An Introduction to French Pronunciation

46 Stress
word. To take English again as our starting-point, the main
stress on the word beautiful is always on the first syllable and
the main stress on behaviour is always on the second syllable,
regardless of their position in the sentence.
9.1.3 The situation in relation to French is very different in
that the normal stress is associated not with the word but
with the rhythmic group (see chapter 7). (For the distinction
between normal stress and emphatic stress, see 9.2.l.) To
anticipate a point that will be fully developed in 9.4, we can
say that in la petite maison the only normally stressed syllable
is -son, while in la maison est petite the only normally stressed
syllable is -tite.
9.1.4 There is no universally recognized terminology for
referring to different types of stress. In particular, what is
here referred to as ‘normal stress’ is elsewhere variously termed
‘unemphatic stress’, ‘tonic stress’, ‘final stress’, ‘grammatical
stress’ and ‘logical stress’ (the least satisfactory of the lot).
9.2 Emphatic Stress
9.2.1 It frequently occurs in English, and in other languages
that have the normal stress on a fixed syllable, that that
syllable is given an even greater degree of prominence, i.e.
is pronounced with even more energy than normally, as one
way of expressing some kind of emotion or reaction, e.g.
surprise, indignation, anger, pleasure, terror, relief, disgust,
admiration, or for some other expressive purpose such as
uttering a request or a warning. This can be illustrated by
such sentences as the following, in which the stressed syllable
is printed in bold type:
What a wonderful view!
He’s gone and bought a harpsichord!
Stupid!
I’ve seen him!