Download Stress in English and Arabic

Stress in English and Arabic
Introduction
Supra-segmental features (stress, along
with pitch, intonation, and length) are very
important for they give the language its
appearance, therefore, are central to the
communication of meaning. The Arabic
and English phonological system vary
extensively, not only in the range of the
sounds each language has, but also in the
relative importance of vowels, consonant,
syllables, and these supra-segmental
phonemes. Therefore, learners of English
face problems when they use stress.
Here, I am going to discuss Stress, Stress
degrees, types and location.
Stress
•
The term stress is defined as syllable •
prominence. Prominence may derive
from several phonetic factors such as
increased length, loudness, pitch
movement or a combination of these
aspects. The following lines indicate
stress both within utterances and
within words.
Stress within utterances and
within words
•
• The location of the major stressed syllable
within utterances can be responsible for
changing the intended meaning. In examples
(1.a and 1.b), the syllables that carry the
major stress are capitalized.
• 1a: I THOUGHT you would eat it ( intended
meaning : you have eaten it)
• 1b: I thought you would EAT it ( intended
meaning : you have not eaten it).
Rhythm and Stress in English
and Arabic
• Rhythm and stress are connected terms;
they imply the same meaning in many cases.
So the rhythmic pattern of the sentence is
dependent on the number of stressed
syllables. Therefore, English rhythm is
stress-timed while Arabic rhythm is syllabletimed. English rhythm has been called
stress-timed rhythm. Spanish, German,
French, Japanese, in addition to Arabic all
have syllable-timed rhythm.
Types of English stress
English stress is dependent on the
origin of words and the rhythmic
factors (heavy-light syllables). Words
borrowed from Latin and other
languages are stressed differently. In
the case of Anglo Saxon words, the
first syllable of the root is stressed e.g.,
in the following words the stress is in
the first syllable "blossom, holy, body,
never ".
Word Stress:
•
•
•
English word stress is not always on
the first syllable. Here are some
examples of stress in different
syllables of the word:
comPUter
LANguages
pronunCIAtion.
Sometimes you can predict the stress
placement because of the type of
word or the ending you put on it.
Phrase Stress
Phrase stress is an important part of the
rhythm in English. It is a term that refers to
the most stressed word in each phrase
(thought group) in a sentence. What are the •
patterns? When we read a sentence normally
(without giving any extra emphasis), each
thought group (phrase) in a sentence has
one word that is the most stressed.
Placement of stress in English
• “In order to decide on stress placement, it is
necessary to mark some or all of the
following information
• Whether the word is morphologically simple
or complex.
• The grammatical category to which the word
belongs (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc).
• The number of syllables in the word and the
phonological structure.
Stress in simple words:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
a- Stress in two syllable words:
Verbs
-If the secondary syllable of the verb has a long
vowel or if it ends with more than one consonant,
the second syllable is stressed.
e.g. a’pply , a’ssist.
-If the final syllable contains a short vowel and one
final consonant, the first syllable is stressed.
e.g ‘open
‘equal.
Nouns
• -If the second syllable contains a short
vowel the stress comes on the first
syllable. e.g. ‘money ‘product.
• -Most adjectives , adverbs and
prepositions seems to behave like
verbs and have stress in the first
syllable. e. g ‘lovely ‘even , ‘willing,
'honest , ‘perfect
Stress in three syllable words:
• Verbs
• -If the last syllable contains a short vowel
and ends with not more than one consonant,
the syllable will be unstressed and stress will
be placed on the preceding syllable, e.g.
en’counter , de’termine
• -If the final syllable contains along vowel or
diphthong, or ends with more than one
consonant, the final syllable will be stressed.
• e.g. enter’tain
Nouns
• -if the syllable preceding the final syllable
contains a long vowel or diphthong, or it
ends with more one consonant, the middle
syllable will be stressed, e.g.
• mi’mosa
di’saster
• - if the final syllable contains a short vowel
and the middle syllable contains a short
vowel and ends with not more than one
consonant, both final and middle syllables
are unstressed and the first syllable is
stressed. e.g. ‘quantity , ‘cinema
Adjectives
• - Adjectives seem to need the same
rule, e.g. ‘opportune , ‘insolent
• -if the word ends in-ic-sion-tion, it has
stress on the second syllable from the
end, e.g., so’lution ter’rific
Phrase Stress
• Below you hear two sentences read slowly and
deliberately as if they were said in a presentation:
• The noisy car /has been parked/ in the garage.
• Many people/ often read/ the business section / of
the newspaper.
• When they are said more rapidly there will be fewer
pause and less stress, e.g.,
• The noisy car has been parked in the garAGE.
