The Stress rules 1. Stress tends to fall on content words within an utterance 2. Only a word 's stressed syllable carries the sentence stress 3. Within an intonation unit there may be several words receiving stress but only one has the nucleus 4. New information tends to receive prominence and generally occurs towards the end of an utterance9 The Stress Rules 1. Stress tends to fall on content words within an utterance. 2. Only a word’s stressed syllable carries the sentence stress. 3. Within an intonation unit, there may be several words receiving stress but only one has the nucleus. 4. New information tends to receive prominence and generally occurs towards the end of an utterance