![]() When the resulting word is a noun, the stress will be placed on the prefix. Notice the above examples–they are all verbs with prefixes attached. That is, when a prefix is attached to a noun in such a way that the resulting word is a noun compound. One exception to this pattern, as we’ve mentioned before, are compound words. If a word contains a prefix, such as pre-, dis-, ex-, re-, over-, under-, etc., a good rule to follow is that the stress will fall on the first syllable of the root word. ![]() With prefixes, this is a bit easier to determine. Words with an affix–a prefix or a suffix–will typically alter the stress pattern of a word. Below is a short list of more common stress patterns found in English. However, there are some common features which affect the stress in a word, such as words with prefixes or suffixes, the origin of a word, or the grammatical function. Unfortunately, there is no simple rule for determining where the stress falls in a word. In sum, word stress errors in English are frequently very damaging because of the disastrous domino effect they put into motion. For example, when a student puts prominence on the word “economics” but pronounces it following the word stress pattern for “economy”. Additionally, when speakers put prominence, or focus, on a nonstandard vowel within a word because of failing to follow the word’s standard word stress pattern, listeners’ attention will still be drawn to that word – but what listeners are likely to notice is the word’s nonstandard pronunciation, not the idea to which the speaker aimed to draw listeners’ attention. This would negatively impact the listener’s ability to find the spoken word in their mental dictionary, which relies heavily on the sounds of consonants, particularly for high functional load consonants.Īs a result, word stress errors can easily cause listeners to be unable to identify the word the speaker is saying and therefore perhaps unable to identify the boundary between words. English word stress is highly patterned, as can be seen by searching all words whose spelling matches a student’s problem word from its stressed vowel to the end of the wordĪdditionally, where ordinarily stressed syllables beginning with /t/, /p/, or /k/ are instead pronounced unstressed, L1 English listeners are likely to hear the those sounds as /d/, /b/, or /g/, respectively.
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