emphatic accent

Accent, which comes from the Latin accentus, is the articulation of the voice that allows highlighting, through pronunciation, a syllable of a word. Distinction is achieved by using a higher tone or greater intensity.

There are different types of accent, such as prosodic accent or the musical accent. In this case we are going to focus on the emphatic accent, which is also known as diacritical accent.

This accent allows differentiate between two words through pronunciation and implies, in writing, the use of a accent mark (an oblique line). In this way, a distinction is made between a stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable that contributes to the differentiation of two meanings.

Take the case of the / he. When this monosyllable is written without an accent, it is an article: "The car broke down". On the other hand, if the emphatic accent is used, the word becomes a personal pronoun: "He already knows that his doors are open in this company".

The emphatic accent is also used in other monosyllable words, such as I know ("My wife has already left" / "I swear I don't know") Y tea ("I will call you later" / "Today I'm going to have tea with my grandmother").

More examples that we can find regarding the use or not of the emphatic accent are the following:
-More and more. The first word works as an adversative conjunction while the second is an adverb of quantity. Examples of sentences of both would be the following: "I want to go on that trip but my finances do not allow it" and "I ate much more than I should."
-Yes and yes. The first term is a conditional conjunction and the second is an affirmative adverb. In this way, they are used in this way: "If you come to my house to do your homework, tomorrow I will accompany you to play for a bike ride" and "When I asked him if he wanted to marry me, he answered with a resounding yes."
-I know and I know. The first option is a personal pronoun and the second is a first person singular verb form. Examples are these: "He fell asleep during the car ride" and "I don't know what you're talking about, I have nothing to do with that matter."

In addition to all the data exposed, we cannot ignore the fact that there are others that are also worth knowing about the emphatic accent, such as the following:
-It is very common to use it to convert a stressed word into an unstressed one.
-It can be found very frequently in what are speeches and exhibitions of a journalistic or political nature.

The exclamatory pronouns and the interrogative pronouns, on the other hand, have an emphatic accent to differentiate themselves from conjunctions and of the Relative Pronouns: "How cold it is in this place!" / "I think you will like this"; "What is your name?" / "No player is as skilled as Messi"; "Who will come to eat?" / "They are the guys I told you about last night.".