ABSTRACT
This commencing chapter deals with stressing words or syllables, that is, pronouncing them more loudly or with more force, thus making them more salient perceptually. Schlüter (2005: 21) suggests that the notion of stress, in contradistinction to accent which belongs to the syntactic area of the sentence, depends on the morphology of lexical items and the way in which they are pronounced. It denotes the relative prominence of a segment or syllable and is liable to carry meaningful information as to the nature and function of the word. This first chapter also concerns the structure of the syllable in English, and the rhythm of utterances taken from standard usage, and from the language of blues.