• Many people/often read/ the business section/ of the
NEWspaper
Adjectives
• - Adjectives seem to need the same rule,
e.g. ‘opportune , ‘insolent
• -if the word ends in-ic-sion-tion, it has
stress on the second syllable from the
end, e.g., so’lution ter’rific
Stress in complex words
• A complex word consists of two or more
grammatical units, e.g. carefully and
careless.
• “Complex words are of two major types:
word made from a basic stem word with the
addition of an affix, and compound words,
which are made of two independent English
words, e.g. ice-cream, armchair
Affixes effects on word stress
• Affixes have three possible effects on word
stress.
• the affix itself receives the primary stress.
• e.g. ‘ semicircle ,
person ’ality
• the word is stressed just if the affix was not
there .
• e.g.
un ‘ pleasant , ‘ marketing
• the stress remains on the stem, not the affix,
but is shifted to a different syllable.
• e.g. magn ‘ netic.
Stress in compound words
• Compound words are characterized by
the probability to divide them into two
words , both of which can exist
independently as English words.
• The stress in compound words mainly
fall on the first syllable.
• e.g. ‘type writer , ‘tea cup
Arabic Stress
Arabic lexical stress is more predictable than
English stress. Arabic has stress placement
rules that operate at the word level. The
placement of stress is determined by the
number and length of the syllables in the
word. In brief the system, degree, placement
types, and location of stress in Arabic differ
completely from English stress.
Arabic syllable Structure
• Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (cv)
and (cvv) and closed syllables (cvc), ( cvvc) and
(cvcc). Every syllable begins with a consonant or
else a consonant is borrowed from a previous word
through elision – especially in the case of the
definite article ?al (the) ( used when starting an
utterance) or – L (when following a word), e.g.,
baytu-l mudiir ‫ “بيت المدير‬house ( of) the director” ,
which because bay-tul – mu –diir when divided
syllabically. By itself the definite noun mudiir would
be pronounced / ?al mudi:/
Placement of stress in Arabic
• According to Kharama and Hajjaj (1989:27), the
placement of Arabic stress can be classified as
follows:
• (1-) Word Stress
• a-1) Words of one syllable have primary stress
whether it is long or short.
• e.g. /‘bard/ ( cold ) ‫برد‬
•
/’tar/ ( the flew ) ‫طار‬
•
/’fi/ ( in ) ‫في‬
• b-1) Words of two or three syllables take a primary
stress on the first syllable.
• e.g. /’?na / (I) ‫أنا‬
•
/’?abadan/ (never) ‫أبدا‬
•
/’kataba/ (he wrote ) ‫كتب‬
Arabic syllable Structure
• c-1) A multi syllable word takes the
primary stress on the last syllable.
•
e.g. /yakt’ubun/ ( they wrote ) ‫يكتبون‬
•
/ta’wus/ ( peacock) ‫طاووس‬
• d-) if the syllable is CVCC or CVVC, the
stress is in the final syllable
•
e.g/ kTABT‫ كتبت‬/
/ naiiS
/ ‫نعيش‬
Sentence stress in Arabic
• a-2)-Some articles in Arabic are not
stressed if they are followed by words
with two consonants, and if they do not
take secondary stress.
• e.g /’fi/ (in) ‫ في‬/ fi-l-‘bayt/ ‫ ( في البيت‬at
home) but
• /,fi bay’tina / ‫( في بيتنا‬in our home ) with
secondary stress.
Sentence stress in Arabic
• b-2)- Inversion of subject and predicate seems to
change the words on which the stress falls, but not
the stress type.
• e.g ‫ ا‬/ ar-rajulu fi –l-‘bayt/
‫( الرجل في البيت‬the man in
the house ).
• /fi-l-bayti –‘rajul/ ‫( في البيت رجل‬there is a man in the
house).
• c-2)- With the possessive phrase stress on the
second part .
• e.g ‫الرجل بيت‬/bayt-ur-‘rajul/ ( the man’s house ).
• ‫ كتاب الولد‬/kitab Al-‘walad/ ( the boy’s book).
Sentence stress in Arabic
• d-2)- Stress placement concerning the inseparable
pronouns with verbs within a sentence varies:
•
e.g / ‘dahaba/‫( ذهب‬he went ).
• / da'habat /‫( ذهبت‬she went ).
• They keep stress on the second syllable of the verb.
• Finally, when emphasizing some words of the
sentence, stress in this case becomes movable.
• e.g
/’sami wajada muna /(sami found
muna)‫ سامي وجد مني‬.
• /sami ‘wajada muna /(sami found muna)‫ سامي وجد مني‬.
• /sami wajada ‘muna /(sami found muna). ‫سامي وجد مني‬
•