UNIVERSIDAD DE CHILE

FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y HUMANIDADES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LINGÜÍSTICA
Profesor Hiram Vivanco Torres

SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES

0. INTRODUCTION.
Connected speech can be divided into units called segments, which are usually
classified as vowels or consonants. A sequence like ‘bed’ consists of three segments: [bed]
2 consonantal: [b] and [d] and a vocalic one: [e].
An adequate phonetic description would be incomplete and unsatisfactory if it does not
account for other characteristics accompanying segments that have a relevant meaningful
importance. These features are known as suprasegmental or prosodic elements. The most
important ones are pitch, loudness and length. (Cruttenden 2008: 51).
According to this author, pitch is the perception of fundamental frequency, the acoustic
manifestation of intonation (:270), while “what is ‘loudness’ at the receiving end should be
related to intensity at the production stage, which in turn is related to the size or amplitude of
the vibration” (:22). Length is related to duration, although “variations of duration in acoustic
terms may not correspond to our linguistic judgements of length” (:23)

1. INTONATION.
1.1. Description of intonation.
Technically, intonation is defined as “the combination of tonal features into larger
structural units associated with the acoustic parameter of voice fundamental frequency or F0
and its distinctive variations in the speech process. F0 is defined by the quasiperiodic number
of cycles per second of the speech signal and is measured in Hz. The production of intonation
is defined by the number of times per second that the vocal folds complete a cycle of
vibration and is controlled by muscular forces of the larynx, which determine the tension of
the vocal folds, as well as aerodynamic forces of the sublaryngeal (respiratory) system. The
perception of intonation is defined by the perceived pitch, which roughly corresponds to F0
realisations” (Botinis et al 2001: 2).
It is interpreted as the rising and falling of the voice. It corresponds to melody in music.
It is important to state that both in music and in language we have to tell melody from
rhythm. We may keep the stresses in a sentence and vary its melody o vice versa, in the same
way as we may keep a musical rhythm and modify the melody. This is the reason why we
may identify a certain musical form as a waltz, tango or samba even if we have not heard it
before. What we are identifying is its rhythm.
1.2. Representation of intonation.
Human beings do not produce sounds within the same range, i.e. within the same
highest and lowest note. There are people who can reach very high and very low notes. They
are said to have a ‘wide register’. In singing, the different registers receive names such as
soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone and bass.
In phonetics it is common to use two parallel horizontal lines, showing the highest and
the lowest pitches, instead of the staff used in music. Intonation changes are shown by mean
of lines or arrows:

HIGH TONE

LOW TONE
HIGH FALL LOW FALL HIGH RISE LOW RISE

A simpler marking system that may be superimposed on a text is frequently employed,

as well. These marks are placed before the syllable where the melodic change takes place.

HIGH FALL LOW FALL HIGH RISE LOW RISE

If there is not an intonational modification, vertical lines are used to indicate

prominence without pitch change. These are sometimes called static tone marks:

HIGH STATIC LOW STATIC

1.3. Functions of intonation

Intonation has many relevant functions that deserve consideration. Perhaps the best
way to determine what the functions of intonation are, is asking what might be lost if we
spoke without intonation. Le us imagine a stretch of language in which every syllable is said
with the same tone, without pauses, without changes of speed, length or intensity. This would
be the type of language produced by a mechanical speech producing device that organizes
sentences putting words together. Simplifying, we can say that prosody makes it easier for the
listener to understand what the speaker want to express. Among its many functions, it can be
said that intonation, together with the other prosodies, is particularly relevant to express
attitude, prominence, grammatical relationship, discourse structure and naturalness (Roach, P.
2008: 183-203; Cruttenden 2008: 279-289; Wells 2006: 11).
1.3.1. Attitudinal or expressive function.
Intonation makes it possible to express emotions and attitudes as we speak, and adds a
special type of meaning to spoken language.
The same sentence may show different attitudes depending on the intonation with
which it is uttered, as in the following greetings:

Let us consider the following commands:

The distinction between commands and requests lies mainly on intonation:

We can relate attitude to Austin’s illocutionary force, to the intentionality of the

speaker. According to this author, the literal meaning has a ‘locutionary force’ that does not
always correspond to the intention of the speaker. Let us illustrate this with the following
example: if somebody says: ‘¿Could you pass me the salt?’, he is most likely asking
somebody to do something rather that asking that person about his capacity to do something.
In the same way, the three sentences just mentioned above (‘Good morning’, ‘Leave him
alone’, ‘Come closer’) acquire a different illocutionary force when they are said with
different melodic patterns.
1.3.2. Accentual, informational or focusing function.
Intonation has a significant role in assigning prominence to syllables that must be
recognized as accented. This syllable may not only receive a pitch change. It is frequently
said with more intensity. Daniel Jones says, "When it is desired to emphasize (for contrast) a
particular part of a word which is not normally stressed, that part may receive a strong stress,
and the normal primary stress may become a secondary stress" (1962: 255). Gili Gaya (1958:
32) and Rabanales (1959: 233-234) refer to it as 'acento de insistencia'. The latter accepts the
name 'acento expresivo', as well. 'Contrastive stress' and 'emphatic stress' are used by
Chomsky (1968: 24-25), 'emphatic stress' by Brosnahan and Malmberg (1970: 158-159),
'acento afectivo' or 'enfático' by Quilis and Fernández (1979: 160), ‘accent d'insistence' by
Tranel, (1987: 194), and 'acento enfático’ or ‘de insistencia' by Quilis (1988: 318; 1993: 396).
An analysis of this type of accent in Chilean Spanish is described in Vivanco 1995-1996.
This type of accent is frequently employed to indicate contrast, as in:

