2
Syllable Division and Word Stress
INTRODUCTION
In the previous chapter you have learnt about sounds in the English language. This chapter introduces you to syllable pattern and stress pattern in English. English is a stress-timed language. To understand the stress pattern of this language, you need to understand the concept of syllables.
A syllable is a group of one or more sounds with the vowel sound as its essential part. Words are made of syllables where each word can have any number of syllables. For example, the word ‘new’ has one syllable whereas the word ‘new book’ has two syllables. To tell you the secret, the number of vowels in a word determines the number of syllables it has.
We have monosyllabic words where there is only one syllable, ...
Get A Manual for English Language Laboratories now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
