SENTENCE STRESS

Sentence stress is the pattern of stressed and unstressed words across a sentence. Normally this emphasis is on words that carry important information, although this can change significantly, depending on the specific meaning the speaker wants to communicate.

Example
'She bought a new car' probably has main stress on 'car' and secondary stress on 'bought'.


* English is a stress-timed language. This means that stress in a spoken sentence occurs at regular intervals and the length it takes to say something depends on the number of stressed syllables rather than the number of syllables itself.