ACCENT, the stress or emphasis given by the voice to a certain syllable or syllables of a word, or to certain notes in a bar of music; also, the peculiar intonation of one spoken lan guage when compared with another; further, marks used in printing or writing to show the position of the stress. In a dissyllable there is but one accent, as a-back', but in a polysyllable there may be more than one. One of these, however, is always greater than the rest and is called the primary accent; the 'others are called secondary.
Two wholly distinct classes of accent are found in Aryan languages, the musical and the expiratory; the former, which is that of some Semitic tongues also, being that of Greek and Sanskrit, the latter that of Latin and Teutonic. Some languages, as French, have no accent, the stress on all syllables being the same, but even here the stopping of the voice gives the final syllable a slight tilt upwards, with the effect of an accent on that syllable. Accent may he free, as in Greek or old Teutonic, that is, its posi tion in a word may shift in accordance with the nature of the syllables or of the words which follow, or fixed, as in later Teutonic and English: perhaps the only remnant of the free accent in English is the word "cannot," which, though often spelled as two words, is really a compound word with an accent shifting accord ing to emotion. By a change of stress we often indicate the change of an adjective or a noun into a verb, as fre'quent (adj.), frequent' (verb); pro'ject (noun), project' (verb).
In compound words the accent is commonly on the first; but when the first element is a prefix, separable or inseparable, it is accented only when the root-word is noun or adjective, the root receiving the accent if it is a verb, this of course not applying to words borrowed from other languages, for which there is no settled rule, the chance of first usage commonly determining it. The inflections have almost al ways been left unaccented, and this has aided greatly in the sloughing off of the whole in flectional system in modern languages: even where retained to the eye they are often' net pronounced at all, as in French.
There is a certain analogy between accent and emphasis, emphasis doing for whole words or clauses of sentences what accent does far single syllables. One result of this has been
to develop duplicate words with different mean ings, as of and off, to and too, through and thorough (originally pronounced tho-roo). All modern verse depends on stress-accent (see METRE) ; while that of classical Greek and Latin,, as of some Semitic tongues still, rested on quantity or length of syllables, a system not easy for those reared on stress to comprehend, much less imitate.
Marks of In ancient Greek, ac cents marked the rise and fall in pitch of the voice, and were three in number, the acute (a), the grave (a) and the circumflex (a or a). The same marks are now used in French, and the first two in Italian, though they are largely of historical or etymological interest only, and do not always indicate a difference in pronunci ation. A mark similar to the acute accent is sometimes used to signify stress in English words, chiefly in poetry; and one like the grave is used to mark as a separate syllable letters otherwise not pronounced so, for example, learned, abhorred. Marks sometimes called accents are used in mathematics; for example, a'+b' (read a prime plus b prime). In geom etry and trigonometry, a circle at the right of a figure indicates degrees, one mark minutes, two marks seconds of a degree, as 4' 5". In mensuration and engineering, the mark denotes feet, inches and lines, as 4' 6" 10"'.
In The greater emphasis or inten sity given to certain notes or passages, as distinguished from their length in time and their quality or timbre. It is divided into three classes, grammatical, rhythmical and rhetori cal or esthetic. The grammatical accent is al most always on the first part of a bar; long measures have usually secondary ones, as have polysyllables in words. Rhythmical accent is the more pronounced character given to certain parts of larger compositions, phrases, themes, motifs, to mark off entrances, finales or cli maxes. Rhetorical accent corresponds strictly to the same emphasis in oratory, in accordance with emotion or a desired effect, and is at the will of the performer.