 Beyond the segmental phonological analysis there are aspects that also contribute to the understanding of words and sentences in English. They apply to all varieties of English and arise from a combination of phonetic aspects such as pitch, loudness or length. The most important of these suprasegmental phonological features are stress and phenomena that have to do with pitch variation. We refer to them as total phenomena but the focus of this e-lecture is on stress phenomena. Phonetically stress is defined as the force with which a syllable is structured. A stressed syllable is produced with more energy than its neighbors and is therefore usually louder. Sometimes on a higher pitch then maybe even longer. Thus stress is the phonological correlate of a combination of loudness with its physical correlate intensity, pitch and its physical correlate frequency and length in physics refer to as duration. Let's look at an example. Now here we have the sentence many students go to Marburg and you will probably agree that this utterance consists of two tone units whose terminal juncture is here. Now within each tone unit we find at least one syllable, the so-called nucleus, which is more prominent than the others. That is it carries more stress. Now in this case it will be stew, many students go to Marburg. So here are the stressed syllables. In present day English the placement of stress can influence our understanding of English words in various ways and it can be subdivided into several types. Now the first one we will discuss is referred to as lexical stress. Lexical stress concerns words where the placement of stress leads to lexical differences that is to differences in terms of meaning or word class. Another phenomenon is referred to as shift stress. This affects words whose stress pattern is dependent on their syntactic environments. And last but not least we have the phenomenon of weakening which concerns words whose segmental structure depends on whether they are stressed or unstressed. Let's look at lexical stress first. In a group of primarily disyllabic words that is words consisting of two syllables and which have their origin in the romance languages, the placement of stress helps to distinguish their word class. Two stress patterns can be defined for such items and let's illustrate this with our first example. The item contrast versus contrast. Marked in red is the nominal stress pattern where the stress falls on the first syllable and marked in blue is the verbal stress pattern where the stress falls on the second syllable. So we have the contrast versus to contrast. Now as you already see the segmental structure can also be affected. The entrance versus to be entranced. Or look at this one. Object the noun versus to object. And the last example I've got here is the present versus to present. Let's look at shift stress next. There are many words that have a primary and a secondary stress when they are pronounced in isolation or a single constituents. However, when they form part of a larger construction, they switch their primary stress from one syllable to another, leaving the syllable that originally carried the primary stress unstressed. Now in these words over here, which are all adjectival and character, we can see two stress patterns. One which occurs when they're used in a predictive context or in isolation. In such cases, their second syllable is stressed. So you have Chinese or the guide is Chinese. You will get something like she felt unhappy. She is blue-eyed. My sister is 13. They live next door and the German capital is called Berlin. So in all these predicative contexts, we stress the second syllable. This can be contrasted with an attributive context where the first syllable is stressed. A Chinese guide, an unhappy feeling, a blue-eyed girl, a 13 year old girl, our next door neighbor or the Berlin police. So once more as a guideline, if these adjectival items are used attributively, you stress the first syllable. If they're used predicatively, you stress the second syllable. Let's look at weakening next. One of the most characteristic features of English phonology is the weakening of the vowels or the centralization of vowels towards the vowel schwa in unstressed syllables. This affects about four dozen monosyllabic function words which occur very frequently in conversational English. These words have a strong form in stressed position with a fully stressed vowel or a weak form if they occur in an unstressed position with a weakened vowel or even a syllabic consonant. The importance of weak forms can easily be illustrated. Here are some examples. Now let's first of all read out each word of this sentence as if it occurred in isolation. There were rather a lot of them. And in conversational English we will get there were rather a lot of them. And you get the following weak forms. So five out of seven words are reduced with a vowel that is either schwa or even dropped at all as in them. A lot of them. Here is our next example. Again, each word in isolation, most of them are new and in conversational English most of them are new. And then we will have three weak forms. And our final example is especially interesting because here we have the same word occurring as a weak form and as a strong form in the same utterance. And that's of course the word there. But let's first of all read out the words as if they occurred in isolation again. Why was there nobody there to meet them? And in conversational English we will get why was there nobody there to meet them? And immediately you see that we have four weak forms and one strong form because there is fully stressed. And so here you get the contrast between why was there nobody there to meet them? Consult the Virtual Linguistics Campus for a complete list of potential weak forms in British and American English. And this of course reminds me of the suprasegmental phonological differences between the two main varieties, British and American English. So let's look at them next. Well in fact there are only few suprasegmental differences between American and British English. They concern for example the placement of stress in long words of French origin. So let's look at them first. You can see them here in the first column of my examples. Let's listen to British English first. Ballet, garage, garage. And now American English? Ballet, garage. So what's the difference? Well whereas American English tends to preserve the original stress in British English words of this type initial stress is preferred. Garage, British English versus garage, American English. Further differences concern the placement of stress in polysyllabic words. So let's look at column two next. What is the difference between these two? Well in British English we will get... Dictate, rotate. An American English? Dictate, rotate. And you see we have later stress in British English in these words. Now the next set of words with four syllables in British English. Dictionary, secondary. We get one stress and in American English we have at least an additional secondary stress. Dictionary, secondary. And finally in the fourth column we have initial stress in American English. Elsewhere, princess. Whereas British English would use final stress. Elsewhere, princess. So these examples summarize the main suprasegmental phonological differences between British and American English. From the previous discussion we can conclude that English is stress-timed. Not the syllables within the words are equal in length but the tone groups. That is strings that contain one stress syllable referred to as nucleus. The syllables themselves may last different amounts of time. Here is the example we used earlier on. Many intelligent students go to Marburg and you can clearly hear that the two nuclei, Stu and Ma are longer than all the other syllables in that string. Stress-timed languages can be contrasted with syllable-timed languages where every syllable is perceived as taking up roughly the same amount of time. An example is Italian. The mother tongue of Valentina, one of our MA students. So welcome Valentina. Can you introduce yourself? Ciao, mi chiamo Valentina, sono Di Napoli e parlo l'italiano. Okay, you could already hear the syllable-time character of Italian but we want to make it more obvious. So Valentina, can you read the translation of our sentence, the translation into Italian in such a way that we can clearly identify the syllable-time character of Italian without sounding strange, of course. Molti studenti intelligenti vanno a Marburg. Yes, that was very easy to identify that the syllables are almost equal in length. Now this effect of almost equal syllable length explains that Italians often sound strange when they speak English. Now I know you can speak English very well but can you illustrate this effect to us by reading the first sentence with a strong Italian accent? Many intelligent student go to Marburg. Okay, you heard it. Valentina can normally when she speaks English, it's much better but here she exaggerated a little bit to sound Italian. Well and when the English speak Italian, it's the other way around, isn't it? So if I read this one, the Italian string with an English accent, Molti studenti intelligenti vanno a Marburg. What do I sound like? Crazy. Okay, thank you very much for helping us. Well, let's summarize. It should have become clear that stress can also evoke certain changes within words and within utterances. In the e-lecture present-day English suprasegmental phonology 2, we will look at tonal phenomena in present-day English. You may already know that English is not a tone language but we will illustrate that the tone associated with the nucleus of an utterance may play some kind of role in identifying the meaning of it. So see you then.