Kachru (1983) states that it is the non-segmental features of South Asian English (SAsE) such as stress and rhythm, rather than segmental features, that mark its uniqueness. He argues that while the segmental features of SAsE are heavily influenced by mother tongues and may therefore be different between various speakers, non-segmental features are shared. One of the primary examples given by him and other linguists working on SAsE is its stress pattern. Variation in stress between RP and SAsE (and a lack of vowel reduction in SAsE) also causes differences in the rhythm of the two varieties.

Research shows that the stress patterns of various sub-varieties of SAsE are comparable and that they do not seem to be influenced by the various first languages of its speakers (Pickering and Wiltshire 2000). In their study, Pickering and Wiltshire looked at SAsE spoken by native speakers of Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, and Tamil and found that there was no significant difference in the lexical stress pattern in the English spoken by speakers of these three languages. This supports Kachru’s claim that SAsE shares non-segmental features. Thus, the following description of stress, based on studies of other South Asian dialects of English, may be used to describe PakE as well, since no independent reliable studies of stress of the latter are currently available.

Four dimensions of stress in SAsE have been studied: syllable-time, frequency, pitch, and amplitude.