3.8.4 The functioning of stress and intonation in English

　 Intonation and stress generally occur simultaneously in utterance. When intonation contour falls on a syllable, the nucleus is stressed and the vowel is naturally lengthened a bit. In the meantime, there is a little pause after the syllable. This simultaneous functioning of the features serves to highlight the information focus, or to eliminate ambiguity (double interpretations of the same phrase or sentence).

　 Every component of a sentence contains some information. It may or may not be highlighted in speech, depending on the speaker's intention and the situation. Intonation contour can indicate the information focus of the sentence. The following sentence may be uttered with the intonation contour on any word, depending on what the speaker wants to give prominence to:

　 Jack hid the ball under the desk.

　 If the intonation contour falls on Jack, the speaker emphasizes the doer, meaning it is Jack who did it. If on hid, the speaker wants to focus on the action, implying that Jack put the ball there deliberately so that others will not see it. In the former case, Jack contrasts with other persons, and in the latter, the verb hid contrasts with other verbs (put, left, etc.). You can try to shift the intonation nucleus to other words and see how the information focus is changed.

　 Intonation and stress are very important in that they can disambiguate phrases and sentences. Stress can distinguish the two types of noun phrase in the following columns A and B:

　　　　　A 　　　　　　　　　　B

　　a greenhouse 　　　　　a green house
　　a redcoat 　　　　　　 a red coat
　　a hotdog 　　　　　　　a hot dog
　　a sleeping car 　　　　a sleeping baby

The phrases in A are compound nouns preceded by an indefinite article. Those in B are: article + modifier + noun. Similarly, intonation can distinguish the two meanings of the sentence:

　　Those who went there quickly made a fortune.

With the intonation contour on there, the meaning of the sentence differs from on quickly.