page 4