2018-09-17 Pronunciation: focus words

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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The focus word in a thought group is the one with the strongest stress.
p. 80 exercise 1 - With your partner, guess which word in each / thought group / has the strongest stress. Practice saying the phrases with that stress.
which
economics
bedroom
looked / mess / anything
Hey! / Wait / hand
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How do we stress words and syllables in English?
1) louder
2) longer
3) higher
- Higher pitch is the one that’s most noticeable to most speakers. Louder is the least important.
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It looks like it’s starting to snow.
	I thought it was going to rain.

It looks like it’s starting to rain.
	I thought it was going to rain.

If you pronounce the wrong response, it will sound like you weren’t listening to the speaker.
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p. 81 exercise 2 - Practice pronouncing with stress on the underlined focus words. Draw a circle over the stressed syllable in each underlined word.
In compound nouns (like “flight attendants”), the first word has stronger stress and higher pitch.

Put that in the orange bowl.
- If you stress “orange”, then it’s the first part of a compound noun.
	(An orange bowl is a bowl for oranges.)
- If you stress “bowl”, then it’s a noun modified by the adjective “orange”.
	(An orange bowl is a bowl that is the color orange.)
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Normally (especially if there’s not other context that requires emphasizing a different word), the focus word is the last content word of a thought group.
“I already sent it to him.”
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p. 82 exercise 3 - Underline the last content word in each thought group. Then practice pronouncing the conversations with your partner.
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p. 83 - If the focus word has multiple syllables, the primary stress gets the highest pitch.
That’s a tremendous amount of responsibility.
- The rise in pitch happens on the primary stress syllable, not before.
Isn’t that a lot of responsibility?
- If the whole word rises (e.g. in a question), the syllables after the primary stress continue to go up.
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Homework: p. 84 - Underline the focus in these conversations? (In conversations, you can identify which words give new information. Those words have focus.)
	(Tomorrow: contrastive stress)