Frequency of stressed syllables in USA English

[Tom Zurinskas]

I used the truespel database and Collins Cobuild word frequncy database to analyse frequency of stressed syllables in text.

The table below uses the Collins Cobuild database top 5k words of English and looks at each sorted by number of syllables and which syllable is stressed.  Note that popular words have many "instances" in text (newspapers, magazines etc)

Results show that the most common word on a page of text is a 1 syllable word (77%).  Next come two syllable words (16.5%), with stress 3 times as likely on the first syllable as on the second.

Of interest is that for 4-syllable words, stress is more likely on the 2nd syllable than the 1st or 3rd (second to last) syllable.  This is contrary to what I've read, saying that stress is most likey on the second to last syllable.

number of  stressed
syllables  syllable instances    %    words  %
1           1     11,832,617 76.87% 1,724 34.48%

2           1      1,904,655 12.37% 1,561 31.22%
2           2        645,092  4.19%   455  9.10%

3           1        416,830  2.71%   485  9.70%
3           2        319,662  2.08%   418  8.36%
3           3         12,029  0.08%    18  0.36%

4           1         24,674  0.16%    34  0.68%
4           2        119,703  0.78%   136  2.72%
4           3         71,461  0.46%    96  1.92%
4           4          none    none   none  none

5           1         none    none    none none
5           2         14,233  0.09%    22  0.44%
5           3         18,483  0.12%    24  0.48%
5           4          9,025  0.06%    20  0.40%
5           5          none   none    none  none

6           1          none   none    none  none
6           2          none   none    none  none
6           3          1,653  0.01%     3  0.06%
6           4          1,793  0.01%     2  0.04%
6           5           670   0.00%     2  0.04%
6           6          none   none    none  none

totals             15,392,580 100%    5,000 100%

Although only 5k words are used, these make up about 85%-90% of words on a page.  If the database were extended to all words, the percentage wouldn't change much.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling



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