英语语音重读sentence-stress.ppt

Sentence Stress (句子重音) Sentence stress — stressed words and unstressed words in a sentence: Sentence stress is the relative degree of force given to different words in a sentence. General rules for sentence stress — what to stress in a sentence? *In an English utterance, content words / information words are generally stressed while function words are unstressed. *In general, stressed words give information to the listener and unstressed words join the information words together. *If you stress all the words in an utterance, you may sound unpleasant or even cause misunderstanding because you are giving too much information, and English speakers usually stress all words only when they are impatient, angry, or very serious. *Correct pronunciation of stressed and unstressed words is thus extremely important for effective communication in English. Sentence Stress (句子重音) content words / information words: nouns verbs (full verbs instead of auxiliary verbs) adjectives and adverbs demonstratives: this, that, these, those interrogatives: who, when, why, etc. numerals: one, two, first, second, etc. function words: articles and prepositions personal pronouns: I, me, he, him, etc. possessive adjectives: my, his, your, etc. relative pronouns: who, that, which, etc. common conjunctions: and, but, that, as, if, etc. the word “one” used as a noun-substitute the verbs “be”, “have” and auxiliary verbs Sentence Stress (句子重音) Three levels of stress in English sentences: 1. strongly stressed (focus words) 2. stressed (content words) 3. unstressed (function words) Special attention should be paid to the following: 1. The stressing of the noun “street”: stressed when used as a common noun; unstressed when used in names of streets: I saw him in the street. // I saw him in North Street. 2. The stressing of reflexive pronouns and emphatic pronouns: reflexive pronouns “oneself” are normally unstressed; emphatic pronoun “onese