Changing Word Stress for Clarification: American English Pronunciation

He's married. He IS married. Why would you say this sentence two different ways? In this

video, we're going to discuss word stress and clarification in American English.

I have already done some videos on stress, and you've learned that stressed words will

generally be the content words in a sentence. Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives,

and adverbs. But there are almost always exceptions to the rules. And today, I want to talk about

clarification. When you stress something for clarification, you may find that you change

the stress of the sentence. Let's take the example sentence "He is married." Let's say

you're at a party with a friend and you're talking about someone else. You point and

you say, "He is married." But it's loud, your friend has not quite heard you. She says,

"He's not married?" And you say, "No, he IS married," stressing the word 'is'. So the

first time you said it, "He's married … he is married," the word 'married' got the stress.

But the second time, "He IS married," you're bringing out the word 'is', because there

was confusion: is or isn't. So, you're going to stress the word where the confusion was.

He IS married: changing the stress of the sentence.

Let's say your friend did understand, "He's married," but she thought you were pointing

at someone else. So she points and says, "He's married?" And you say, "No, HE's married,"

he, and you point to the correct person. Now, here you're stressing the word 'he' because

you are clearing up that misunderstanding. "No, HE's married, HE's married," stressing

'he'. So, stress that doesn't follow your typical stress roles can happen when someone

is trying to clarify a point. Keep this in mind as you study native speakers speaking,

and see if you can identify them using stress in this way. That's it, and thanks so much

for using Rachel's English.