As you study the rules for word stress, know that there are times when you will stress words that might normally be unstressed to clear up a misunderstanding.
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He’s married. He IS married. Why would you say this sentence two different ways? In this video, we’re going to discuss word stress and clarification in American English.
I have already done some videos on stress, and you’ve learned that stressed words will generally be the content words in a sentence. Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. But there are almost always exceptions to the rules. And today, I want to talk about clarification. When you stress something for clarification, you may find that you change the stress of the sentence. Let’s take the example sentence He is married. Let’s say you’re at a party with a friend and you’re talking about someone else. You point and you say, He is married. But it’s loud, your friend has not quite heard you. She says, He’s not married? And you say, No, he IS married, stressing the word ‘is’. So the first time you said it, He’s married … he is married, the word ‘married’ got the stress. But the second time, He IS married, you’re bringing out the word ‘is’, because there was confusion: is or isn’t. So, you’re going to stress the word where the confusion was. He IS married: changing the stress of the sentence.
Let’s say your friend did understand, He’s married, but she thought you were pointing at someone else. So she points and says, He’s married? And you say, No, HE’s married, he, and you point to the correct person. Now, here you’re stressing the word ‘he’ because you are clearing up that misunderstanding. No, HE’s married, HE’s married, stressing ‘he’. So, stress that doesn’t follow your typical stress roles can happen when someone is trying to clarify a point. Keep this in mind as you study native speakers speaking, and see if you can identify them using stress in this way. That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.
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