Presentation

Upstream Destressing: Another Step Toward Natural Speech

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Abstract

English speech is known for its bumpiness—peaks and valleys of stress with one dominant peak variously called the discourse stress, primary phrase stress, sentence stress, nuclear stress, and tonic. Less well known is the fact that native speakers selectively demote the peaks adjacent to the discourse stress to valley status for a variety of reasons. This is the phenomenon of destressing (or deaccenting). This paper focuses on the least well-known part of the destressing story— upstream destressing. It is a systematic downgrading of the peak or peaks just before the discourse stress. We first describe what is involved phonetically in destressing, why this phenomenon occurs, and the rules governing its use. Then we examine the pedagogical implications of this phenomenon: How can we introduce the destressing behavior to linguistically naive learners? How can we help them predict when to destress peaks on their own? What does a destressed peak sound like? What kind of practice do they need so that this behavior will become a natural part of their oral performance?

How to Cite:

Dickerson, W. B., (2010) “Upstream Destressing: Another Step Toward Natural Speech”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 2(1).