Editing Stress (linguistics) (section)

== Prosodic stress ==
{{Infobox IPA
| above = Extra stress
| ipa symbol = ˈˈ◌
}}
''[[Prosody (linguistics)|Prosodic]] stress'', or ''sentence stress'', refers to stress patterns that apply at a higher level than the individual word – namely within a [[prosodic unit]]. It may involve a certain natural stress pattern characteristic of a given language, but may also involve the placing of emphasis on particular words because of their relative importance (contrastive stress).

An example of a natural prosodic stress pattern is that described for [[French language|French]] above; stress is placed on the final syllable of a string of words (or if that is a [[schwa]], the next-to-final syllable). A similar pattern is found in English (see {{slink||Levels of stress}} above): the traditional distinction between (lexical) primary and secondary stress is replaced partly by a prosodic rule stating that the final stressed syllable in a phrase is given additional stress. (A word spoken alone becomes such a phrase, hence such prosodic stress may appear to be lexical if the pronunciation of words is analyzed in a standalone context rather than within phrases.)

Another type of prosodic stress pattern is ''quantity sensitivity'' – in some languages additional stress tends to be placed on syllables that are longer ([[mora (linguistics)|moraically heavy]]).

Prosodic stress is also often used [[pragmatics|pragmatically]] to emphasize (focus attention on) particular words or the ideas associated with them. Doing this can change or clarify the meaning of a sentence; for example:

{{block indent|<poem>''I'' didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)
I ''didn't'' take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)
I didn't ''take'' the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)
I didn't take ''the'' test yesterday. (I took one of several, ''or'' I didn't take the specific test that would have been implied.)
I didn't take the ''test'' yesterday. (I took something else.)
I didn't take the test ''yesterday''. (I took it some other day.)</poem>}}

As in the examples above, stress is normally transcribed as [[italic type|italics]] in printed text or underlining in handwriting.

In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue

{{block indent|<poem>"Is it brunch tomorrow?"
"No, it's ''dinner'' tomorrow."</poem>}}

In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the syllables of ''tomorrow'' would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of ''dinner'', the emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as ''din'' in ''din''ner are louder and longer.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Stress and Non-Stress Accent |last=Beckman |first=Mary E. |date=1986 |publisher=Foris |isbn=90-6765-243-1 |location=Dordrecht}}</ref><ref>R. Silipo and S. Greenberg, [http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~steveng/PDF/ICPhS.pdf Automatic Transcription of Prosodic Stress for Spontaneous English Discourse], Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS99), San Francisco, CA, August 1999, pages 2351–2354</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kochanski |first1=G. |last2=Grabe |first2=E. |last3=Coleman |first3=J. |last4=Rosner |first4=B. |date=2005 |title=Loudness predicts prominence: Fundamental frequency lends little |journal=The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America |volume=118 |issue=2 |pages=1038–1054 |doi=10.1121/1.1923349|pmid=16158659 |bibcode=2005ASAJ..118.1038K |s2cid=405045 |doi-access=free }}</ref> They may also have a different fundamental frequency, or other properties.

The main stress within a sentence, often found on the last stressed word, is called the ''nuclear stress''.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Thematic Structure: Its Role in Grammar |last=Roca |first=Iggy |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |year=1992 |pages=80}}</ref>