Nguyễn Trọng Long

English Prosody Made up of three prosodic systems: – Stress: operates at the level of the word – Rhythm – Intonation: operates at the level of the phrase or whole utternace.. Word stre

Suprasegmental features

and Prosody

Lect _ Nguyen Trong Long 2009

 An informal definition: The ‘music’ of a language, its

characteristic ‘melody’ and ‘rhythm’

 A more formal definition: The system of prosodic

contrasts that a language employs

 Supra-segmental features: Phonetic features that span more than a single speech segment Features that span a whole syllable or are only apparent when one syllable is compared with others in its neighbourhood

 Typical suprasegmental features:

– Voice pitch

– Loudness or vocal effort

– Length or relative duration of a syllable

 Suprasegmental features realize or express prosodic

English Prosody

 Made up of three prosodic systems:

– Stress: operates at the level of the word

– Rhythm

– Intonation: operates at the level of the phrase or

whole utternace

 Stress: the relative prominence of a syllable.

 Rhythm: patterns of stress in time Rhythm:

 Intonation: the pitch pattern of an utterance.

intonation applies only in part.

 Prosodic interference or transfer effects (interference of L1 prosody on L2) can be a major source of difficulty for second language learners

 More on this later

English word stress

 Locate the main stress (most prominent syllable) in these words:

electric electrician permit (n) permit (v)

   

 Locate the unstressed syllables in the words above

 Unstressed syllables undergo vowel reduction

 Syllables that are not reduced, but not the most

prominent in the word are called ‘secondary stressed’

syllables

 

 

 Hence we may distinguish 3 levels of stress in English words:

– Primary: main stress or accent

– Secondary: unreduced and not accented

– Tertiary: reduced or unstressed.

 Some word stress alternations in English:

diplomat diplomacy diplomatic

photograph photography photographic

  

  

 It is sometimes hard to distinguish between

secondary and tertiary levels of stress.

 or  ??

 There is some dialect variation with vowel reduction

 English word stress ‘likes’ to follow an alternating pattern

of stressed and unstressed syllables:

  

S U S U S U S S U S U

Word stress is culminative in English

 Polysyllabic words in English have a single center of stress prominence, the accented syllable

 Even in long words, which might be said to have two

primary stressed syllables:

 The stress pattern of a word ‘culminates’ in a single

syllable – the one that potentially carries phrase accent

Compound words

 Words that are composed of words:

[htdg] [ht dg]

compound phrase

[lk] [lk ]

<opportunity> <look in>

 Compound word has initial stress.

 The second element of the compound is

de-accented (Compared with the 2nd element of the phrase)

 Only one accented syllable per word.

Stress is important for the sound pattern of

English words

practice hearing and producing these

Stress and word class in English

 All major lexical items carry primary stress (have

an accentable syllable).

 Function words are normally unstressed

(reduced)

John was sure that the keys were on the table.

 The preposition ‘on’ which carries primary stress,

is an exception to the rule in this case.

 The accented syllables on lexical items and the unstressed function words set up a rhythmic

pattern in English utterances.

English rhythm

 Stressed syllables tend to occur at regular

intervals of time.

Stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time.

 You can usually tap in regular time to the primary

stressed syllables in a fluent English phrase

 English is said to be a ‘stress-timed’ language

 Other languages are said to be ‘syllable timed’ (e.g

French) or ‘mora timed’ (Japanese, Finnish)

 No language is perfectly rhythmic (isochronous) and this classification of types of language rhythm remains

Summarizing: English stress

 Three levels of prominence (stress) in English

words.

 Depending on whether a syllable may carry

accent, or undergo reduction:

Accented ReducedPrimary stress yes no stressed

Secondary stress no no stressed

Tertiary stress no yes unstressed

 English stress is culminative.

 Alternating stressed and unstressed syllables set

up rhythmic patterns in speech.

 English is said to be stress-timed.

Phonetic expression of stress in English.

 Is complex and involves several supra-segmental features:

 Pitch prominence: accented syllables carry the main changes of voice pitch in the utterance.

 Loudness: stressed syllables are louder.

 Length: stressed syllables are longer in duration.

 Gestural magnitude: Length and loudness

differences may reflect a common factor that

prominent syllables are produced with larger

articulatory and vocal gestures, which resist

reduction and coarticulation effects – properties

possibly voice quality) to make lexical

contrasts (to distinguish words).

tone is a supra-segmental feature).

quite limited.

‘competing’ prosodic systems.

Types of tone language

examples of contour tone languages.

pitch changes (along with voice quality).

Africa) have level tones, usually in just

two pitch registers: high and low.

A West African register tone language

Tone and word stress

 May be regarded as competing systems of word prosody Why might this be so?

 The phonetic features which carry tone and stress are similar

 Tonal contrasts and stress contrasts may make competing

requirements on the speech mechanism

 In English, there is only one accent bearing syllable per word Some syllables undergo reduction

 Stress contrasts exist between syllables in different positions in

a word: permit permit

 In Vietnamese, every syllable carries a tone Syllables are not reduced

 Tone contrasts would be threatened by syllable reduction

 The melody of a phrase or whole utternace.

 What would an utterance sound like without its intonation contour?

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

 This utterance was generated by a speech

synthesiser, where voice pitch can be separately controled from other parameters of speech

production.

 Changes in voice pitch are the main phonetic

cue for intonation.

 But the duration and pausing pattern in an

utterance are also crucial cues for intonation

The elements of an intonation contuour

 The major pitch peaks and voice pitch changes, which are known as ‘accents’

 The shape and location of these accents

 The relative duration of segments and the location of

pauses (junctures)

Voice pitch trace spectrogram

Meaning and the shape of pitch accents

 The meaning of a pitch accent will be strongly

affected by the context in which it appears.

 But some generalizations can be made about the meanings of basic accent types:

fall low rise level high rise risefall

‘agree’ ‘go on’ bored surprise insist

‘assert’ impatient question

neutral

Functions of intonation: What does

intonation do?

 Illocutionary: marking speaker’s attitude and intended

purpose of the utterance

– Asserting, pleading, insisting, inquiring,…

 Demarcative: marking phrase boundaries

– Related to syntactic parsing, identifying phrase boundaries

 Highlighting: marking ‘new’ or ‘important’ information

– When a topic is first introduced into discourse, it is likely to be placed at the intonational centre of the phrase, to be thus

highlighted to draw the listener’s attention On subsequent

mention, the item shifts out of intonational focus It is now old

Some intonational contrasts to analyse