How was stress created?

fungi   Sat Oct 20, 2007 1:22 am GMT
My native language is syllable-timed, and it doesn't have such thing as a stress.
Why does this thing exist?
It feels strange for me to be aware of stresses when I'm saying English words.
Guest   Sat Oct 20, 2007 1:52 am GMT
I don't know how they came about, but I will say that as a native speaker I'm usually not consciously aware of them when I speak or listen to the speech of other people. I do notice when someone stresses a word differently than I would, though. That normally only happens with people who have foreign accents, but there are some regional variations in word stress as well. For example, where I live, people say "aDULT", but I've met a few people from other areas who say "ADult".
Lazar   Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:03 am GMT
Fungi, if I may ask, what is your native language?
fungi   Sat Oct 20, 2007 3:36 am GMT
Lazar, my native language is Korean. :)
fungi   Sat Oct 20, 2007 3:40 am GMT
Guest, I tend to say aDULT, too. But, sometimes, I say ADult. I don't exactly know why I fluctuate between these variants.
Guest   Sat Oct 20, 2007 4:38 am GMT
Did you know that native speakers often can't tell the stress of a word without actually trying out all the possibilities and seeing how they sound? Native speakers have no trouble imitating the stress of a word they've heard someone else say, of course, but consciously recognizing where the stress falls is more difficult in many cases. How do non-native speakers fare in this area?
Guest   Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:45 pm GMT
Is ADult the noun and aDULT the adjective?

This would fit in with CONtract the noun and conTRACT the verb?
Guest   Sat Oct 20, 2007 3:25 pm GMT
No.
fungi   Wed Oct 24, 2007 6:21 am GMT
"Did you know that native speakers often can't tell the stress of a word without actually trying out all the possibilities and seeing how they sound? Native speakers have no trouble imitating the stress of a word they've heard someone else say, of course, but consciously recognizing where the stress falls is more difficult in many cases. How do non-native speakers fare in this area?" How can it be difficult for natives to recognize where the stress falls? That's strange, because I can do that effortlessly.

Anyway, to get back to my original question, how did stress evolve in the English language?
furrykef   Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:31 am GMT
I can do it effortlessly, too, and I'm a native English speaker. What's really strange is when I talk to native Spanish speakers online in Spanish and they sometimes put accent marks on syllables that aren't even stressed! (The entire purpose of accent marks is to indicate stress, so it makes no sense to put them on the wrong syllable!) So I guess it's intuitive to some people and not to others...

I did have to be taught about stress when I was a child, though. I remember the hint that one teacher gave us was to put the hand in front of the mouth and feel where the strongest puff of air is to find the stressed syllable, which is a pretty reliable indicator. Of course, I haven't had to do that in years.

I think stress of some kind is a feature of most languages, which I think includes some dialects of Korean, using a "pitch accent" (meaning only pitch indicates stress, not syllable length or volume as in English). I think it's because it creates rhythms that are pleasing to the ear... that's more or less the basis of poetry in many languages. I can only speculate, though...

- Kef
guest   Wed Oct 24, 2007 2:10 pm GMT
I am also a native Korean speaker, my mother being Korean, and Korean does have a stress--it's usually on the first syllable. Sometimes I've heard it on the particle of the word, especially where there are several syllables between the root and final particle (multiple syllables) as in "kuruniKKA" but this is for effect/clarity. It could also be "kuRUNikka" and be the same. These types of stress are frequent, but first syllable is usually the case.

<<I think stress of some kind is a feature of most languages, which I think includes some dialects of Korean, using a "pitch accent" (meaning only pitch indicates stress, not syllable length or volume as in English). >>

FurryKef, No. I have never come across this in any Korean dialect. That is a feature of JAPANESE. I know you're NOT trying to somehow tie Korean to Japanese! : ) I'm beginning to think that you are a native English speaker with Japonic roots...
Travis   Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:01 pm GMT
>>FurryKef, No. I have never come across this in any Korean dialect. That is a feature of JAPANESE. I know you're NOT trying to somehow tie Korean to Japanese! : ) I'm beginning to think that you are a native English speaker with Japonic roots...<<

There are Korean dialects which retain pitch accent, from what I have heard as well. It is just that the dialects from which Standard Korean is derived converted pitch accent into phonemic vowel length, and more recently many of such dialects have in turn lost phonemic vowel length.