Misaccent

Misaccent is a nonstandard term used to describe deviations from expected prosodic patterns in speech, most commonly the incorrect placement of lexical stress within words. It can also refer more broadly to the adoption of an accent or pronunciation variant that differs from the norms of the speaker’s community. In practice, misaccent may involve stress resting on an atypical syllable, or it may denote a broader mismatch in rhythm, intonation, or vowel quality that affects how a word or speaker is perceived.

Two main contexts are often associated with misaccent. Lexical-stress misaccent occurs when a word’s stress is placed on the wrong syllable according to the language’s standard pattern, which can change perceived meaning or create a momentary difficulty in comprehension. Accent misalignment refers to pronunciation features tied to a particular region or social group that are not typical for the speaker, potentially reducing intelligibility or altering social judgments about the speaker.

Causes of misaccent include transfer from a speaker’s first language, limited exposure to the target variety, deliberate hypercorrection, or rapid speech where timing and emphasis are not aligned with native norms. Its perception ranges from mildly noticeable to clearly non-native, and it can influence judgments of intelligibility and competence in some contexts.

In linguistic research, more precise terms such as lexical-stress errors or non-native accent are often preferred, and misaccent is typically used as an informal label. The concept highlights the role of prosody and regional or social variation in speech perception. See also accent, pronunciation, prosody, lexical stress, and second language acquisition.