María A.

Martín Díaz
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4. INTRODUCTION TO SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY

 Until now we have been cutting up speech into segments, and analysing
segmental features.

 We are now going to study another set of phonetic features, which do not affect
one segment, but longer stretches of utterances, such as the syllable, the word and
the sentence.

 These features, which are so to speak superimposed on segments, are known as

suprasegmental or prosodic features and include accentuation, rhythm and
intonation.

4.1. English Accentuation

 There are two terms or concepts: stress and accent, that are usually confused or
used as synonyms when talking about this prosodic feature.

 Stress tends to be a more general term, which is more often used to refer to all
sorts of prominence (including prominence resulting from increased loudness,
length or sound quality), or to refer to the effort made by the speaker in producing
a stressed syllable.

 Accent may refer to prominence given to a syllable, usually by the use of pitch.
For example, in the word ‘potato’ the middle syllable is the most prominent; if
you say the word on its own you will probably produce a fall in pitch on the
middle syllable, making that syllable accented. ´

 In any case, in order to start with an introduction to English accentuation, we will

use both terms, stress and accent, indistinctively for the time being.

4.1.1. Word-stress

 To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables. Every word is made from
syllables.

Word number of syllables

Dog dog 1

Table ta-ble 2

Expensive ex-pen-sive 3

Interesting in-ter-est-ing 4

Unexceptional un-ex-cep-tion-al 5
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 Word-stress shows what syllable or syllables in a word are stressed. A stressed syllable is
heard louder and is characterized by a higher intensity (amplitude) and a longer duration. A
stressed syllable displays a change in pitch and frequency.

 The stress pattern of each English word has to be learnt individually. Though there are
some regular stress patterns.

 In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word, we
accentuate ONE syllable, we say it very loudly (big, strong, important) and all the others
very quietly.

 Let’s take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. We stress ONE

syllable in each word. And it is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word
is different.

Shape Total syllables Stressed syllable

PHO TO GRAPH 3 #1

PHO TO GRAPH ER 4 #2

PHO TO GRAPH IC 4 #3

 The syllables that are not stressed are weak or small or quiet. Native speakers of English
listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word stress in your
speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your
comprehension.

 Word stress is part of the language. English speakers use word stress to
communicate rapidly and accurately, even in difficult conditions. If, for example,
you do not hear a word clearly, you can still understand the word because of the
position of the stress.

 Here are some rather complicated rules that can help you understand where to put the
stress:

 Stress on first syllable

Rule Example

Most 2-syllable nouns PRESent, EXport, CHIna, TAble

Most 2-syllable adjectives PRESent, SLENder, CLEVer, HAPpy

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 Stress on last syllable

Rule Example

Most 2-syllable verbs to preSENT, to exPORT, to deCIDE

 Stress on penultimate syllable (penultimate = second from end)

Rule Example

Words ending in –ic GRAPHic, geoGRAPHic

Words ending in -sion and -tion teleVIsion, reveLAtion

 Stress on ante-penultimate syllable (ante-penultimate = third from end)

Rule Example

Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy deMOcracy, geOLogy, phoTOgraphy

Words ending in –al CRItical, geological

 Compound words (words with two parts)

Rule Example

Compound Ns, the stress is on the 1st part BLACKbird, GREENhouse

Compound Adjs., the stress is on the 2nd part bad-TEMpered, old-FASHioned

Compound Vs, the stress is on the 2nd part underSTAND, overFLOW

 All dictionaries give the phonetic spelling of a word. This is where they show
which syllable is stressed, usually with an apostrophe (') just before or just after
the stressed syllable. (e.g. plastic /plæs'tIk/ or /'plæstIk/).

 The stressed or accented syllables considered up to now are making reference to

what we can call primary stress, the strongest type of stress, that in which the
prominence results from a pitch movement, or tone.

 However, in some words we can observe a type of stress that is weaker than
primary stress but stronger than that of an unstressed syllable (i.e., in the first
syllables of PHOTOGRAPHIC /ˌfəʊtəˈgræfɪk/). Usually called secondary stress,
it is represented in transcription with a low mark [͵]
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4.1.2. Weak and strong forms