But it is necessary to state that it is not only used to show contrast, but to indicate
emphasis:

1.3.3. Grammatical function.

When using information provided by intonation, the listener finds it easier to recognize
the grammatical and syntactic structure of what is being said. For example, to determine the
placement of phrase, clause or sentence boundary, or the distinction between interrogative
and affirmative constructions.
The following example illustrates this function: Roach (2008: 194)

Another example is:

(Only some of the students, the ones who got good marks, are happy)

(All the students got good marks and are happy)

Or in Spanish:

1.3.4. Discourse or cohesive function.

Considering the act of speaking from a wider perspective, we may notice that
intonation may suggest to the listener what has to be taken as ‘new’ information and what is
considered as ‘given’ information; it may also suggest that the speaker is indicating a kind of
contrast or link with some material present in another tone unit and, in conversation, it may
provide a hint in relation to the type of answer that is expected. These are some examples of
this function:

(and not the DVD, or as an answer to ‘What did you send to John on Tuesday?’, or as a
comment to a statement such as ‘So that you sent a DVD to John on Tuesday’.

(and not to Peter, or as an answer to ‘Who did you send the book to on Tuesday?’, or as
a comment to a statement such as ‘So that you sent Peter a book on Tuesday’.

(and not on Monday, or as an answer to ‘When did you send the book to John?’, or as a
comment to a statement such as ‘So that you sent the book to John on Monday’
1.3.5. ‘Naturalness’ function.
We could include a sixth function, difficult to describe, but recognizable by every
competent native speaker. It has to do with the result of adequate intonation use, which
provides naturalness to speech and can be related to what Wells calls the indexical function,
when he says: “... intonation may act as a marker of personal or social identity. What makes
mothers sound like mothers, lovers sound like lovers, lawyers sound like lawyers, ...” (Wells
2006, 12). Following Chomsky, we could say that native speaker competence makes it
possible to recognize that an utterance has been produced by a native speaker or not. There
are many features contributing towards this goal, some of which are more easily
distinguishable than others: word choice, syntactic structure, segmental features and, most
certainly, intonation and rhythm. However competent a foreign speaker may be, if his
intonation (together with rhythm, certainly) is not the one a native speaker would have used
in the same circumstances, his speech would sound unnatural and would attract attention to
the way he said something and not to its contents.
1.3.6. The lexico-semantic function.
There are languages, called tone languages, en which the function of intonation is
much more important, as in them a melody change modifies the referential meaning of a
word completely. Such is the case of numerous oriental languages, like Mandarin Chinese, in
which the same sound sequence /ma/, has different meanings according to the tone with
which it is uttered:i

2. LOUDNESS
Some authors avoid the use of the word ‘stress’ because it “has been used in different
and ambiguous ways in phonetics and linguistics. It has sometimes been used as simply
equivalent to loudness, sometimes as meaning ‘made prominent by means other than pitch’
(i.e. by loudness or length), and sometimes as referring to syllables in words in the lexicon
and meaning something like ‘having the potential for accent on utterances’ (Cruttenden
2008.23). In this paper Wells’ approach is followed. He states: “stress is realized by a
combination of loudness, pitch and duration” (2006:3).
2.1. Word stress.
In a word like ‘mother’, the first syllable is stronger that the second. In ‘university’, the
syllable ‘ver’ is the strongest; it has the main or primary stress. But there is another syllable,
‘u’, that receives what we call a secondary stress. The other syllables, ‘ni’, ‘si’ and ‘ty’ are
considered unstressed. The presence of syllables receiving a main or a secondary stress is
important in English as they tend to be pronounced fully. Weakening and vowel reduction,
among other phonetic phenomena, usually occur in unstressed syllables, phenomena that are
not so marked in other languages like Italian or Spanish
2.2. Lexico-semantic function of stress.
Stress placing may change the meaning of a word in English and in Spanish, what is
usually referred to as ‘lexical stress’. A word like ‘object’ is a noun if stressed on the first
syllable and a verb if stressed on the second. In Spanish we have cases like: ‘papa’ (‘potato’
or ‘Pope’) and ‘papá’ (‘father’) depending on the position of the stress. And there are cases
like: hábito, habito, habitó; límite, limite, limité; célebre, celebre, celebré; depósito, deposito,
depositó; ejército, ejercito, ejercitó.
This does not happen in French, as in this language stress falls on the final syllable,
exclusively. It does not occur in Czech or Finnish, either, where it falls on the first syllable.
In spite of this fact, stress position may be modified by rhythmical or by contrastive
reasons (Vivanco 1995-1996) We find interesting cases in word compounds in English in
which stress is significant: pairs like ‘white house’ (‘a house which is white’) and
‘Whitehouse’ (the residence of the USA Presidents’), for instance
2.3. Sentence stress.
Not every word in the sentence receives the same degree of intensity. Nouns,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs tend to be more strongly stressed. Nevertheless, any other word
may receive a special stress for contrastive purposes.

