2018-03-26 Pronunciation: focus words

Greg Malivuk
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http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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Focus Words: the words with the strongest stress in each thought group
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Handout p. 80 - Which word in each thought group is the most important or noticeable?
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Which word is the focus word in, “Sometimes everybody’s an idiot”?
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Stress usually means higher, longer, and louder. Louder is the least important.
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In normal speech (especially if it’s not a conversation), the last content word in each thought group is the focus word.
p. 82 - Underline the last content word of each thought group.
“I haven’t been able to reach her,” ends with a sound like “reacher”.
In different contexts, another word might be the focus word, but if there’s no previous part of the conversation, it’s probably the one we underlined.
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How would we pronounce the same response after different statements?
It looks like it’s starting to rain.
	I thought it was going to rain. (Agreement, confirmation, I expected this.)

It looks like it’s starting to snow.
	I thought it was going to rain. (I expected something different.)
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If you pronounce the wrong “version” of the response, it will sound like you didn’t hear what your partner said.
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I asked you to buy ten red roses.
- What is the meaning if I stress each different word?
(Every word except “to” can be the focus word here.)