If you recall the beginning of this article, you'll remember we briefly mentioned "stress." In the world of prosody, stress doesn't refer to anxious feelings or any other emotion at all.
Definition: Stress refers to added intensity or emphasis placed on a syllableor word in a spoken utterance, which makes the stressed syllable or word louder. Stress is another component of intonation.
Different kinds of words place stress on different syllables:
Word Type
Stress Example
Two-syllable nouns (stress on the first syllable)
TAble, WINdow, DOCtor
Two-syllable adjectives (stress on the first syllable)
HAppy, DIRty, TALLer
Two-syllable verbs (stress on the last syllable)
deCLINE, imPORT, obJECT
Compound nouns (stress on the first word)
GREENhouse, PLAYgroup
Compound verbs (stress on the second word)
underSTAND, overFLOW
This is by no means an exhaustive list of word and stress types but should give you a decent idea of how stress affects the pronunciation of words.
