Exercise: Stress & Vowel Reduction

Vowel reduction is the term applied to the replacement of any vowel by schwa when the syllable in which that vowel appears does not carry any stress, either primary or secondary.

A. Consider the following pairs of words. Primary stress is on the underlined syllable, and secondary stress on the syllable in italics. Note changes in stress pattern between column I and column II. Circle all the vowels that are reduced to schwa in each column.

Column I	Column II	Column I	Column II
impose	imposition	prepare	preparation
contrast	contrastive	pornography	pornographic
relate	relative	reveal	revelation
indicate	indicative	regal	regalia

                

KEY  for Exercise A

B. Circle each vowel which you hear as schwa. Be careful not to use overly 'careful' or slow pronunciation (if you do, you won't produce any schwas!) Use normal-speed pronunciation.

1. hospitalize   2. reminiscence   3. secretarial         4. distinguish     5. applicable        6. application

7. labyrinth       8. hypodermic      9. extinguish       10. composition   11. tournament   12. extracurricular

13. pictorial    14. bureaucracy  15. bureaucratic   16. phosphorescence

KEY  for Exercise B