The use of stress in speech helps us to deliver and understand meaning in longer utterances. Content words convey the most important ideas in the sentence. The rest of the utterance consists of function words, which we need to hold language structures. Content words are meaningful words such as nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. In opposition, function words are mainly "empty" words such as articles, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjuctions and indefinite adjectives.
There are a large number of words in English which can have a "strong" form and a "weak" form. These words are most often the function words, filling in between content words and making sentences "work" grammatically. These words can be pronounced differently, depending on the information that is conveyed in the utterance, so it is important to be aware of their possible forms.
Source: Roach, Peter. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Lic. Nancy Férnandez, Prof. Paula Viera, Language and Oral Expression I (Course book 2010).
Do the quiz in the following link and check if your hypotheses were correct:
2- Reflective questions:
Have you found the activity difficult? Yes/ No? Why?
Did you like it?
Put your score and your answers on the comments below.
There are a large number of words in English which can have a "strong" form and a "weak" form. These words are most often the function words, filling in between content words and making sentences "work" grammatically. These words can be pronounced differently, depending on the information that is conveyed in the utterance, so it is important to be aware of their possible forms.
Source: Roach, Peter. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Lic. Nancy Férnandez, Prof. Paula Viera, Language and Oral Expression I (Course book 2010).
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Jonathan Harker, a young lawyer, is assigned to work on a village in the mists of Eastern Europe, Transylvania. He is captured and imprisoned by the Count Dracula, a vampire. Dracula finds a photograph of Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray. She resembles Count Dracula’s dead wife, for this reason, he travels to London to meet her.
Dracula, who is a possessive and lustful man, finds Mina and seduces her. When she refuses to talk with him, he forces her violently. Mina is an engaged woman from the Victorian era. She represents virginity and purity. She doesn’t want to do anything that could be inappropriate. She is submissive. However, she feels attracted by Count Dracula and she allows him to talk with her and even to touch her.
In the scene you are about to watch Dracula takes hold of Mina and drags her out of a ballroom to a dark place where they are alone. He strokes Mina’s face and neck, at the same time she shows pleasure at Dracula's touching. Dracula’s eyes turn red and he tries to bite her.
Watch the video.
Watch the video.
1- In the scene Dracula and Mina utter the chunks below. Which words do you think they are going to stress? Why?
/ do not fear me /
/ stop this /
/ I can’t do this /
/ no / /she isn’t Isabella/
Do the quiz in the following link and check if your hypotheses were correct:
Have you found the activity difficult? Yes/ No? Why?
Did you like it?
Put your score and your answers on the comments below.
