| Secondary stress | |
|---|---|
| ˌ◌ | |
| IPA number | 502 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ˌ |
| Unicode(hex) | U+02CC |
Secondary stress (or obsolete:secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees ofstress in thepronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being calledprimary. TheInternational Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is a short vertical line preceding and at the foot of the secondarily stressed syllable, as before the-nun- inproˌnunciˈation (the higher vertical line denotes primary stress). Another tradition in English is to assignacute andgrave accents for primary and secondary stress, respectively:pronùnciátion.[citation needed]
Most languages have at most one degree of stress on thephonemic level (English can contrast up to four levels of stress, that is, three degrees of stressed and one unstressed, according to some analyses[1]). That is, eachsyllable has stress or it does not. Many languages have rhythmic stress; location of the stress may not be predictable, but when the location of one stressed syllable (which may be the primary stress) is known, certain syllables before or after can be predicted to also be stressed; these may have secondary stress. An example isDutch, where the rule is that initial and final syllables (word boundaries) take secondary stress, then every alternate syllable before and after the primary stress, as long as two stressed syllables are not adjacent and stress does not fall on/ə/ (there are, however, some exceptions to this rule). SeeDutch phonology § Stress. A similar rule applies inRomanian: secondary stress falls on every alternate syllable, starting with the first, as long as it does not fall adjacent to the primary stress.[2] In other languages (includingStandard Arabic,Bhojpuri,Cayuga,Estonian,Hawaiian,Kaure,Malayalam, andWarrgamay)[3], secondary stress can be predicted to fall onheavy syllables.
In other languages, the placement of secondary stress is not predictable, or may not be predictable (and thus bephonemic) for some words. This is frequently posited for Germanic languages, includingEnglish. For example, secondary stress is said to arise incompound words likevacuum cleaner, where the first syllable ofvacuum has primary stress, while the first syllable ofcleaner is usually said to have secondary stress. However, this analysis is problematic;Bolinger (1986) notes that these may be cases of full vs reduced unstressed vowels being interpreted as secondary stress vs unstressed. SeeStress and vowel reduction in English for details.
InNorwegian, thepitch accent is lost from one of the roots in a compound word, but the erstwhile tonic syllable retains the full length (long vowel or geminate consonant) of a stressed syllable; this has sometimes been characterized as secondary stress.[4]
