Accentuation

STRESS, ACCENUATION & PROMINENCE:

1- STRESS is a property of syllables which makes them stand out as more noticeable than others. Examples for English: Stress is a large topic, which cannot be covered in its entirety here; however, some examples follow.
The position of the stress can change the meaning or Word class of a Word, and so forms part of the phonological composition of theWord.
It is necessary to consider what factors make a syllable count as stressed. It seems likely that stressed syllables are produced with greater effort than unstressed, and that this effort is manifestated in the air pressure generated in the lungs for producing the syllable and also in the articulatory movements in the vocal tract. These effects of stress produce in turn various audibleresults: one is ‘pitch prominence’, in which the stressed syllable stands out from its context (for example, being higher if its unstressed neighbours ar low in PITCH, or lower if those neighbours are high; often a pitch glide such as a fall or rise is used to give greater pitch prominence). Another effect of stress is that stressed syllables tend to be longer – this is very noticeable in English,less so in some other languages. Also, stressed syllables ten to be louder than unstressed, though experiments hae shown that differences in loudness alone are not very noticeable tomost listeners. It has been suggested by many writers that the term ‘accent’ should be used to refer to some of the manifestations of stress (particularly pitch prominence), but the Word, though widely used, has neveracquired a distinct meaning of its own.
One of the areas in which there is Little agreement is that of ’levels’ of stress. Some descriptions of languages manage with just two levels (stress and unstressed), while others use more. In English, one can argue that if one takes the Word indicator as an example, the first syllable is the most strongly stressed, the third yllable is the next most stronglystressed and the second and fourth syllables are weakly stressed, or unstressed. This gives us three levels: it is posible to argue for more, though this rarely seems to give any practical benefit.

There is an article writen by Hector Ortiz Lira about ‘stress and accentuation’:
…“según la teoría prosódica actual, los acentos léxicos (“stresses”) pueden o no convertirse en acentos contextuales(“accents”), dependiendo de fenómenos rítmicos y pragmáticos mientras los acentos léxicos constituyen un potencial para los acentos contextuales, estos últimos son las realizaciones de los primeros, rol que desempeñan al adquirir la forma de acentos tonales (“pitch accents”). La palabra de contenido es relativamente corta (por ejemplo “cup”) y queda precedida y seguida de acentos tonales cercanos(por ejemplo: “a hot cup of tea”). Este fenómeno recibe el nombre de “stress shift” según el cual se evitan los acentos tonales en silabas contiguas”…
The following, is an article about ‘accent’ writen by O’connor and Arnold:
‘We may define an accent (or 'accentual stress') as one consciously and voluntarily accorded by a speaker to a particular word or syllable. It should be noted that apitch movement which is a latter element of a complex tone, even if so delayed that it is effected on a subsequent word, does not constitute an accent.’

2- In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence; it is caused by greater muscular energy and breath force, and it is perceived as loudness, and canbe defined as the property of a sound which enables us, using only our ears, to place it on a scale going from loud to soft. In other way, the word accent is sometimes also used with this sense. But it differs in some points: when a syllable is a starter of pitch movement, or has the natural potential to be one, we shall say that it is accented, irrespective of whatever other elements are...