(1) The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as “import and import”. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English compounds is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example, ['blackbird] is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a [black'bird] is a bird that is black.

(2) The more important words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc. are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed to achieve different effect. Take the sentence “He is driving my car” for example. To emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or yours, but mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun my, which under normal circumstances is not stressed.

(3) English has four basic types of intonation, known as the four tones. When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied message in what is said.