Language Focus: Stress and Intonation

20 min

Read this sentence aloud three times, putting the strongest stress on the word in capitals each time:

"I didn't say SHE lost the necklace." (Someone else lost it.)
"I didn't say she LOST the necklace." (Perhaps she sold it.)
"I didn't say she lost the NECKLACE." (She lost something else.)

The words do not change, but the meaning does. When you read prose aloud in class, perform a scene, or give an oral presentation in the examination, stress and intonation carry half of the meaning. Writers know this: the punctuation, italics and rhythm of a good sentence tell a reader where the voice should rise and fall.

Definition

word stress: the extra force, length and pitch given to one syllable of a word: LIT-er-a-ture.
sentence stress: the stress given to the most important words in a sentence, usually the content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs).
contrastive stress: extra stress on one word to contrast it with another, stated or implied.
intonation: the rise and fall of the voice's pitch across a phrase or sentence.
weak form: the reduced pronunciation of an unstressed function word, as in to said as /tə/ or and as /ən/.

Word stress in the language of literature

Stressed syllables are in capitals.

Word	Stress	Related word	Stress
literature	LIT-er-a-ture	literary	LIT-er-a-ry
irony	I-ro-ny	ironic	i-RON-ic
poetry	PO-et-ry	poetic	po-ET-ic
narrative	NAR-ra-tive	narrator	na-RRA-tor
comparison	com-PAR-i-son	comparative	com-PAR-a-tive
character	CHAR-ac-ter	characterisation	char-ac-ter-i-SA-tion

Noun or verb? In many two-syllable pairs, the noun is stressed on the first syllable and the verb on the second: a CON-trast / to con-TRAST; a RE-cord / to re-CORD; a PRE-sent / to pre-SENT; an OB-ject / to ob-JECT; a CON-duct / to con-DUCT.

Sentence stress and rhythm

English gives roughly equal time to each stressed syllable and squeezes the weak syllables between them. Read the opening of "The Gift of the Magi" with the stresses marked:

ONE DOL-lar and EIGHT-y-sev-en CENTS. That was ALL. And SIX-ty cents of it was in PEN-nies.

The short second sentence has only one stress, ALL, and it lands like a sigh. In the third, stress falls on SIXty and PENnies: the shame of small coins. Reading it this way brings out Della's careful counting.

Intonation: the three main patterns

Pattern	Used for	Example
Fall ↘	Statements; wh- questions; commands; question tags that expect agreement	Where did you buy it ↘? It's beautiful, isn't it ↘?
Rise ↗	Yes or no questions; surprise; question tags that really ask; items in a list before the last	Have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last ↗? You've read it, haven't you ↗? (I'm not sure.)
Fall-rise ↘↗	Reservation, polite disagreement, something left unsaid	The ending is clever ↘↗ … (but I didn't like it).

Lists: rise on each item and fall on the last: "Plot ↗, character ↗, setting ↗ and theme ↘."

Worked example: preparing a passage for reading aloud

Passage (adapted from the ending of "The Necklace"): Madame Forestier was deeply moved. She took her hands. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste!"

Find the key words: DEEPly MOVED; TOOK … HANDS; POOR maTHILDE; PASTE.
Mark the intonation: narrative sentences fall ↘; "Oh, my poor Mathilde!" falls with warmth ↘; "Why, my necklace was paste!" rises on "Why" ↗ (surprise) and falls heavily on PASTE ↘.
Mark the pauses: a short pause before "Why", and a longer one after "paste" to let the listeners feel the shock.
Check the effect: the reading should sound tender first and then shocking, as the scene is.

Tip

Punctuation is a score. A full stop asks for a fall and a pause; a question mark after a yes or no question asks for a rise; a dash asks for a sudden break; italics ask for contrastive stress. Read the punctuation, and the intonation follows.

Warning

Don't stress every word when you read aloud. If everything is stressed, nothing is.
Don't rise at the end of every statement: it makes confident points sound like questions.
Wh- questions normally fall: "Who has taken it ↘?", not ↗.

"Intonation in English", a pronunciation lesson from Oxford Online English. Practise each pattern with the speaker, then reread the examples in this lesson.

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Practice

Mark the stressed syllable: (a) literary (b) ironic (c) narrator (d) comparative (e) characterisation.
Noun or verb? Mark the stress: (a) Writers often contrast two settings. (b) There is a sharp contrast between the endings. (c) She will present her essay tomorrow.
Explain the change of meaning: (a) "MATHILDE borrowed the necklace." (b) "Mathilde BORROWED the necklace."
Rising or falling? (a) Who wrote "The Necklace"? (b) Did O. Henry write it? (c) Read the first page.
How do you say this tag to check something you already believe? "You finished the novel, didn't you?"
Mark the stresses and the intonation for this sentence, then read it aloud: "Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail."

Show answersHide answers

(a) LIT-er-a-ry (b) i-RON-ic (c) na-RRA-tor (d) com-PAR-a-tive (e) char-ac-ter-i-SA-tion.
(a) con-TRAST (verb) (b) CON-trast (noun) (c) pre-SENT (verb).
(a) It was Mathilde, not someone else, who borrowed it. (b) She borrowed it, she did not buy or steal it.
(a) falling (wh- question); (b) rising (yes or no question); (c) falling (command).
With a falling tone on "didn't you ↘", because you expect agreement.
For example: JIM STOPPED in-SIDE the DOOR ↗, as im-MOV-a-ble as a SET-ter at the SCENT of QUAIL ↘. (A slight rise at the comma, and a fall at the end.)

Sources and credits

Short passages from "The Gift of the Magi" (O. Henry, 1905), "The Necklace" (Maupassant, 1884, public-domain translation) and Pride and Prejudice (Austen, 1813): public domain.
Video: Intonation in English, Oxford Online English, embedded from YouTube.
Intonation diagram, tables, worked example and practice written by Ganzaa.

1Word stress in the language of literature

2Sentence stress and rhythm

3Intonation: the three main patterns

Word stress in the language of literature

Sentence stress and rhythm

Intonation: the three main patterns