Degrees of word-stress

Instrumental investigations show that a polysyllabic word has as many degrees of prominence as there are syllables in it. D. Jones indicated the degrees of prominence in the word “Opportunity”. But not all these degrees of prom are linguistically relevant. The problem is to determine which of these degrees are linguistically relevant. There are 2 views of the matter. Some (e.g. D. Jones, R. Kingdon, V. Vassilyev consider that there are 3 degrees or W-s in English: primary, secondary (partial stress) and weak (unstressed). Secondary stress is chiefly needed to define the stress pattern of words. E.g. “e,xami'nation”, “,qualifi'cation”, “'hair-,dresser”.

All these degrees stress are linguistically relevant as there are words in English the meanings of which depend on the occurrence of either of the 3 degrees in their stress patterns. E.g. 'import - im'port, ,certifi'cation - cer,tifi'cation =certificate.

Some American linguists (G. Trager, A. Hill) distinguish 4 degrees of W-s:

• Primary (as in “cupboard”) /  /

• Secondary (as in “discrimination) / ^ /

• Tertiary (as in “analyze”)

Weak stress (as in “cupboard”), but very often the weakly stressed syllable is left unmarked. /v/

American phoneticians consider that secondary stress generally occurs before the primary stress (as in examination), while tertiary stress occurs the primary stress (as in handbook, specialize).

Linguistically, tertiary word-stress can be taken for a variant of secondary w-s, as there are no words in English the meanings of which depend on whether their stress patterns is characterized by either secondary of tertiary stress.