ˈ
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Translingual
Symbol
ˈ
- (IPA) primary stress.
- (phonetics) a mid floating tone (when the macron is used for vowel length) or a high-mid floating tone (when the macron is used for tone).
Usage notes
(IPA): The stress mark is placed before the stressed syllable. Rarely it may occur immediately before the vowel of the stressed syllable, but this is not standard IPA usage.
It may be doubled, ⟨ˈˈ⟩, or even tripled for extra stress, e.g. prosodic stress on a word. For English, however, prosodic /ˈˈ/ is typically analyzed as primary stress and written ⟨ˈ⟩, while lexical stress /ˈ/ is analyzed as secondary stress and (along with some non-stressed syllables) written ⟨ˌ⟩.
Some English dictionaries use ⟨¦⟩ for a syllable that may take either primary or secondary stress (that is, may be lexically stressed or not).
(tone): When this symbol is used for tone, normally either the language does not have stress, or something else will be used to mark it.