ABSTRACT
When we produce a phrase, we accent some words and leave others unaccented. Taking a common-sense view of the matter, it might seem self-evident that the words we pick out to accent are the most important words. In practice, this is not how it works at all. We have already seen how words are deaccented because they come in the middle of a tone group, or because they are grammatical words. In the first place, we do not positively assign accents, but get rid of them: the accents of a phrase are those that are left after the rules have applied. Secondly, although it is usually unimportant words that lose their accents, importance is not taken into account, and sometimes the key word of a phrase or sentence is deaccented.
