Prosodic features (sometimes known as suprasegmental phonology)

are those aspects of speech which go beyond phonemes and deal

with the auditory qualities of sound. In spoken communication, we
use and interpret these features without really thinking about them.
There are various conventional ways of representing them in writing,
although the nuances are often hard to convey on paper.

Pause. Pause as hesitation is a non-fluency feature. However,

intentional pauses are used to demarcate units of grammatical
construction, such as sentences or clauses. These can be indicated in
writing by full stops, colons, semi-colons and commas.

Pitch. Different pitch levels, or intonation, can affect meaning. The

most obvious example is the way in which speakers raise the pitch at
the end of a question, and this is indicated by a question mark in
writing. However, patterns of rise and fall can indicate such feelings
as astonishment, boredom or puzzlement, and these can be shown
in writing only in a special transcription.

A recently-fashionable use of pitch variation is “inlift”, in which the

speaker raises the pitch of the voice in an interrogative way in the
middle of a sentence, as if seeking confirmation of the listener’s
comprehension. The popularity of this speech feature has been
attributed to Australian soaps, but it already seems to be in decline.

Stress. Stress, or emphasis, is easy to use and recognize in spoken

language, but harder to describe. A stressed word or syllable is
usually preceded by a very slight pause, and is spoken at slightly
increased volume.

At word level, stress can differentiate between, for example, the

noun ‘desert and the verb des’ert, a distinction which cannot be
shown in ordinary writing: a reader will have to rely on the context
to determine which is meant.

At sentence level, which word is stressed can alter the meaning of

the sentence. Consider the sentence I like your red shoes. There is a
good deal of difference between I like your red shoes; I like your red
shoes; I like your red shoes; and I like your red shoes. In writing, this
can only be shown typographically, through the use of italics or
underlining. In such cases, a writer will generally italicise the whole
word, even if, in a polysyllabic word, only one syllable actually
carries stress.

In any sentence, some words will be stressed more than others:

lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are more likely
to be carry primary stress than grammatical words are.

Volume. Apart from the slight increase in loudness to indicate

stress, volume is generally used to show emotions such as fear or
anger. In writing, it can be shown by the use of an exclamation mark,
or typographically with capitals or italics (or both).

Tempo. Tempo, or speed, is to some extent a matter of idiolect.

Whilst its use is not wholly systematic, it can indicate the difference
between, for example, impatience and reflectiveness. It can be
shown in writing only through unspoken words, e.g. “Certainly not”,
he snapped.
 Word Formation Processes Clipping
Etymology Shortening a word by deleting one or more syllables
The study of the origin of the word Examples:
Etymology comes from Latin but has Greek roots Facsimile = fax
(etymon ‘original from’ + logia ‘study of’) Hamburger = burger
Gasoline = gas
Types of Word Formation Advertisement = ad
1. Coinage Professor?
2. Borrowing Doctor?
3. Compounding
4. Blending Backformation
5. Clipping Creative reduction due to incorrect morphological
6. Backformation analysis.
7. Conversion Examples:
8. Acronyms editor = edit
television = televise
Coinage babysitter = babysit
Invention of totally new words wiretap = wiretapper
Extension of a name of a product from a specific Note: backformation always involve reduction (changing
reference to a more general one the form of the word)
e.g. Kleenex, Xerox, and Kodak
Conversion
Borrowing Assigning an already existing word to a new syntactic
Taking over of words from another language category.
English borrowed a lot of Latin and French words Examples:
Leak (Dutch) Barbecue (Spanish) butter (N) -> V = to butter the bread
Piano (Italian) Sofa (Arabic) permit (V) -> N = an entry permit
Croissant (French) Yogurt (Turkish) empty (A) -> V = to empty the litter-bin
must (V) -> N = doing the homework is a must
Compounding Microwave (N) -> V
Two or more words joined together to form a new
word. Acronyms
Examples: Words derived from the initials of several words
Home + work homework (N) Pick + pocket pickpocket Examples:
(N) Low + paid low-paid (Adj) National Aeronautics and Space Agency = NASA
Note: The meaning of a compound is not always the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
sum of the meanings of its parts. = UNICEF
Coconut oil = oil made from coconuts United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Olive oil = oil made from olives. Organization = UNESCO
Baby oil = oil NOT made of babies Compact Disc = CD
Other examples of Acronyms:
Blending a) Radar a) Radio detecting and ranging
Similar to compounds, but in blending only parts of the b) FYI b) For Your Information
words are combined. c) TGIF c) Thanks God It’s Friday
Examples: d) a.k.a d) also known as
Motor + hotel = Motel e) HTML e) Hypertext mark-up language
Breakfast + lunch = Brunch f) www f) World wide web
Smoke + fog = smog g) btw g) By the way
Teleprinter + exchange = telex h) ATM h) Automatic Teller Machine
i) FAQ i) Frequently asked questions