In order to decide on stress placement, it is necessary to make use of some or all of the following points:
♦ Whether the word is morphologically simple, or whether it is complex as a result either of containing one or more affixes (that is prefixes and suffixes) or of compound word
♦ What the grammatical category of the word is ( noun, verb, adjective, adverb …)
♦ How many syllables the words has
♦ What the phonological structure of those syllables is :
– One component of syllable is the rhyme, which contains the syllable peak and the coda
– A strong syllable has a rhyme either has a syllable peak which is a long vowel or diphthong or a vowel followed by a coda (one or more consonants)
– Weak syllables have a syllable peak which is a short vowel and no coda unless the syllable peak is the schwa [ ə ] or in some circumstances [ ɪ ].
Examples:
Strong syllable: heart [ hɑːt ] ; bat [ bæt ]
Weak syllable: reduce [ rɪdjuːs ]; herbicide [ hɜːbɪsaɪ ]./.