Phonetics II - Unit 3 - General Revision

Every word has a ... stress, which is the one found and marked (') in dictionaries.

In connected speech, lexical stresses always become accents.

• TRUE

• FALSE

Answer explanation

Native speakers recognize all the potential accents but they have the option to downgrade/remove some of them. That is a pervasive characteristic of English.

... words are generally accented.

Function words are generally unaccented and they include:

• CONJUCTIONS

• ADVERBS

• PREPOSITIONS

• PRONOUNS

• ARTICLES

English rhythm is described as ... because the amount of time between accented syllables is roughly the same.

Within each intonation phrase, one word is selected as the most important and it is made the ... of that IP

The nuclear accent is the last accent in an IP; i.e: we cannot accent words following the nucleus

• TRUE

• FALSE

In general terms and as a rule, we place the nuclear accent on the ... item in the IP

Find the nucleus in the following IP:

/ Here's some information about them /

Answer explanation

It should be pointed out that the nuclear accent is on the the third syllable of the word.

When a sentence contains both old and new information, the nucleus usually goes on:

• OLD INFORMATION

• THE FIRST CONTENT WORD

• THE LAST LEXICAL ITEM WITH NEW INFORMATION

• A REPEATED PHRASE