Suprasegmental features and Prosody

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY WAJ 3102

WEEK 8

Prosody

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 contrasts.

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. Intonation: the pitch pattern of an utterance.

Some complications

Prosody in languages that are related to English can be analysed under three main headings (word stress, rhythm, intonation). However, for tone languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, and many others) or other languages whose prosodic system is quite different from that of English (like Japanese), the 3-way division of prosody into stress, rhythm and 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.

English word stress

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

English word stress

It is sometimes hard to distinguish between secondary and tertiary levels of stress.

There is some dialect variation with vowel reduction. English word stress likes to follow an alternating pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables:

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: psycholinguistics One syllable in the word tends to carry the accent in the intonation contour of a whole utternace. 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:

hot-dog

hot dog
phrase

<look in> Compound word has initial stress. The second element of the compound is deaccented. (Compared with the 2nd element of the phrase) Only one accented syllable per word.

look-in <opportunity>

compound

look in

Stress is important for the sound pattern of English words

Non-native speakers of English should practice hearing and producing these stress contrasts: an insult to insult an overflow to overflow an increase to increase a walkout to walk out See exercises from Peter Ladefoged.

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 occur 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 controversial.

Summarizing: English stress

Three levels of prominence (stress) in English words. Depending on whether a syllable may carry accent, or undergo reduction:

Accented Primary stress yes Secondary stress no Tertiary stress no

Reduced no stressed no stressed 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 suprasegmental 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 of unstressed syllables.

Tone
Tone languages use voice pitch (and possibly voice quality) to make lexical contrasts (to distinguish words). The domain of tone is the syllable (Hence tone is a supra-segmental feature). The number of tones a language uses is quite limited. Tone and word stress tend to be competing prosodic systems.

Vietnamese tones
350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 a

Types of tone language

(Standard) Chinese and Vietnamese are examples of contour tone languages. Their tones are made up of dynamic voice pitch changes (along with voice quality). Register tone languages (predominating in 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 permit In Vietnamese, every syllable carries a tone. Syllables are not reduced. Tone contrasts would be threatened by syllable reduction. Does Vietnamese have word stress? A controversial issue.

Intonation
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).

spectrogram

Voice pitch trace bird hand

two

bush

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: yes yes yes yes yes fall low rise level high rise risefall

agree assert neutral

go on

bored impatient

surprise question

insist

Functions of intonation: What does intonation do?

Illocutionary: marking speakers 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 listeners attention. On subsequent mention, the item shifts out of intonational focus. It is now old information.

Some intonational contrasts to analyse

Would you like tea or coffee? A: B: A lion is a mammal. A: B: Your mom will marry a lawyer. Go on. A: B: When danger threatens your children call the police. A: B: Jenny gave Peter instructions to follow. A: B: