INSTRUCTION 1 DO YOU POSSESS ARTICULATE SPEECH? When you listen to your own voice speaking, what do you think about it? Are you articulate? Do you occasionally mumble words? Today we shall be taking a look at the term “Stress” in English. What is it? It is the relative emphasis given to a syllable in a word (lexical stress), or a minimum of one word in a sentence (prosodic stress). A language can either be syllable-timed, or stress-timed. In a stress-timed language, the interval or duration between two stressed syllables is equal. In a syllable-timed language, the duration between every syllable in a word is equal. Examples of stress-timed languages include, • English • Russian • Arabic • German • Portuguese Examples of syllable-timed languages include, • French • Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo • ...