Logical stress as a way of expressing thought

Acceleration is the allocation of a component of speech by acoustic means.

The stress of a word or a verbal stress is the singling out of one syllable in a word. The stress in Russian is force, that is, the stressed syllable is pronounced with a greater sound power. Also, it is not subject to reduction, that is, it is pronounced without noticeable changes in its sound characteristics, in contrast to unstressed sounds.

In addition to verbal, there is also a logical stress. This is an increase in the tone that highlights the main word or group of words in the sentence, that is, it no longer refers to a single word, but to a phrase or sentence. It puts emphasis and reflects the purpose of the statement, the main idea of the proposal. So, if the sentence "Tanya eats soup" puts a logical stress on the word "Tanya", then it is about Tanya, and not about Masha or Katya. If the stressed word "eats", then for the speaker it matters that she eats it, and does not salt or stir. And if under the stress there will be a word "soup", then it is important that it is soup, not a cutlet or pasta.

Logical and grammatical pauses

Logical stress is closely related to logical and grammatical pauses. In sounding and writing, each phrase is divided into semantic parts, each of which contains several words or only one. Such semantic groups in the sentence are called speech units, bars or syntagmas. In a sounding speech, syntagmas are separated from each other by logical pauses - stops, the duration and fullness of which can be different. Each separate syntagma itself is inseparable: there are no pauses in its composition. There are also grammatical pauses, which in the written text are indicated by commas, dots and other punctuation marks. Where there is a grammatical pause, there is always a logical pause, but not every logical pause is indicated by a punctuation mark.

There are also psychological pauses, which are denoted by an ellipsis on the letter.

The logical pause can be connecting and separating. The connecting pause denotes the boundaries between syntagms within a sentence or between parts of a complex sentence; it is short. The separating pause is longer. It is done between individual sentences, as well as plot or semantic compositional parts of the text.

The main word or group of words in the sentence can be highlighted with a logical pause before this word or after it. Maybe there are two pauses at once, which "frame" the selected word.

Intonation and logical stress

In oral speech, there is a tonal accent - an increase or decrease in tone. The change in its height not only indicates the main words or combinations of words in the sounding speech, but also makes the speech more diverse, distinct and pleasant for the ear. Without the necessary change in intonations, the speech, even provided with the necessary pauses, becomes monotonous, indistinct and euphonious. If the logical stress conveys the meaning of the utterance, the tonal keeps the listeners' attention.