2.4. Rhythm.

Rhythm can be described as the way in which stresses are distributed in a text. When
referring to rhythm, Wells says: “The extent to which there is a regular ‘beat’ in speech”
(:51). Every language has its particular rhythm, i.e. stresses are distributed in a characteristic
way, so that languages may be distinguished according to their stress pattern distribution.

2.5. Modificación de la posición del acento de una palabra.

It has been stated above that stress generally falls on a given syllable and that it cannot
fall somewhere else. For instance, the word ‘mother’ is stressed on the first syllable and
cannot be stressed on the second. Some authors g oto the extreme of saying that this place is
absolutely inalterable (Navarro 1953: 182-183, Gili Gaya 1958: 32) and that any modification
may bring about serious decoding difficulties. Nevertheless, word stress may change its
place, principally because of rhythmical reasons.
There are texts in which rhythm outweighs other characteristics, as it happens in many
poems and, particularly, in numerous songs. We find an example in the chorus of our
National Anthem, where the stress in the word 'contra' moves from the first to the second
syllable, resulting in the following rhythmical structure: "el asilo contra la opresión". In "El
Padre Nuestro" we also find a case of stress shift in the words 'santificado' and 'así'. In these
two words the first syllable will receive stress. Something similar happens in several lines of
"Volver a los 17", by Violeta Parra, where the main stress falls on the last syllable of each
verse:
Se va enredando, enredando,
como en el muro la hiedra,
y va brotando, brotando,
como el musguito en la piedra.
In "Casamiento de negros", by the same author, we also find stress displacement, this
time to the first syllable:

Ya se casaron los negros

Ya se murió la negrita
In "Gracias a la vida", rhythm modifies the position of stress in several words in lines
two, three, tour and five:

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.

Me dio dos luceros que, cuando los abro,
perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco,
y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
y en las multitudes al hombre que yo amo.

Another example is found in the first line of “Unicornio”, by Silvio Rodríguez:

Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdió,
In Esbozo de una nueva gramática de la lengua española (Real Academia Española,
1977), this phenomenon is mentioned in a footnote:
El ritmo es un elemento tan esencial y de primer orden en la palabra hablada como en la música.
Lo prueba el hecho de que en el canto, a pesar de la regularidad de los intervalos rítmicos y de la
libertad melódica de la música, extrañas a la elocución, lo único que percibe el oído como
anomalía es el desajuste entre el ritmo de la tonada y el de la letra, provocado por una distorsión
del acento de intensidad. Así ocurre en algunos puntos de la siguiente canción popular (indicamos
con un guión los silencios de la notación musical, con una línea vertical la separación de los
compases -compás de compasillo- y con tilde el arsis y la tesis que se suceden alternativamente
en la tonada):
que | vén.go de la | vár - de la | vár - del ri | ó - - la | cá.mi.sa de | sé - da de | mí - ma.ri | dó
La distorsión se produce en 'rió', 'cámisa' y 'maridó'. El acento de intensidad en 'mí' es normal en
la zona dialectal leonesa, de la que procede: esta canción (: 66).
These rhythmical variations that in Spanish are found nearly exclusively in songs and
poems, in other languages may occur in everyday speech. It is usually held that there is a
universal rhythmical ideal, favouring the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. This
point of view is already present in Sweet (1875-76), when he refers to the 'principle of
rhythmic alternation’, in the sense that the rhythmical organization of language or music is
structured according to some general tendencies that are expressed in certain rhythmical
models or patterns: binary patterns (successions of stressed elements (s) and weak elements
(w), sequences of sw or ws, that are the most frequent ones. It is also possible to find ternary
patterns (wws) or (sww). Quaternary patterns may be interpreted as two binary patterns. The
validity of this position is demonstrated in the fact that contemporary authors coincide to a
large extent with the British phonetician. Such is the case of Liberman (1975) and Liberman
and Prince (1977), for example, who state that:
a surface representation like áchromatic léns is derived by a rule of stress shift from an
underlying representation in which the first word has its "normal" lexical word stress pattern,
e.g., achromátic léns. Liberman and Prince argue that the stress shift rule applies only when two
stresses of the same level are adjacent, in the relevant sense, and hence constitute a "stress clash".
The stress clash is eliminated by shifting the first of the clashing stresses backward (Selkirk 1984:
46).
More recently, Carr focuses the problem from a generative perspective, more precisely from
a metrical phonology approach. He coincides with Selkirk when he refers to this phenomenon
as "clash avoidance", responding to the need of avoiding “the sequence of identical
phonological objects " (Carr 1993: 225). Going back to Sweet, we find it relevant to re-
produce his comment about the rhythmical character of stress:
There is an important feature of stress generally which in most cases makes any minuter
symbolization of stress unnecessary. This is its rhythmic character, or the tendency to alternate
weak and strong stress. Perfect uniformity of stress is as phonetically unnatural as level force in a
single syllable, but the tendency of stress is not, like that of a single force-impulse, to decrease
progressively, but rather to sway to and fro. Hence in a group of three syllables, of which the first
has the predominant stress, we may generally infer that the second will be weaker than the third,
as in relative. (1890: 47).
Jones refers to this phenomenon as 'rhythmical variations', pointing out that it affects,
principally, words pronounce with double stress. They tend to lose the first when ‘closely
preceded’ by another stressed syllable, or the second, when ‘closely followed’ by another
stressed syllable. He exemplifies:
Thus although the word fourteen spoken by itself, or said in answer to the question 'How many
people were there?' has double stress, yet in fourteen shillings it is stressed on the first syllable
only and in just fourteen it is stressed on the second syllable only (Jones 1962: 253).
These variations also occur in words that may have single or double stress:
“'Piccadilly 'Circus” and “'close to Picca'dilly”
“'Waterloo 'Station” and “the 'train for Water'loo”

