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accent

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length. In English each word has at least one primary stressed syllable, as in weath'er; words of several syllables may also have secondary stress as in el'e-va´´tor. In English, vowels in unaccented syllables are often pronounced as Ә regardless of the orthographic letter. Thus, the vowels of the second syllables in cir'cus, na'tion, ther'mos, eas'ily, saun'a , and sor'rel are all pronounced the same. Sentence stress, known as intonation or contour, includes three basic patterns: the statement, It's a dog , where the pitch pattern is level-high-low; the yes/no question, Is it a dog? where the pattern is level-high pitch; and the command, Catch him! which begins high and ends low. Both word stress and sentence stress occur in English. However, emphasis of certain words within a sentence is optional. Tonal languages, such as Chinese and…
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Full text Article accent

From Word Origins
Accent was originally a loan- translation from Greek into Latin (a loan- translation is when each constituent of a compound in one language is translated into its equivalent in another, and then reassembled into a new compound). Greek prosōidíā (whence English prosody ) was formed from pros ‘to’ and…
| 119 words
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Full text Article Accent

From Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies
According to David Crystal in Ben Crystal and David Crystal, You Say Potato: A Book About Accents (Macmillan, 2014), ‘An accent is a person's distinctive pronunciation,’ one that is influenced by an individual's geographical and social background. However, ‘no two people have exactly the same accent…
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Full text Article accent

From The Macquarie Dictionary
the distinctive character of a vowel or syllable determined by its degree or pattern of stress or musical tone. Plural: accents any one of the degrees or patterns of stress used in a particular language as essential features of vowels, syllables, or words primary accent falling accent sentence…
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Full text Article accent

From A/V A to Z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms
1 . Generally: The characteristic pronunciation and speech patterns of a particular country, region, or social order such as the Mexican accent in Spanish or the Cockney accent in English. One's native accent generally carries forward into one's pronunciation of another language, thus leading to the…
| 199 words
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Full text Article ACCENT

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In Eng., accent is the auditory prominence perceived in one syllable as compared with others in its vicinity. Accent and stress are often treated as synonymous, though some literary scholars and linguists distinguish the two terms according to a variety of criteria. Disagreements persist about the…
| 1,663 words
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Full text Article Accent

From The Harvard Dictionary of Music
1. Emphasis on one pitch or chord. An accent is dynamic if the pitch or chord is louder than its surroundings, tonic if it is higher in pitch, and agogic if it is of longer duration. In measured music [see Meter ], the first beat of each measure is the strong beat and thus carries a metrical accent. …
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Full text Article ACCENT.

From The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms
In Eng., accent is the auditory prominence perceived in one syllable as compared with others in its vicinity. Accent and stress are often treated as synonymous, though some literary scholars and linguists distinguish the two terms according to a variety of criteria. Disagreements persist about the…
| 1,664 words
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Full text Article accent

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length. In English each word has at least one primary stressed syllable, as in weath'er; words of several syllables may also have secondary stress as in…
| 301 words
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Full text Article accent

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
The relative prominence of a particular syllable of a word by greater intensity or by variation or modulation of pitch or tone. Vocal prominence or emphasis given to a particular syllable, word, or phrase. A characteristic pronunciation, especially: a. One determined by the regional or social…
| 351 words
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Full text Article accent

From The Chambers Dictionary
modulation of the voice; tone of voice; stress on a syllable, word, or note; a mark used to direct this stress; a mark over a letter to indicate differences of stress, pitch, length, quality of sound, etc; intensity; any way of pronouncing speech characteristic of a region, a class or an individual; …
| 155 words
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