Abstract: This paper examines the place of heavy syllables in relation to syllable structure in English language. Drawing from examples in the literature, it is seen that syllable weight plays a vital role in the placement of stress in English. It is noted that although nouns, adjectives and verbs display different stress patterns, in all of these, it is always the heavy syllables that attract stress. Apart from the issue of stress assignment, the paper looks at other prosodic phenomena in which syllable weight is paramount.