 One of the features of word stress in English is its duality with respect to what we
call weak forms. When we talk about weak forms in the phonetics of English this
regards a series of words which have one pronunciation (strong) when isolated,
and another (weak) when not stressed within a phrase.
 Weak forms are usually distinguished by a change in vowel quality from a border
position on the vowel quadrilateral to a central position. The vowel in a weak
form is usually the schwa (ə) (See the previous figure).
 Weak forms are pronounced more quickly and at lower volume in comparison to
the stressed syllables. They are also not central to changes in intonation.
 It is possible to use only strong forms in speaking, and some foreigners do this,
but native speakers find such "all-strong-form" pronunciations unnatural and
foreign-sounding; moreover, the unnecessary lack of reduction creates the
impression of emphasis, which may even lead to misunderstanding.
 It is crucial for learners of English to be familiar with the use of weak forms or
else they are likely to have difficulty comprehending (native) speakers who do use
them (statistically, as many as 95% of the occurrences of a function word in
native speech are weak).
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 There are roughly forty words in English that have these two basic forms: the
usual, unstressed pronunciation (very often, the same word exhibits several
different weak forms), and the stressed pronunciation (called the strong or full
form), which is only used in certain specific situations (see the table above).

 Most of them belong to the closed class of function words (det. and pron. [1-11 in
the table], prep. [12-17], conj. [17-22] and aux. [23-30]), although certain highly
frequent major category words (e.g., the noun saint when part of compound
proper names – [+1]) also show this kind of dual behaviour.

 There is a logical explanation behind the occurrence of weak forms: they are
present in words which are necessary to construct a phrase yet, at the same time,
do not communicate a large quantity of information since they are not content
words.
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4.1.3. Sentence Stress

 While word stress (or accent) is generally decided by language rules, sentence
stress (or prominence) is decided by speaker choice, dislocating it from its neutral
position when (s)he wishes to emphasize or contrast some part of the sentence.

 When we speak we give more emphasis to some parts of an utterance than to

others. That is, we can make a syllable stand out with respect to its neighbouring
syllables in a word, but also we can make some words stand out with respect to
the rest of the words in a longer utterance.

 Like word stress, sentence stress can help you to understand spoken English,
especially when spoken fast.

 To be able to cope with the assignment of sentence stress (and on the basis of that,
with intonation) we have to make a distinction between:
 Content/lexical words  The key words of a sentence. They are the
important words that carry the meaning or sense (Ns, Vs, Adjs, and Advs,
including adverbial particles)
 Structure/function/grammatical words  They are small, simple, not very
important words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the
sentence its correct form or “structure” (Articles, preps, prons, conjs, and
modal auxiliaries)

 According to a suprasegmental viewpoint, this distinction lies on the basis of that

word being stressable or not, in unmarked utterances (see the table below).

 By unmarked utterances we understand sentences with a neutral or normal stress,

that is, utterances in which it is the last stress (generally a content word) that is the
strongest.

Content/Stressed word Function/Unstressed Words

Verbs Modal auxiliaries
Nouns Articles
Adjectives Conjunctions
Adverbs Prepositions
Question words Pronouns
Prepositional adverbs
Negatives

 This stressed syllable called the tonic (also accent, nucleus, or sentence stress)
will also have a special role in describing intonation, as intonation is nothing else
but a falling or rising melody starting on the tonic (see section 4.3.)

 Sometimes we can stress a word that would normally be only a structure word, for
example to correct information. Look at the following dialogue:

“They've been to Mongolia, haven’t they?

"No, THEY haven’t, but WE have.
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 In this sense, we can identify four major types of stress or tonic placement

 Unmarked tonic stress (neutral tonicity)  The ‘neutral’ one, normally

placed on the last content word

“It was very BOring”

“You mustn’t talk so LOUDly”

 Emphatic stress (dislocated tonic)  When we assign an emphasis to a

content word, which is usually a modal auxiliary, an intensifier, an adverb,
etc.

“It was VEry boring”

“You MUSTN’T talk so loudly”

 Contrastive stress  Any lexical item can receive the tonic stress provided
that it is contrastive with some other lexical element in the utterance (No
distinction is made between content and function words regarding this)

“Do you like this one or THAT one?”

 New information stress  In a response to a wh-question, the information

supplied is stressed

“What’s your NAME?”

“My name is GEORGE”
“Where are you FROM?”
“I’m from WALES”

4.2. Rhythm in English

 Sentence stress and weak forms give English its rhythm or “beat”. They add
“music” to the language changing the speed at which we speak (and listen to) the
language.

 Speech is perceived as a sequence of events in time, and the word rhythm is used
to refer to the way events are distributed in time.

 Obvious examples of vocal rhythms are chanting as part of games or in

connection with work.

 In conversational speech the rhythms are vastly more complicated, but it is clear
that the timing of speech is not random.

 An extreme view (though a quite common one) is that English speech has a
rhythm that allows us to divide it up into more or less equal intervals of time
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called feet, each of which begins with a stressed syllable: this is called the stress-timed
rhythm hypothesis.

