By desmond bett; B. A- criminology m. A – public administration & policy

Initial stress Medical stress Final stress
‘acrobat a`nnoying ca`hoots
‘kingfisher de`molish gaber`dine
‘patriarchate Chau`cerian hullaba`loo
Main stress can fall on only one syllable in a word. The location of main stress is part of the make-up of a word and not changed capriciously by individual speakers. You cannot decide to stress hullabaloo on the penultimate syllable on a Monday (`hullabaloo) and on the final syllable for the rest of the week (hullaba`loo).
However, in some cases, if we wish to contrast two related words, we can shift stress from its normal position to a new position. This can be seen in `vendor and ven`dee which normally are stressed on the first and second syllable respectively. But if the speaker wants to contrast these two words both words might be stressed on the final syllable as I head an estate agent do in a radio interview.
[2.6]
It is ven`dor, not ven`dee who pay that tax
This example illustrates well the point that a word is allowed just one stress. Stress can be shifted from one syllable to another, but a word cannot have two main stresses. We cannot have *`ven`dor and *`ven`dee where the two syllable received equal stress. Stress has to do with relative prominence. The syllable that receives main stress is somewhat more prominent than the rest, some of which may be unstressed or weakly stressed. By contrast, function words are normally unstressed. We can say Nelly
went to town with no stress on to unless we wish to highlight to for contrasting purpose, e.g. Nelly went to town and not far away from town).
It is easy to see how stress can function as a valuable clue in determining whether two content words are a single compound word or two separate words. The noun street and lamp are both stressed when they occur in isolation. But if they appear in the compound `street-lamp, only the first is stressed. The stress on lamp is suppressed.
Stress is the only phonological clue. In addition to stress, there are rules regulating the position in which various sounds may occur in a word and the combinations of sounds that are permissible. These rules are called PHONOTACTIC RULES. They can help us to know whether we are at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a word. A phonological word must satisfy the requirements for words of the spoken language. For instance, while any vowel can begin a word, and most consonants can appear alone in the beginning of a word, the consonant [ ] is subject to certain restrictions. (This consonant is spelled ng as in long (see the symbol used on p.xix). In English words [ ] is not allowed to occur initially although it can occur in other positions. Thus, [ ] is allowed internally and at the end of a word as in [I I] longing and [I ge] longer. But you could not have an English word like ngether, *[ ee] with [ ] as its first sound. However, in other languages this sound may be found word-initially as in the Chinese name Nga [ a] and the Zimbabwean name Nkomo [ komo].
There are also phonotactic restrictions on the combination of consonants in various position in a word in the spoken language. As everyone knows, English spelling is not always a perfect mirror of pronunciation. So when considering words in the spoken language it is important to separate spelling from pronunciation (cf. Chapter 7). You know that He is knock-kneed is pronounced /hI Iz nK ni:d/ and not */he Is knk kni:d/. A particular combination of letters can be associated with very different pronunciation in different words or different position in the same word. The spelling kn is pronounced /kn/ at the end of a word, as in /beIkn/, but at the beginning of a word as in knee and knock the /k/ is dropped and only the n is sounded. Similarly, other stop-plus-nasal combinations like tm /tm/ and dn /dn/ are allowed at the end of a word (e.g. bottom/btm/and burden /b: dn/) but these consonant cluster are not permitted at the beginning of a word. Putative words like */tmIs/ (*tmiss) and */dnel/ (*dnell) are just impermissible. In the spoken language we recognize as English words only those forms that have the right combination of sounds for the position in the word where they occur.
Moreover, even when a sound or combination of sounds is allowed, often a somewhat different pronunciation of the /sound in standard British English (RP) in different position in a word. Compare the initial / with the final / in the following:
[2.7]
Word-initial clear Word-final dark pre-consonantal dark
/[] /[] /[]
Labor lead loft sill smell fulfil milk salt belt quick
Lend let lick leaf cool bull sprawl spoilt coly wild
The / sound is always made with the blade of the tongue against the teeth-ridge, with the sides lowered to allow air to escape. But there is a subtle difference. When / is in word-final position or when it is followed by another consonant (as it is in the last two columns), besides the articulatory gestures mentioned above, the back of the tongue is also simultaneously raised towards the soft palate (or velum). This type of / is called dark or velarized /(). But when / is at the beginning of a word, no valorization takes place. This latter type of / is called clear or non-velarised / ([]). Thus, the kind of / we hear gives an indication of where in a word it appears.
Do not fail to note the use of square brackets. They are used to enclose ALLOPHONES, i.e. variants of a phoneme. Allophones are different sound, e.g. [] and [], that occur in different contexts which all represent the same phoneme /I/.
With regard to spelling too, the situation is not chaotic, although admittedly the relationship between letters and phonemes is not always straightforward, as knee being pronounced /ni:/ demonstrates. We recognize as English words only those orthographic words that conform to the spelling conventions of English. If, for example, you saw the word zyroglen you would treat it as a foreign word. The letter combination zyr is not English. There is no way a word in English could start with those letters.
Let me summarize. One sense in which we use the term ‘word’ is to refer to WORD-FORMS. If we are thinking of the written language, our word-forms are ORTHOGRAPHIC words can be identified on the basis of their phonological characteristics such as stress and phonotactic properties.