Am I stressing correct words? April 7

[Musicgold]

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Hi,

Am I stressing correct words in the following sentences? I have also recorded the sentences.

A murder sparked by a barroom spat ended Thursday in a courtroom brawl after Kyle Smith was sentenced to life for killing one person and wounding five others outside a Victoriaville bar.

Thanks,

MG.

[Esl_Expert]

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Hi MG,

I've recorded the sentence the way I would say it.

One thing I'll mention is that I'd expect the word 'five' to have just as much stress as the word 'one'.

Another thing is that this sentence is not representative of what you'd hear in everyday conversation. It sounds like a sentence from a newspaper.

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"This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

[Musicgold]

Thanks ESL Expert.
You are right in that one would not hear such sentence in everyday conversation. The sentence is from a newstory.

A follow up question if you don't mind.

1. You didn't stress 'sentenced' and 'outside' much. Is that correct? I thought they were content words, but now I am not sure.

[Esl_Expert]

Hi MG,

Does this make any sense to you?

A murder sparked by a barroom spat ended Thursday in a courtroom brawl after Kyle Smith was sentenced to life for killing one person and wounding five others outside a Victoriaville bar.

[Musicgold]

ESL Expert,

Thanks you. It totally makes sense.

Did you actually type that sentence or some software generate it for you? It is very helpful.

[Esl_Expert]

Hi MG,

No, it actually took me ages to type that out, repeatedly changing the font size according to my own estimation of the amount of stress each word is likely to get. Frequently changing the font size using this forum's software is quite tedious.

What I wanted to try to convey is that basically ALL content words receive stress, but they don't necessarily receive exactly the same amount of stress.

For example, in the phrase 'Victoriaville bar', both words are stressed, but the word 'bar' should receive noticeably more stress.

.

Here is an example that is somewhat different:

In the phrase 'train station', the word 'train' would typically be stressed about the same as (or possibly slightly more than) the first syllable of the word 'station':
train station
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"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of the oncoming train." ~ Robert Lowell

[Musicgold]

Thank you . I appreciate your effort.