Stress and Vowel Reduction in English

Stress And Vowel Reduction In English

Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress). Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel (schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced" (or sometimes with a syllabic consonant as the syllable nucleus rather than a vowel). Various phonological analyses exist for these phenomena.

Read more about Stress And Vowel Reduction In English:  Lexical and Prosodic Stress, Reduced Vowels, Unstressed Full Vowels, Distinctions Between Reduced and Unreduced Vowels, Alternation Between Full and Reduced Vowels

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