 This stress-timed rhythm is created by squashing unstressed syllables (and

therefore weak forms) in between stressed ones.

 In the following example, there is 1 syllable between SELL and CAR and 3
syllables between CAR and GONE. But the time (t) between SELL and CAR and
between CAR and GONE is the same. We maintain a constant beat on the
stressed words. To do this, we say “my” more slowly, and “because I've” more
quickly. We change the speed of the small structure words so that the rhythm of
the key content words stays the same.
Syllables

2 1 3 1

Will You SELL my CAR because I've GONE To FRANCE.

t1 Beat t1 Beat t1 Beat t1 Beat

4.3. ENGLISH INTONATIONAL PATTERNS. THE TONE UNIT

 Intonation, sometimes called the “music of the language” is a combination of

regular patterns of stressed words with corresponding sequences of higher or
lower notes, that is, a blend of sentence stress and pitch variation in the spoken
language.

 According to Celick, the study of intonation involves the following four steps:
 Division of a stream of speech into intonation or tone units.
 Selection of a syllable (of a word), which is assigned the ‘tonic’ status
 Selection of a tone for the intonation unit.
1
 Pitch range, or key (Brazil et al., 1980) .

 In the study of intonation it is usual to divide speech into larger units than
syllables, especially if one studies long utterances in which there must be some
points at which the analyst must mark a break between the end of one pattern and
the beginning of the next.
 Statistically, we find that in most cases tone-unit boundaries do fall at obvious
syntactic boundaries, and not in the middle of a phrase.

1
Brazil, D. & M. Coulthart, C. Johns 1980. Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching.. Harlow
(Essex): Longman. We are not going to focus on this one in this course
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4.3.1. THE INTONATION UNIT

 An intonation unit/phrase, also called a tone group, is the unit of a spoken

language like English

 Tone-unit boundaries and are usually marked off with slash brackets “/ /” or
vertical lines “||”.

 A tone group is made up of an obligatory nucleus or tonic syllable and some

other optional elements:
 Nucleus (N)  Usually the last stressed syllable, and therefore the most
prominent, of the tone unit. It always has pitch change, that
is, the speakers’ voice will either rise or fall on the tonic
syllable (this change is usually referred to as tone).
 Head (H)  The first stressed syllable in the tone group.
 Pre-Head (PH)  Any unstressed syllable before the head.
 Tail (T)  Any unstressed syllable after the nucleus where the melody of the
tone is always continued.

 So the structure of a tone group could be like the one below, where the round
brackets indicate the optional quality of such components

/ (Prehead) (Head) Nucleus (Tail) /

4.3.2. INTONATIONAL PATTERNS

 In the analysis of English intonation, we can mainly talk about two types of
intonation: rising intonation and falling intonation: (see websites on intonation)

 Generally, a rising intonation is used for YES/NO questions, lack of finality

(listing items). It expresses uncertainty
 Generally, a falling intonation is used for Wh-questions (information
questions), answers, statements, commands, directions, and for finality,
completion (i.e., the last item in a list). It expresses certainty.

 However, we can identify, apart from the level pitch movement, 4 other basic
tones (though others have been also suggested by various authors):

 Fall : This one could be subdivided, according to different authors, into

High-Fall (the voice starts very high up and goes down to the
bottom of its range) and Low-Fall (the fall is not that abrupt)
 Rise : This one could be subdivided, according to different authors, into
High-Rise (the voice starts low and it goes up to the top of the
range) and Low-Rise (the voice goes up slightly)
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 Fall-Rise : The voice changes direction

 Rise-Fall : The voice changes direction

 Level ◦ : The voice stays level

 In Celik’s teaching experience only four types of tones can be efficiently taught to
non-native speakers of English: fall, low-rise, high-rise and fall-rise See figure
below to check their respective tone contours)

 As can be inferred, one of the approaches to interpret intonation has been to

match it with grammatical structure (Y/N questions) or with expressing attitude or
emotion (indifference, surprise, etc.)

 This is not, though, a clear-cut analysis because in certain circumstances we could

find examples that could contradict these rules (i.e., Y/N questions with a falling
intonation,…)

 One of the most recent and useful analysis on intonation is Brazil & Coulthard’
analysis, since it helps us to explain how to interpret intonation in the discourse.
According to these authors, by means of tones, the speaker may signal whether
the information is new or shared.

4.4. EXERCISES

 Exercises on word and phrasal stress

 Exercises on reduced forms
 Exercises on pitch height
 Exercises on pitch direction (tone) and rhythm
 Exercises on chunking or identification of tone units
 Exercises on the structure of a tone unit
 Selection of a tone for the tone unit
 Transcriptions (direct and reverse)