美语听力与发音技巧 listen 9

美语听力与发音技巧 第9期（句子中的重音）

Welcome to Daily Tips on Learning English. Today’s tip is on word stress on sentences.
In general, it is true that content words are stressed whereas function words are not stressed. Content words usually convey the meaning of the sentence. Function words make the sentence grammatically correct. Content words are: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, this, that, these, those, and “wh-“ words, who, what, when, why, how, which. Function words are: articles, such as “a” and “the”; possessive adjectives, such as “his”, “my”, “your”; prepositions, such as “in”, “on”, “of”; conjunctions, such as “and”, “but”; personal pronouns, such as “ I”, “he”, “she”; the “be” verb, “am”, “is”, “are”, “was”, “were”; and auxiliaries¹, such as “do”, “does”, “did”.
Take for example the sentence “Andrew brushes his teeth every morning.” The content word alone can convey the meaning of the sentence, namely “Andrew brushes teeth every morning.” The functional² word “his” only makes the sentence grammatically correct. So “his” is unstressed, the other words are stressed. Why isn’t “his” stressed? Because of course he brushes his teeth, not your teeth, or my teeth. This we would naturally assume. If, however, Andrew brushes someone else’s teeth beside his own, then it would be very important to let your listener know that by stressing whose teeth he brushes.
So, what words should be stressed? The simple answer is whatever words are important to the meaning you are trying to convey. if someone write the sentence on the board out of context and asks, “Which words are important? Which words should you stress?” You should answer, “That depends on the context.” Stress is used to let your listener know what is important to your message. If you stress words properly, your listener will have an easy time understanding your message. If you stress every word equally, then your listener will have to listen very carefully and try to guess the main point of your message. If your stress the wrong words, the listener will misunderstand your message or just feel very confused. So remember to stress the important words to your message.
This has been today’s daily tip. Tune³ in tomorrow for another tip on learning English.

1 auxiliaries   

n.助动词 ( auxiliary的名词复数 )；辅助工，辅助人员

参考例句：

• These auxiliaries have made our work much easier. 有了这些辅助人员，我们的工作才顺利多了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• In English the future tense is often rendered by means of auxiliaries. 在英语中，将来时常用助动词来表现。 来自辞典例句

2 functional   

adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的

参考例句：

• The telephone was out of order,but is functional now.电话刚才坏了，但现在可以用了。
• The furniture is not fancy,just functional.这些家具不是摆着好看的，只是为了实用。

3 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。