5. Schwa Sound and Stress

This week I had a revision about the schwa sound, which is really interesting. Schwa, as syllabic consonants, often appears in non-stressed syllables in English. Schwa appears in unstressed syllables but can also occur before [ɹ], as in bird [bəɹd].

Stress is not found in all languages. For example, French and Mandarin are usually described as not having lexical stress (no prespecified prominent syllable in a word). For languages with stress, two main types can be distinguished: 

-Fixed stress languages: stress always fall in the same position. e.g., in Finnish, stress is always placed in the first syllable; in Polish, stress usually falls in the second-to-last syllable.

 -Free stress languages: stress position is not fixed or predictable. e.g., English: record [ˈɹɛk.əɹd] vs. record [ɹɪˈkɔɹd] Spanish: canto [ˈkan.to] ‘I sing’ vs. cantó [kanˈto] ‘s/he sang’.

You can also give special stress to particular words, giving them broad meanings (e.g., contrast): I don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want this.