What is 'Sentence Stress.'
Sentence Stress is actually the “music” of English, the thing that gives the language its particular “beat” or “rhythm”. It is a key for speaking and understanding English. With sentence stress, some words in a sentence are stressed (loud) and other are weak (weak). Look at the following sentence:
I WANT to GO.
Do we say every word with the same stress? No. We make the important words BIG and the unimportant words small. What are the important words in this sentence? Yes, that's right: WANT and GO. Look at other examples.
We WANT to GO.
We WANT to GO to WORK.
We DON’T WANT to GO to WORK.
We DON’T WANT to GO to WORK at NIGHT.
Sentence Stress and Weak Form
Weak or unstressed form is most often the function word, filling in between content word and making sentences work grammatically.
Verbs (verb to be and auxiliary verbs)
(am, are, is, was, were, do, does, have, has, had, can, could, would, should )
THAT's WHAT I'm TRYing to SAY.
WHERE do you LIVE?
WHERE's he from?
Personal pronouns (you, your, he, him, she, her, us, them )
HOW do you DO?
WHERE does he DO?
WHAT does your BROTHer THINK?
Prepositions (to, at, of, for, from)
He's already GONE to WORK.
THAT's the LAST of the WINE!
Conjunctions (and, but, than)
She's HERE, but JANE isn't.
Articles (a, an, the)
He's a DOCtor.
Indefinite adjectives (any, some, such)
Have you GOT any BIScuits?