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Stress-Shift: stress, accent, and rhythm explained

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The stresses shown in dictionaries are so often different from the reality of English speech. To understand why, we need to unpack stress • accent • rhythm

For animations, a big thankyou to Marta at https://www.youtube.com/@UClYNXZjPPnLhaHVZN_5g9Tg

0:00 Introduction

3:36 'Stress Shift' (Piccadilly)

5:11 Variability (overt/covert)

6:49 Shifted forms getting fixed (Vauxhall)

8:24 Speaker/accent differences (Heathrow)

9:18 Nuclear pitch-accents

11:54 Onset pitch-accents

13:21 Rhythmic beats

16:41 'Stress timing'

17:22 Dictionaries

19:16 Messy pretonic syllables

20:28 'Fantastic'!

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