3. LENGTHENING.
In some languages lengthening has a lexico-semantic function, acquiring a relevance
that it does not have in English or in Spanish, for instance. In these languages length is so
important that we may speak of ‘chronemes’, i.e. units of length that have a phonological
value. In Italian, the length of the [l] in ‘vile’ and ‘ville’ is capable of changing meaning: the
first utterence means ‘coward, villain’ and the second, ‘villas’. In Finnish we find both
consonants and vowels that are distinguished by their length: ‘tuli’ (‘fire’), ‘tuuli’ (‘wind’),
‘tulli’ (‘customs’); ‘muta’ (‘mud’), ‘muuta’ (‘another, partitive sg.’), ‘mutta’ (‘but’),
‘muuttaa’ (‘change, move’). In Estonian we can distinguish even three distinctive lengths, as
shown in the following examples: ‘lina’ (‘sheet’). ‘linna’ (‘of the city’, with a half long ‘n’)
and ‘linna’ (‘to the city’, with an over long ‘n’).
In English or in Spanish, the lengthening of a segment has significant effects, though
not lexico-semantic. If we hear a negative answer, using the word ‘no’ pronounced with a
very long ‘n’, we may understand that the speaker is hesitant. We could state that the
distinction existing between the three pronunciations of ‘ch’ in Chilean Spanish is partially
dependant on the length of the closure of the stop preceding the fricative: in standard
pronunciation this closure lasts 0,07 seconds and in the marked pronunciation (used by young
upper class people) it lasts 0,14 seconds (Vivanco 1998-1999 :1267).

4. PAUSE.
Even though pauses have primarily a physiological function fisiológica, to allow the
speaker to breathe, they also have a meaningful role, separating units of speech: phrases,
clauses, sentences. A good use of pauses helps the listener to decode satisfactorily. Le us
examine the following examples in Spanish:
No quiero ir al cine.
No, quiero ir al cine.

Mi hermano, me dice este tipo, es muy vivo.

Mi hermano me dice: este tipo es muy vivo.

Vine solo para verte

Vine solo, para verte

As we have said before, pauses are accompanied by other prosodies.

5.0. PHONETIC JUNCTURE.

Roach defines juncture as “the relationship between one sound and the sounds that
immediately precede and follow it” (Roach 2008: 144). In other words, juncture is the degree
of linking between two phonetic segments. Sometimes it will be difficult to determine the
meaning of an utterance because there is no clear indication of the separation between two
elements. Some examples may be useful to understand what juncture is.
The utterance: /greidei/ may be decoded either as “grade A” or “gray day”; /aiskri:m/,
as “I scream” or “ice-cream”. There are millions of examples. These are some of them: a
name - an aim; that's tough - that stuff; peace talks - pea stalks; see the meat - see them eat;
it swings - its wings; great ape - grey tape; sick squid - six quid; get aboard - get a board.
 (THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS ARE TAKEN FROM SOME NOTES IN SPANISH WHERE MORE DETAILS ABOUT
JUNCTURE ARE PROVIDED)

