Lexical stress, or word stress, is the stress placed on a given syllable in a word. The position of lexical stress in a word may depend on certain general rules applicable in the language or dialect in question, but in other languages, it must be learned for each word, as it is largely unpredictable. In some cases, classes of words in a language differ in their stress properties; for example, loanwords into a language with fixed stress may preserve stress placement from the source language, or the special pattern for Turkish placenames.
Non-phonemic stress
In some languages, the placement of stress can be determined by rules. It is thus not a phonemic property of the word, because it can always be predicted by applying the rules.
Languages in which the position of the stress can usually be predicted by a simple rule are said to have fixed stress. For example, in Czech, Finnish, Icelandic and Hungarian, the stress almost always comes on the first syllable of a word. In Armenian the stress is on the last syllable of a word.[5] In Quechua, Esperanto, and Polish, the stress is almost always on the penult (second-last syllable). In Macedonian, it is on the antepenult (third-last syllable).
Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in Classical Arabic and Latin, where stress is conditioned by the structure of particular syllables. They are said to have a regular stress rule.
Statements about the position of stress are sometimes affected by the fact that when a word is spoken in isolation, prosodic factors (see below) come into play, which do not apply when the word is spoken normally within a sentence. French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, but that can be attributed to the prosodic stress that is placed on the last syllable (unless it is a schwa, when it is the second-last) of any string of words in that language. Thus, it is on the last syllable of a word analyzed in isolation. The situation is similar in Standard Chinese. French (some authors add Chinese[6]) can be considered to have no real lexical stress.
Phonemic stress
Languages in which the position of stress in a word is not fully predictable are said to have phonemic stress. For example, English, Russian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Stress is usually truly lexical and must be memorized as part of the pronunciation of an individual word. In some languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Lakota and, to some extent, Italian, stress is even represented in writing using diacritical marks, for example in the Spanish words célebre and celebré. Sometimes, stress is fixed for all forms of a particular word, or it can fall on different syllables in different inflections of the same word.
In such languages with phonemic stress, the position of stress can serve to distinguish otherwise identical words. For example, the English words insight (/ˈɪnsaɪt/) and incite(/ɪnˈsaɪt/) are distinguished in pronunciation only by the fact that the stress falls on the first syllable in the former and on the second syllable in the latter. Examples from other languages include German umschreiben ([ˈʔʊmʃʁaɪbn] “to rewrite” vs. [ʔʊmˈʃʁaɪbn̩] “to paraphrase”); and Italian ancora ([ˈaŋkora] “anchor” vs. [aŋˈkoːra] “more, still, yet”).
In many languages with lexical stress, it is connected with alternations in vowels and/or consonants, which means that vowel quality differs by whether vowels are stressed or unstressed. There may also be limitations on certain phonemes in the language in which stress determines whether they allowed to occur in a particular syllable or not. That is the case with most examples in English and occurs systematically in Russian, such as за́мок ([ˈzamək], “castle”) vs. замо́к ([zɐˈmok], “lock”); and in Portuguese, such as the triplet sábia([ˈsabjɐ], “wise woman”), sabia ([sɐˈbiɐ], “knew”), sabiá ([sɐˈbja], “thrush”).
Dialects of the same language may have different stress placement. For instance, the English word laboratory is stressed on the second syllable in British English (labóratory often pronounced “labóratry”, the second o being silent), but the first syllable in American English, with a secondary stress on the “tor’ syllable (láboratory often pronounced “lábratory”). The Spanish word video is stressed on the first syllable in Spain (vídeo) but on the second syllable in the Americas (vidéo). The Portuguese words for Madagascar and the continent Oceania are stressed on the third syllable in European Portuguese (Madagáscar and Oceânia), but on the fourth syllable in Brazilian Portuguese (Madagascar and Oceania).
Compounds
With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component. And even such exceptions, for example mankínd,[7] are instead often stressed on the first component by some people or in some kinds of English.[8] Sometimes the same components as those of a compound word are used in a descriptive phrase with a different meaning and with stress on both words, but that descriptive phrase is then not usually considered a compound: bláck bírd (any bird that is black) and bláckbird (a specific bird species) and páper bág (a bag made of paper) and páper bag (very rarely used to mean a bag for carrying newspapers but is often also used to mean a bag made of paper).[9]
Levels of stress
Main article: Secondary stress
Some languages are described as having both primary stress and secondary stress. A syllable with secondary stress is stressed relative to unstressed syllables but not as strongly as a syllable with primary stress. As with primary stress, the position of secondary stress may be more or less predictable depending on language. In English, it is not fully predictable, but the different secondary stress of the words organization and accumulation (on the first and second syllable, respectively) is predictable due to the same stress of the verbs órganize and accúmulate. In some analyses, for example the one found in Chomsky and Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English, English has been described as having four levels of stress: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, but the treatments often disagree with one another.
Peter Ladefoged and other phoneticians have noted that it is possible to describe English with only one degree of stress, as long as unstressed syllables are phonemically distinguished for vowel reduction.[10] They believe that the multiple levels posited for English, whether primary–secondary or primary–secondary–tertiary, are mere phonetic detail and not true phonemic stress, and often, the alleged secondary stress is not characterized by the increase in respiratory activity normally associated with primary stress in English or with all stress in other languages. (For further detail see Stress and vowel reduction in English.)
klik link below to see the word stress lists :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1asAFt5OTl_CLvt6k_PUp1gkwv6CWaJkh/view?usp=sharing
ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 