Sentence Stress

Students think that only pronouncing the words right makes them sound like native speakers, but that is partially true. Along with pronunciation, sentence stress and intonation are important too to sound like native speakers.

Just like every song has a different rhythm; likewise, every language has a rhythm and music. 

Sentence stress gives a sentence a beat.  Sentence stress occurs when we say certain words more loudly and with more emphasis than other words. It can help the listener understand the critical information that the speaker wants to convey. 

Most of the languages differ from each other when it comes to sentence stress and word stress. Some languages are tonal (e.g., Thai), some languages stress content words (e.g., European), and some have no sentence stress (e.g., Japanese). 

In the English language, we stress the content words in a sentence. 

In this lesson, you will learn the essential parts of a sentence, stress on the content words, what are content words, and when you do not need to stress in a sentence. So, without wasting time, let us begin. 

Basic types of words in a sentence 

There are two types of words in a sentence that make up a sentence understandable to the reader or listener. 

Content words: Every sentence has some keywords that carry the actual information of the sentence. Such terms are called content words.  If you remove the content words from a sentence, a sentence will make no sense at all. 

Structure words: There are some structure words in a sentence that make a sentence grammatically correct but carry no vital information at all.  If you remove the structure words from a sentence, it will be grammatically incorrect but still understandable by the listener or reader.

Example:

 The sentence above is grammatically incorrect, but one can assume that this message's sender wants you to send their house because he is gone to London. Such words are content words. Now, if we add a few more words to the sentence above: 

Now this sentence is grammatically correct and conveys the same message. The words that are added in this sentence are called structure words. 

Stress on content words

When it comes to sentence stress, we only emphasize content words in a sentence. There can be more than one content word in a sentence. Everyone needs to remember that we need to maintain a constant beat on the stressed words. If there are two or more syllable between two content words and one-syllable between two other content words, we will say all the syllables at a constant time to maintain the sentence's rhythm. 

Example:A brown fox jumps slowly. 

All the words in the above example are essential; that is why we must stress them. 

Noun, verb, adjective, and adverb all are content words.  Negative words such as never, not, neither also get stressed because they alter the sentence’s meaning. A few modals can be stressed too in a sentence. Here are a few examples of content words in sentences. 

Noun 

1. The kids are in the car. 
2. He is my friend. 
3. She is my employee. 
4. We are at the shopping mall.

Main verbs

The main verbs are content words. We stress the main verbs in a sentence, such as actions or state.

1. I knew it; you are not going to London. 
2. I bought a pink doll for my daughter. 
3. She is sleeping in the lounge. 
4. They are taking the bus. 

Adverbs

Adverbs are also content words. They convey some meaningful information too. In the examples below, some of the examples of sentence stress on adverbs are mention. Although there are main verbs and nouns are content words too in the sentence, we will only look at adverbs. 

1. She works slowly. 
2. He is dancing beautifully. 
3. Our teacher speaks very loudly. 

Adjectives 

Adjectives modify a noun and pronoun and alter the information given by the noun.  You have to stress the adjectives too in a sentence. 

Example:

1. I am sure. He is fine. 
2. She spent her time in a beautiful house.
3. Bella is an adorable baby. 

Negatives

Negatives such as never, not, neither also get stressed in a sentence. Whenever negatives occur in a sentence, we say them with a louder pitch than other words. 

Example:

1. He never lies. 
2. She is not talking to him. 

Modals

There is some exception when it comes to stress on the modals.  We only stress on should, would, could, might, etc. but not on can or will. 

Example:

1. You should buy this shirt. 
2. He might be leaving. 

WH-Questions 

WH- question words such as what, where, when, how, why, etc. also get stressed in a sentence. 

Example:

1. What are you eating?
2. When are you coming home? 

Not to stress 

There are some words in a sentence that do not carry any information at all called structure words, as you learned earlier. Such words include preposition, articles, pronouns, conjunctions, etc.  here is a list of words that should not be stressed in a sentence. 

• Be verb (am, is, are, was, were, etc.)
• articles (a, an, the)
• prepositions (to, in, at, on, for, from, etc.)
• personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, etc.)
• possessive adjectives (my, your, his, her, etc.)
• conjunctions (and, or, so, but, etc.)
• auxiliary verbs (be, have, do in two-part verbs or questions)
• the modal can (because it’s so common)

CONCLUSION: 

Giving stress on a word in a sentence alters the meaning of the sentence. So, the essential thing about sentence stress is where you stress in the sentence. One sentence can have a lot of meanings if you emphasize a different word every time. Always remember that the time between stressed words is still the same. 

Exercise: 

Bold the words that you think should be stressed in sentences. 

Horses are farm animals. They are usually black, white, grey, and brown. They carry goods and people from one place to another. They have very strong and long legs. Horses can run long distances. Horses have hard hoofs that protect their feet. 

Answer: 

Horses are farm animals.  They are usually black, white, grey, and brown. They carry goods and people from one place to another. They have very strong and long legs.  Horses can run long distances. Horses have hard hoofs that protect their feet.