Imaginemos que nos encontramos escuchando los titulares de un noticiero radial o

televisivo y oímos lo siguiente:
"En la edición de hoy entregaremos un análisis de la situación /delampa/ en el momento actual".
El auditor recurrirá, automáticamente, a la información contextual -en el sentido extendido
del término, comprendiendo aspectos situacionales- para asignar la interpretación correcta a este
texto. Sabemos que la delincuencia es uno de los flagelos que atacan más severamente a la
sociedad actual y que constituye una de las preocupaciones más serias de la ciudadanía. No sería
extraño, entonces, que nuestro auditor interpretara el titular como referido al "hampa". Por otra
parte, si el país está preocupado de algunos problemas que afectan a la localidad ubicada pocos
kilómetros hacia al noroeste de la capital, quien escuche el texto mencionado lo interpretará como
relativo a "Lampa".
Hace unos años era frecuente oír en los titulares de los noticieros radiales un texto como:
"Fueron encontrados sin vida /losandinistas/ extraviados".
El auditor podía interpretar dicho ítem noticioso por lo menos de dos formas diferentes
dependiendo, fundamentalmente, del conocimiento e información que tuviera del contexto en que
se enmarcaban los hechos referidos y de su propia experiencia. Si palpitaba en el ambiente la
incertidumbre acerca del destino de una patrulla de escaladores que se había adentrado en la
cordillera y se sabía de los esfuerzos del Cuerpo de Socorro Andino para rescatarlos, el ítem en
cuestión sería interpretado, indudablemente, como "los andinistas". Pero si, por otra parte,
Latinoamérica se encontraba conmocionada por los sucesos centroamericanos, especialmente los
de Nicaragua, la interpretación cierta habría sido: "los sandinistas".
Podemos observar que las diferentes lecturas o interpretaciones de estos titulares no
pueden determinarse considerando solamente su estructura y constitución fónica. El grado de
unión que existe entre los sonidos en la cadena hablada dependerá de diferentes factores y
producirá, a su vez, diferentes realizaciones fonéticas. En términos generales, estamos
enfrentados a casos de juntura fonética.
Entre los primeros estudiosos del lenguaje en ocuparse del problema encontramos a Bloch
y Trager, quienes plantean que "los fenómenos que tienen que ver con la manera en que se unen
los sonidos se agrupan bajo el nombre de JUNTURA" (1942: 35). Destacan que no todas las
lenguas tienen los mismos 'hábitos junturales', que en algunas de ellas la transición de un sonido a
otro puede ser muy clara y tajante y que en otras un sonido puede fluir dentro de otro sin una clara
línea divisoria entre ellos. Agregan que este fenómeno puede ser de gran importancia en algunos
casos, ameritando su reconocimiento y descripción por parte de los fonetistas. Para Pike, la
juntura fonológica es "un lugar en que se unen, o comienzan o terminan las unidades fonológicas"
(1947: 234). Algunos fonólogos norteamericanos asignaron tanta importancia a este fenómeno
que llegaron a postular la existencia de un 'fonema juntural', lo que fue criticado por Daniel Jones
(1957). En el Diccionario de Lingüística dirigido por Georges Mounin (1982: 107) se señala:
"Se habla en general de juntura cuando en el interior de una palabra se manifiesta una frontera de
monema o de morfema. Este fenómeno es similar a la pausa virtual, aunque ésta se manifiesta en la
frontera de dos palabras".
Dentro de la tradición británica, principalmente entre los seguidores de Firth (1948),
encontramos el uso del concepto de 'junction prosodies', aquellos rasgos y combinaciones de
rasgos cuya ocurrencia marca la presencia de un límite entre unidades estructurales. La Escuela
de Praga también se ocupó de rasgos de este tipo, denominándolos 'Grenzsignale', señales de
límite. Trubetzkoy (1939) utilizó, también, el concepto de Grenzsignale de tipo negativo, que,
según Sommerstein (1977: 59) son "elementos y combinaciones de elementos cuya presencia
indica que no hay un límite (de un tipo particular) en el entorno". Según Mounin,
"los norteamericanos consideran que la juntura es un fenómeno suprasegmental. [ ... ] A diferencia de la
 terminología usada por Martinet, los norteamericanos abarcan con el término juncture phoneme las
fronteras de palabra [ ... ]" (Mounin, 1982: 107).
Selkirk hace un interesante comentario al respecto:
"La teoría generativa estándar, siguiendo los pasos de la lingüística estructural estadounidense,
representa algunas de estas relaciones entre segmentos como elementos "de juntura", o límites,
proponiendo que estos límites son en sí mismos, segmentos, que ocupan un lugar entre los segmentos
verdaderamente fonológicos en la disposición estrictamente lineal de la representación fonológica"
(Selkirk, 1986: 5).
En términos generales, por juntura se entiende el grado de unión que existe entre dos
segmentos. Dicha unión será mayor entre los sonidos que conforman una sílaba, hablándose, en
este caso, de juntura cerrada. Habrá menos ligazón entre el sonido final de una sílaba y el inicial
de la siguiente, lo que se conoce como juntura abierta interna. La existencia de una pausa, que
impide el enlace de dos segmentos, se denomina juntura abierta externa (determinándose, de esta
manera, que un sonido se encuentra en posición marginal, esto es, inicial o final).
Así, la unión de /s/ y /a/ en "Sal" es un caso de juntura cerrada, en "Dos amigos", de juntura
abierta interna, y en "Aquí tienes los dos. Ambos son buenos", de juntura abierta externa.
El tipo de juntura tiene incidencia en la pronunciación de los segmentos unidos o separados
