In this video we are going to have a look at the Last Lexical Item Rule (LLI). The rule states that in English the main stress falls on the last lexical item in a sentence (or better: a tone unit), unless the speaker wants to change the neutral (= unmarked) meaning of the sentence.

Lexical items are words such as nouns, most verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They carry meaning and are also often called content words. Function words on the other hand are words such as articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns and conjunctions. They do not carry much meaning but hold the syntax together. That’s why we also often call them grammar words.

Depending on which phonology book you read, there are a number of different terms used to describe the same thing. For example, tone units are the same as intonation phrases (= IPs). The main stress is also often called the main accent, tonic stress or nucleus – again, these all refer to the same thing.

As always in English, there are also quite a few exceptions to the Last Lexical Item Rule. You can learn more about these in the following video.

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