Sentence stress

The most important words in a sentence are strongly stressed. They are pronounced LOUDer and slower. Look at these examples from the minimal pair sentences. (In the brackets on the right, the big circles are the strongly stressed syllables and the small circles are the weakly stressed syllables.)

Pair 1: OUT ....... SHIP             Look OUT for that SIIIP! (oOooO)

Pair 2: STOP ....... LEAK             STOP it LEAKing. (OoOo)

Pair 3: LOVE ....... CHICKS             What LOVEly CHICKS! (oOoO)

Pair 4: PILL'S ....... C             This PILL'S got vitamin C in it. (oOooooOoo)

Listen to the minimal pair sentences again and bold the strongly stressed words in each sentence.