Teaching Pronunciation, Revised Edition by Murphy John;

Author:Murphy, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TESOL Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS

For items 3 through 5, see if you can figure out which five words (only) would likely be the prominent words. When you locate them, circle each one:

3. // but I want my sisters to be there // no matter what //

4. // I hope my father stays away //

5. // it would really be a disaster (//) if my stepfather showed up //

Now, provide some justification for why the five words you selected would be prominent. Are there any other words that might be featured but not prominent?

In item 5, stepfather is prominent as a result of the speaker wanting to contrast it with the use of father in item 4. Generally, words used in contrast to something previously mentioned tend to serve as prominent words. We can simultaneously define and illustrate this principle of contrastive stress in the following by imagining that a single speaker is contrasting the words new and old:

// new information tends to be made prominent//

// while old information does not //

Finally, words used emphatically also tend to be prominent, such as don’t and all in this illustration from item 2 above:

// who I really don’t want to invite at all //

Similar emphatic stress is used on the word really in item 5. Although this is not an exhaustive list of phonological conditions that lead to prominent and featured words, it is more than enough to guide students in their analyses of most language samples.

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