{"id":582,"date":"2026-06-15T14:52:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/?p=582"},"modified":"2026-06-15T14:52:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:52:52","slug":"stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"stress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[stress]<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n

Counterpart<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

[-stress]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Feature System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

SPE <\/em>Features<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Definition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stress is a prosodic feature that \u201crefers to increased prominence [of a] certain syllable or syllables\u201d (Gordon 2011:141). Stress is \u201cdetectable via loudness, length, and intonation\u201d (Kennedy 2017:265).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purpose<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stress works alongside other prosodic features, such as length, accent, tone, intonation, pitch, etc. to provide morphological information about segments (Kennedy 2017:292).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although Chomsky and Halle never formally define stress, they do begin sketching the phonology of English by contrasting the difference between the primary stress of a compound, as in bla<\/em>1<\/sup><\/em>ckboa<\/em>2<\/sup><\/em>rd<\/em> (a combining superstrike in SPE<\/em>, but shown here for typographic reasons as a superscript), compared to the adjective plus noun sequence, bla<\/em>2<\/sup><\/em>ck boa<\/em>1<\/sup><\/em>rd<\/em>. Chomsky and Halle propose that phonetic features \u201care scales that admit a fixed number of values\u201d (1968:298), while their classificatory function, a feature \u201cis a physical scale defined by two points, which are designated by autonomous adjectives: high-nonhigh, voiced-nonvoiced (voiceless), tense-nontense (lax)\u201d (1968:299). In the case of English stress, SPE<\/em> recognizes not only the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables, but for English, three degrees of stress are posited.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, the exploration of stress has proved itself to be a fruitful endeavor, with the advent of generative metrical stress theory in the 1970s and 80s. The constraint-based framework of Optimality Theory has also provided great insight into the function of stress (Gordon 2011:141). In early generative literature, the binary feature [stress] was used for French (Schane 1973:64-65). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his dissertation, Hayes (1980) explores deeper into the claims made in Lieberman and Prince\u2019s 1977 work that proposed stress be represented as a \u201cmatter of relative<\/em> prominence among syllables, rather than as a degree of absolute prominence attached to each vowel\u201d (Hayes 1980:7). He goes on to suggest that the most accurate way of representing metrical stress is by using \u201cbinary branching tree structures, in which each pair of sister nodes is labeled [s w<\/em>] or [w s<\/em>], depending on which node is stronger\u201d (ibid.). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chomsky, Noam; and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English<\/em>. New York: Harper and Row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordon, Matthew. 2011. Stress systems. The handbook of phonological theory<\/em> ed. by John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle, and Alan C. L. Yu 2.141-163. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayes, Bruce. 1980. A metrical theory of stress rules<\/em>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Dissertation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy, Robert. 2017. Phonology: A coursebook<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schane, Sanford A. 1973. Generative phonology.<\/em> Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hermans, Ben. 2011. The representation of word stress. The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, vol. 2: Suprasegmental and prosodic phonology <\/em>ed. by Marc van Oostendoorp et al., 980-1002. Malden, MA: Blackwell.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ainsley Graf<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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