Monday 4 December 2017

Stressed Weakform


credit: Japan Times
credit: Cambridge University
 This blog is not about stressed people, but about stressed weakforms (or: weak forms). I found a video in which the speaker - art historian James Fox - uses the conjunction because in the sentence:
"In Japan [cherry] blossom is celebrated not in spite of its transience but because of it."
In this sentence he stresses both spite and because in these multi-word prepositions. In the case of because, however, he does not use the pronunciation typical of the accented (= strongform) version, but an unaccented /bə'kəs/. Listen:



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