Sentence Stress & Rhythm in English

Understanding Stress-Timed Language

English is known as a stress-timed language. This means that the rhythm of spoken English is based on the regular occurrence of stressed syllables. The time between stressed syllables tends to be equal, regardless of the number of unstressed syllables in between.

In contrast, syllable-timed languages, like French or Spanish, give approximately equal time to each syllable.

Sentence Stress

In English sentences, certain words are stressed more than others. Typically, content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) are stressed, while function words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and articles) are not.

• Content Words: Carry the main meaning and are usually stressed.
• Function Words: Serve a grammatical purpose and are usually unstressed.

For example, in the sentence "The cat sat on the mat", the words "cat" and "mat" are stressed.

Rhythm in English

The rhythm of English is created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. This rhythm can affect the meaning and emotion of a sentence.

Examples of Sentence Stress

Consider the sentence:

"She WENT to the STORE to buy some FOOD."

Here, the words "WENT", "STORE", and "FOOD" are stressed because they are content words carrying the main information.