For this question, the word in capital letters has the emphatic stress. Choose the option to which the sentence relates. The woman was delivered of a baby B...
Assessment:JAMB UTME - Use of English - 2025Subject:English Language
For this question, the word in capital letters has the emphatic stress. Choose the option to which the sentence relates.
The woman was delivered of a baby BOY.
Answer Details
Emphatic stress marks the word that carries the key piece of contrasting or corrective information. The stressed word answers the part of the preceding question that was wrong.
In the sentence "The woman was delivered of a baby BOY," the stress falls on BOY. This means the speaker is emphasising the gender of the baby - it was a boy, not something else. The stress corrects a mistaken assumption about the baby's gender.
The question that would prompt this emphasis must be one that gets the gender wrong. The question "Was the woman delivered of a baby girl?" suggests the baby was a girl, and the speaker's stressed response corrects this to BOY. The other options change the subject ("the girl" instead of "the woman") or the number ("two baby boys"), which would require stress on different words.
The correct answer is the question that asks whether the woman was delivered of a baby girl.