An investigation of primary stress in spontaneous speech for pedagogical purposes

The accurate placement of primary stress in spoken English is an important pronunciation skill for non-native speakers to master. The purpose of the study was to contribute to the understanding of native-speaker primary stress placement, and to discuss the pedagogical implications. Two random segments from a collection of spontaneous, native-speaker conversations were analyzed to identify the location of the primary stresses. W. B. Dickerson's (1995) Primary Phrase Stress (PPS) System, a predictive tool for advanced non-native speakers to use in their practice, was applied to the data to determine areas where the PPS system failed to predict a primary stress, or predicted a primary stress that would be unacceptable to listeners. The anomalous areas were investigated to determine patterns for the stress placements and to propose modifications to the PPS system to account for those stress areas. The findings constitute proposed modifications in the areas of stress on else, pointing proforms, and stress placement for emphasis. The findings also include proposed modifications to the PPS system with regard to types of stressable and unstressable information. The pedagogical implications of the study include a proposal for a different approach to the teaching of primary stress based on the concepts of stressable and unstressable versus new and old information.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Teaching English as a Second Language

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2000

Author dc:creator

• Hahn, Mary Katherine

• Teaching English as Second Language

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright by Mary Katherine Hahn, 2000

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125887

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/125887