por ella. Consideremos la realización de la /s/ que precede a la /a/ en los ejemplos dados en el
párrafo anterior:
en "Sal", la única realización posible de /s/ dentro del ámbito del español estándar es [s].
en "Dos amigos" y en "Aquí tienes los dos. Ambos son buenos", la /s/ podrá pronunciarse
[s], [h] y aún omitirse, dependiendo del contexto situacional en que se realice el acto comunicativo.
Un análisis de estos casos refleja que /s/ se comporta del mismo modo, pudiendo realizarse
fonéticamente de la misma manera, cuando se encuentra separada de la vocal siguiente por
juntura abierta, sea ésta interna o externa. No basta, entonces, con describir la pronunciación de
/s/ seguida de vocal sin tomar en cuenta aspectos junturales.
Nos parece interesante mencionar algunos de los aportes que se han hecho recientemente
con respecto a la estructura silábica del español. Deseamos referimos, en especial, a la
contribución de James W. Harris (1983), quien nos dice, entre muchos otros aportes, que "el
español nos proporciona un ejemplo en que una generalización morfológica depende de la
estructura silábica" (op. cit: 4). Considera que la selección del alomorfo del sufijo de diminutivo
depende del número de sílabas que tiene la palabra base. Así, el diminutivo de "madre" es
"madrecita" y no *"madrita", mientras que el de "comadre" es "comadrita" y *no "comadrecita".
Estimamos importante reproducir la siguiente cita de este autor:
"Puede establecerse fácilmente que la unidad de organización lingüística a la que se aplican las
restricciones fonotácticas es, primariamente, la sílaba y no, por ejemplo, el morfema o la palabra. Además
de cualquier otra cosa que ellas puedan ser, las palabras son, por lo menos, sartas de sílabas. Así, la
definición de 'palabra posible' en alguna lengua puede derivarse en gran parte de la definición de 'sílaba
posible' en aquella lengua" (Harris, 1983: 4).
Hemos visto que diferentes autores consideran la existencia de entidades, sean éstas
morfemas o monemas (según la escuela lingüística de sus proponentes), que en el plano
fonológico se manifiestan en unidades que pueden ser coincidentes con una sílaba o una
secuencia de sílabas. En cualquier caso, estos elementos presentan un mayor o menor grado de
conexión con sus vecinos, esto es, entre ellos existirá un diferente tipo de juntura.
La presencia de juntura de uno u otro tipo dependerá, a veces, de consideraciones
morfosintácticas, fenómenos que ilustraremos con ejemplos tomados de diversas lenguas. Sabido
es que en alemán existen las pronunciaciones [x] y [ç] que se encuentran en distribución
complementaria determinada por la vocal precedente (Bloomfield, 1930, Moulton,1947). Así,
encontramos [x] en "Buch, Koch, Dach"; [ç] en "Blicher, Kochin, Dacher, Milch". Pero existen,
además, casos en que estos sonidos se oponen dando lugar a un cuestionamiento de su
condición de alófonos- como sucede en el par ['ku:xən], "pastel, tarta" - ['ku:çən], "vaquita" (Lass,
1984:36) y que puede observarse en otras palabras formadas con el marcador de diminutivo "-
chen" (Anderson, 1985: 299).
Estimamos interesante referimos a un hecho que sucedió en inglés y que tiene directa
relación con el grado de unión en que se encuentran los distintos componentes de una secuencia
fónica. Se trata de sustantivos que comenzaban con "n" y que al ir precedidos del artículo
indefinido "a", perdieron el sonido inicial (/n/), el que pasó al artículo, transformándose este último
en "an". De esta manera, la frase nominal del inglés antiguo "a naedre' ("víbora"), pasó a "an
addre" y actualmente a "an adder". El mismo proceso afectó a la secuencia del inglés antiguo "a
naperon" (diminutivo de "nape", "mantel"), la que se transformó en "an aperon" y posteriormente
en "an apron" ("delantal"). Lo mismo puede decirse de "a noumpere", forma del inglés medio
derivada del antiguo francés "a nonper" ("no par", esto es, "imparcial") que actualmente es "an
umpire" ("árbitro") y algo similar podemos notar en "a nauger" que nos ha llegado, finalmente,
como "an auger" ("barreno"). Con un recorrido un poco más largo, la forma árabe "naranj"
("naranja") llegó al inglés vía francés, quedando actualmente como "orange", perdiendo la "n"
inicial -como ocurre también en el alemán "orange" y el italiano "arancia"- que conserva el español
y que el portugués ha cambiado por "l". El fenómeno contrario se dio en la secuencia del inglés
medio "an ewt" ('tritón", tipo de salamandra), actualmente "a newt", y en "an eke name", ahora "a
nickname" ("apodo"). Esta segmentación equivocada de la secuencia artículo + sustantivo suele
darse, también, en el habla infantil, cuando el niño denomina "efante" al "elefante", considerando
la secuencia inicial "el" como artículo. En una oportunidad escuchamos a un canillita que le decía
a un potencial cliente que no le quedaba ninguna "Súltima", queriendo decir que se le habían
terminado todos los ejemplares de "Las Ultimas Noticias", corrientemente, "Las Ultimas".
Nos parece oportuno mencionar un hecho que hemos planteado en otra oportunidad
(Vivanco, H. 1982-83: 119 y 1987: 83). Al considerar los errores de pronunciación que cometería
un alumno hispanohablante al enfrentarse con la secuencia fónica /maisteik/, se observaba que su
realización fonética sería diferente según si estuviera tratando de pronunciar "mice take" o "my
steak". Si bien en ambos casos sería posible la realización de /s/ como [s] o [h], sólo en el
segundo caso insertaría una [e] epentética antes de /s/. Cabe hacer notar que la diferencia
principal entre ambas secuencias es la ubicación de la juntura, después o antes de la /s/. Este
simple hecho es el responsable de la inserción de [e].

