ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the readers with the basic definitions necessary for understanding word stress and then gives a sampling of the different approaches used to explain word stress in North American English (NAE). It discusses the issues involved in word stress, leaving sentence stress and our reasons for preferring to call it utterance stress. The chapter defines an utterance as “a single completed thought, no matter the length, that carries meaning”. It describes the part of Crystal's relatively broad definition of SYLLABLE: “A unit of pronunciation typically larger than a single sound and smaller than a word”. Native speakers of NAE who are speaking or listening to the language are likely to describe or perceive a stressed syllable as one that is louder, stronger, or more forceful than the other syllables in a word.
