What is lexical (word) stress?

• A. The mark used to indicate sentence type.
• B. The duration of a syllable's vowel.
• C. The emphasis placed on a syllable within a word.
• D. The pitch contour of an utterance.

Answer: (C)

Lexical stress is the emphasis placed on a syllable within a word. This prominence is part of the word’s pronunciation and can involve greater loudness, longer vowel duration, and sometimes higher pitch on the stressed syllable. In many languages, the location of this stress helps distinguish words or parts of speech, as in English where a word can shift meaning or function depending on which syllable is stressed (for example, REcord as a noun vs reCORD as a verb). It’s about the internal structure of the word, not about punctuation marks that signal sentence type, not about how long a vowel lasts in isolation, and not about the overall pitch pattern of an entire utterance.