The stressing of on syllable words?

[Solan]

Can all one syllable words be either stressed or unstressed? Or are some words always stressed, others always unstressed, and most variable.

And does whether a one syllable word is stressed or not depend on whether they are nouns, verbs, articles etc.

[YesNo]

One syllable words like "a" or "the" seem to me better unstressed. Generally, it depends on the words around a one syllable word in the sentence and how one pronounces them in one's dialect.

[desiresjab]

Can all one syllable words be either stressed or unstressed? Or are some words always stressed, others always unstressed, and most variable.

And does whether a one syllable word is stressed or not depend on whether they are nouns, verbs, articles etc.

Context means a lot, and so does a good reader. Generally articles and conjunctions are unaccented, but context and senstivity can alter this.

The plowman homeward plods his weary way.

Everything is normal and obvious.

The plowman homeward on his weary way. Everything is accentually the same, as long as we choose to read it the same way, though we now have the option of racing over the weaker preposition, a choice that was not there with the verb, and almost eliminating its accent. This kind of reading is a little more obvious with:

The plowman homeward in his weary way.

This reading still seems natural and okay because all we did was drop an accent in its proper place without changing the pattern afterwards. But in:

Bent on finding love, my dear,

It is back to business as usual. The preposition is trapped between two strong words, as is the pronoun.

Rage on, raging river.

The above sentence is forceful in its triply accented beginning. We may read it no other way.