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Republic, to take possessives IBM’s annual revenue, and for most but not all nouns, to occur in the plural form goats, abaci” Jurafsky Martin, 2000, p. 4.
Next is verb class which is the class that “includes most of the words referring to actions and processes, including main verbs like draw, provide, differ, and go”
Jurafsky Martin, 2000, p. 4. The third open class, adjective, semantically “includes many terms that describe properties or qualities” p. 4. The examples
are sufficient, happy, changeable, round Greenbaum Quirk, 1990, p. 16. The final open class form, adverb, “has semantically may be solely that each of these
words can be viewed as modifying something often verbs, hence the name adverb, but also other adverbs and entire verb phrases” Jurafsky Martin, 2000,
p. 5. The examples of adverbs are sufficiently, really, afterwards, yet Greenbaum Quirk, 1990, p. 16.
2. Word Stress a. The Nature of Word Stress
Word stress is regarded as one of some pronunciation aspects, as Kenworthy 1987, p. 9 states that several aspects of pronunciation are sounds,
combination of sounds, linkage of sounds, word stress, rhythm, weak forms, sentence stress, and intonation. Another linguist, Meyer 2009, proposes that the
analysis of English speech sounds is focused on segmental and suprasegmental features p. 196. In this case, the analysis of speech segments “are focused on the
individual sounds in a given word” Meyer, 2009, p.196, while “the study of suprasegmentals extends the focus of inquiry to units that are larger than
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individual segments – syllables, words, phrases, and clauses – and to the features of sound that describe these units, specifically stress and intonation” Meyer, 2009,
p. 208. Therefore, word stress itself is included as the part of suprasegmental features.
When we talk about stress, generally we talk about prominence or emphasis, as stated by Mateescu 2003:
“It would be difficult maybe even for a specialist to give a very accurate definition of stress, but even a schoolchild will be intuitively aware that
when we talk about stress in a word or in more complex structures we talk in fact about prominence, or emphasis, that is parts of that word or
structures are perceived as having a higher degree of prominence in comparison to the others.” p. 2
Daniel 1994 supports the statement above, stating that stress is “usually perceived as greater loudness by the listener, with which one part of the word or
longer utterance is distinguished from the other parts” p. 2. Moreover, “stress in English words is relatively easy to perceive: stressed syllables are perceived as
‘more prominent’, or louder, or longer, or ‘more complex’, or produced with more apparent effort, than the less stressed or unstressed syllables that might lie
adjacent to them” McCully, 2009, p. 67. We may say that stressed syllables are recognized as stressed since they are
more prominent than the unstressed syllables, as Jones 1958, p. 141 states that “syllables which are pronounced more forcibly than neighboring syllables are
generally said to be stressed.” In addition, “stress involves making vowels longer and louder” Avery Ehrlich, 1992, p. 63. Thus, to put stress on a syllable in a
word, “we pronounce it with such force as to give it more importance than the
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surrounding syllables and to make it stand out among them” Prator Robinett, 1972, p. 16.
On the other hand, Kenworthy 2000, p. 51 provides four features involved in the perception of prominence. The first feature is loudness, when the
stressed syllables are louder than unstressed ones; the second feature is length, when the vowel in a syllable is held longer than the others; the third feature is
pitch, when there is a change of speed, either faster which results in a higher pitch or slower which results in a lower pitch or some fluctuation in speed; and the last
one is quality, when a stressed syllable has a vowel that differs in quality from the other syllables. To sum up, there are four important features that produce
prominence, namely loudness, length, pitch, and quality.
b. The Importance of Word Stress
It is important to assign the right stress pattern, as Prator Robinett 1972, p. 16 say that stress is “the key to the pronunciation of an English word, and the
location of the accent should always be learned with the word.” Moreover, Prator Robinett 1972, p. 16 argue that if the wrong syllable is stressed, “it may be
quite impossible for anyone listening to understand what you are trying to say.” In other words, it could make the communication unsuccessful.
Furthermore, “an appropriate stress and rhythmic pattern is more important for intelligibility than the correct pronunciation of isolated segments
and, in fact, stress and rhythm determine the pronunciation of segments in English” Sabater, 1991, p. 145. Sabater 1991, pp. 145-146 further explains that an
inappropriate accentual and rhythmic pattern of a word “makes the word
