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From: Ken Logan
Date: 29 Apr 2010
Time: 21:16:06 -0500
Remote Name: 98.70.44.25
Dear Peggy, Sorry to have missed your follow-up question when you posted it the other day. In English (and I imagine in most other languages) there are set stress patterns for specific words, but then when those words are used in sentences, the relative prominence of any one syllable will vary depending upon the surrounding words and, more broadly, the communicative intention that the speaker is trying to convey. Thus, in a therapy situation, it might be helpful to break long sentences into shorter phrases, and then work on attaining stress patterns in those words that are consistent with the standard forms of the specific words, as well as phrasal intonational patterns that are consistent with the intention that is being conveyed. For speakers who clutter, multi-syllabic words can sometimes be challenging to say intelligibly, In such cases, it might be necessary to practice the particular stress patterns associated with those words.