Algunos casos de juntura que causan ambigüedad permitiendo su uso lúdico

Es frecuente encontrar en el español de Chile casos en que la juntura es la responsable de
una ambigüedad en la decodificación. Este hecho fonético da lugar a su empleo lúdicro, siendo
utilizado de manera preferente en chistes, adivinanzas, juegos de palabras, rondas infantiles,
calemboures y múltiples manifestaciones de la cultura popular. Recordemos la historia del osado
campesino quien apostó que le diría en su cara a la reina que era coja -lo que no solamente
estaba prohibido, sino que quien llegara a expresarlo sería castigado con la pena capital- y que
optó por aproximarse a su majestad con un ramo de flores diciendo: "Escoja, mi reina, escoja".
Mencionaremos también una adivinanza que hemos oído desde niños:
Oro no es,
plata no es,
abre la cortina
y verás lo que es.
Reconocemos usos similares en algunos tipos de modificaciones que sufren los refranes,
como lo hemos relatado en otra oportunidad (H. Vivanco, 1985: 106). Así, "De tal palo, tal astilla"
se transforma en "De tal palo, Talcahuano", "Al César lo que es del César y a Dios lo que es de
Dios" se cambia por "Al César lo que es del César y adiós al Séptimo de Línea" y "El que espera,
desespera" queda en "El que es pera, no es manzana". Este fenómeno se encuentra, también, en
los calemboures, de los cuales el profesor Roberto Vilches nos entrega una interesantísima y
vasta colección en su trabajo Curiosidades Literarias y Malabarismos de la Lengua (Vilches,
1955), y de entre los cuales tomamos los siguientes ejemplos:

¿Cuál fue el poeta cuyos huesos no tuvieron médula?

"Ovide" ("Ovidio" en francés se pronuncia igual que "os vides" ("huesos vacíos”)

Una dama, muy descontenta con la frialdad de su marido, le decía: "Querido, tú eras harto diferente en la
primavera de tu edad y en los fuegos de tu verano". "Sí", respondió el esposo, "convengo en que ahora
es "mon automne" ("mi otoño")", de igual pronunciación que "monotone" ("monótono").
Vilches menciona, también, casos similares en el español de Chile. Reproducimos el que
sigue:
“Se cuenta de un campesino que, afanado en cortar las ramas de un árbol, le gritó, desde lejos, a su mujer:
"Tráeme l' hacha ancha". La mujer, falta de ocurrencia, le llevó la chancha que tenían en el corral. El
marido, molesto por la torpeza de su mujer, descendió del árbol y comenzó a pegarle. A los gritos de
ésta, aparece un compadre vecino que, en voz alta, le pregunta al furibundo marido: "Compadre, ¿Por
qué le está pegando a la comadre?", a lo que le contesta: "¡Por l'acha!". Entonces el compadre, muy con-
forme, le responde: "¡Muy bien, compadre, péguele no más!”
Otros tipos de juegos de palabras que hacen uso del recurso fonético del que nos
ocupamos son las preguntas del tipo. ¿En qué se parece ... ? Valgan los siguientes ejemplos:
¿En qué se parece un sabio a un acróbata?
En que el sabio tiene sesos y el acróbata se sostiene.
¿En qué se parecen una urraca y un conde que es ladrón?
- En que la urraca roba y esconde y el otro es conde y roba.
Suelen darse combinaciones de nombres y apellidos cuya pronunciación puede ser
interpretada de diferentes maneras, tales como ocurre con las siguientes: Elba Lazo, Lamas
Segura, Elisa Banderas, Zacarías Pica, Coll Mena, Burr Ross, Cristóbal Monte de Olivos, Del
Porte Del Piano, A. Petit Ossa, Cea Costoya, Aquiles Pica, Barría Lacalle, Estay De Mass, María
C. de Mora, Elba de Carrera, Coll y Flores, Acosta Arce, Iván A. Cartagena, V. Terán O., K. B.
Cea, Vives de Valdés, Elena Morado, etc. (Vilches, 1955: 85-86), a los que podemos agregar Ema
Thomas, Yola Labbé, Pérez Ossa, Acosta Lazo, Keka Galindo, Alba Cea, entre otros.
Es frecuente, también, la ambigüedad acerca del sexo de la persona denominada al
encontramos con secuencias del tipo ['xwana'βejo], ['lwisa'kohta].
Como es fácil de comprender, los humoristas hacen uso frecuente de este fenómeno, del
que damos cuenta en extenso en otro trabajo: Una taxonomía de los actos humorísticos.
(Vivanco, C., Vivanco, H, y Zenteno, C. 1997).

6. THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPRASEGMENTS

6.1. The importance of suprasegments in general.
As we have stated in this paper, all the suprasegmental features are significant. Stress
is probably the most important in English, due to the fact that it can change the referential
meaning of an utterance, as in ‘subject’ (noun) and ‘subject’ (verb).
Even though the other prosodies do not have this capacity in English, they have a very
important role in the communicative act, characteristic that is recognized by speakers when
they make comments like: ‘He agreed, but he said it in such a way...’. In many occasions it is
more important the ‘way’ you say something than the literal message, its syntactical
organization or the words used to structure it. More frequently than we can imagine, prosodic
features may suggest exactly the opposite meaning than the actual words used by the speaker.
Good examples of this phenomenon are ironic and sarcastic utterances. These considerations
fall within what from a hallidayan perspective are called the ‘language forces’: ‘locutionary’,
‘illocutionary’ and ‘perlocutionary’. The first of these refers to what is literally expressed, to
the meaning that words linked in a sentence have, as a proposition (in the logical sense of the
term). The illocutionary force refers to the intentionality with which that proposition is
expressed. Finally, the perlocutionary force has to do with the effects of the utterance on the
listener. Let us give an example: When we say ‘Could you pass me the salt?’ we are
apparently asking a question about the capability of the interlocutor to do something. This
would be the locutionary force or the literal meaning of the expression. But we know that
when saying that sentence what we intend is that the listener hands us the salt shaker which is
out of our reach. Its illocutionary force corresponds to that of a request. As we can see, we
are in front of a different level of meaning. Competent language users recognize these two
levels and act pragmatically in the appropriate way. If instead of receiving the salt shaker the
listener answered: ‘Yes, of course’, we would be uncomfortably surprised. In other words,
we do not want a reply to the literal meaning of the expression, but an action responding to
the intentional meaning. The perlocutionary force has to do with the actual reaction of the
interlocutor, in other words, with the effect of the illocutionary force on him. (Vivanco
1999-2000:124) Prosodic features fulfil a fundamental role in this process, particularly in
showing the illocutionary force of an expression. Not surprisingly it is said to be one the first
aspects of speech that children pay attention to, react to, and produce themselves. “Many
babies are excellent mimics of intonation and may produce English-sounding intonation
patterns on nonsense syllables in the late stages of their pre-linguistic babbling (Peters 1977
quoted by Cruttenden 2008: 291).
The presence of prosody in speech tells a ‘deficiency’ of written language that has to
be made up for using multiple typographical means, such as the use of italics, bold letters,
capital letters, letters of different sizes and colours (as in newspaper headlines) or linguistic
procedures, such as the description of attitudes and intentions. This is easily demonstrated by
the lengthy instructions that playwrights provide actors with, the so called didascalia, so that
they can interpret their intentions accurately.
Undoubtedly there is a close connection between prosody and syntax. “Intonation helps
identify grammatical structures in speech, rather as punctuation does in writing” (Wells 2006:
11). There exists a tight correspondence between the rhythm of a language, the syntactic
groups and the sense groups. For Halliday, for instance, a tone group constitutes a significant
stretch of discourse, as it indicates the way the speaker is structuring it.
In short words, we can state that prosody fulfils a fundamental role in teaching, in
oratory, in discussion. Between two speakers having an equivalent mastery level of lexical,
semantic and grammatical elements and the same level of knowledge of the subject they are
dealing with, the audience will favour the one that makes a better use of segmental features.
He will not only be considered more ‘amusing’, what is good enough, but he will be
understood better. A good use of pauses, intonation, emphasis assignment, among many other
features, will facilitate the understanding of discourse cohesion and coherence, thus fulfilling
with what some authors call the cohesive and integrative function of prosody.
6.2. The importance of suprasegments in foreign language learning.
Even though people talk about the intonation of different languages as if they were
discrete entities, there are multiple intonation systems within each of these. (Grabe, E. & B.
Post. 2002, Fletcher, J., E.Grabe & P. Warren. (2005). A native speaker of any language will
very easily, and without any previous training, detect that another native speaker of that
language is using a dialect different from his own, recognizing intonation patterns that are not
familiar to him.
Face states very clearly: “With Spanish spoken in different regions of the world, there
are considerable differences between the intonation patterns found across the Spanish-
speaking world. Even within a relatively small geographic area there can be considerable
intonational differences” (Face, 2006). To aim at comparing English and Spanish intonation
is an impossible task. What might be intended is to compare the intonation of a certain dialect
of one of these languages with the intonation of a dialect of the other.
But in spite of the fact that there are intonational differences within a language,
there are some characteristics that are shared by many languages: “Like other prosodic
characteristics, intonation is partly universal, but also partly language-specific” (Wells 2006:
5). Thus, in many languages a falling tune is associated with a declarative statement or an
order, and a rising tune, with an incomplete statement, a question or a polite request.
Nevertheless, there are differences that might lead to misunderstanding, particularly of the
intentions or attitude of the speaker, who may sound rude or insistent instead of polite, for
instance. There is empirical evidence that shows that there are significant differences in the
choice of the tone and pitch accent by non-native and native English speakers in similar
contexts, which may cause communicative misunderstanding (Ramírez and Romero, 2005).
But even though a foreign speaker might use the correct intonation, the problem might
lie on the fact that the nucleus is misplaced. It is well known that in languages such as
French, Italian and Spanish the nucleus is on the last word in the intonational phrase, what is
not necessarily the case in English. Consequently, mistakes such as stressing “it” instead of
‘thought’ in “I haven’t thought about it”, are frequently heard (Cruttenden 2008: 292; Wells
2006:12)
While native English speakers can easily distinguish the grammatical, lexical and
pronunciation deviances produced by non-native speakers, and consequently make
allowances for their errors, they are incapable to do so for intonation: “Native speakers of
English know that learners have difficulty with vowels and consonants. When interacting
with someone who is not a native speaker of English, they make allowances for segmental
errors, but they do not make allowances for errors of intonation. This is probably because
they do not realize that intonation can be erroneous” (Wells 2006: 2).
Traditional linguistics has expanded its field from sounds, words, and sentences to
larger units, such as full texts, discourses, and interactions, giving rise to disciplines such as
discourse analysis, text linguistics, pragmatics, and conversation analysis. It can be said that
at present applied linguists stress the crucial importance of intonation, together with stress
and rhythm, as their use does not only complement meaning but creates it. For this reason,
the emphasis of present day language teaching is put on communicative effectiveness and,
consequently, greater importance in the teaching programme has to be placed on
suprasegmental features rather than on individual sounds. In other words there is a tendency
to adopt a top-down approach, i.e., to concentrate more on communication and global
meaning rather than stick to the traditional bottom-up approach (centred on isolated or
contrasted sounds).
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