UNIT 9

THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM III:

STRESS, RHYTHM AND INTONATION.
COMPARISON WITH
THE SPANISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

0. INTRODUCTION
1. THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM
2. STRESS
3. RHYTHM
4. INTONATION
5. CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS
6. CONCLUSION
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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0. INTRODUCTION

The sounds of English are normally studied one by one. But speech sounds seldom occur in
isolation; they are nearly always strung together to form words and sequences of words. In
any combination of sounds there is a tendency for each sound to be influenced by its
neighbours. Sometimes this influence will be so slight as to be hardly noticeable; at other
times it will be very strongly marked. As a matter of fact, students of English realize when
hearing native speakers that their final utterances bear little relation to the pronunciation of
the same words in isolation. In FLT there has been a shift in the teaching of phonetics;
previously, the emphasis was laid on individual sounds, whereas nowadays the focus is on
connected speech. Special attention is being paid to stress, rhythm and intonation since
they also convey meaning and this could be an important source for misunderstandings.
Therefore, stress, rhythm and intonation comprise the bulk of this paper, together with a
contrastive analysis of both, the English and Spanish phonological systems. All of this will be
done from the specialized perspective of renowned phoneticians such as Daniel Jones, An
Outline of English Phonetics (1960), O'Connor, Better English Pronunciation (1974) and
Roger, The Sounds of English (2000), who have established the main core of this unit.

1. THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM: SEGMENTAL VS SUPRASEGMENTAL

FEATURES

Two categories should be clarified from the very outset, for they delimit the field of study of
this unit, i.e., segmental and suprasegmental features:
• Segmental features: they deal with vowels and consonants.
• Suprasegmental features: they correspond to stress, rhythm and intonation. They are also
known as prosodic features.
The suprasegmental features are those which operate over longer stretches of speech, such
as, stress, rhythm, intonation, pitch, and voice quality as opposed to the segmental features
which are referred to as the individual sounds.

In general terms, when one hears English spoken or read aloud, one realizes that a number
of words or syllables stand out from the rest of the sentence. This standing out may be
termed prominence. Investigations go to show that the effect of prominence is produced by
the very intimate combination of length, stress, pitch, and inherent sonority of sounds, i.e. a
sound or syllable has prominence when it stands out from its neighbours because:
- it is more sonorous
- it is longer
- it is louder, because of greater breath force (strength)
- or it has a different pitch.
All in all, stress, rhythm and intonation bear a close relationship with prominence.

2. STRESS

In any English utterance consisting of several syllables some of the syllables are strongly
stressed, and some are weakly stressed. When a syllable is strongly stressed, it means that it
is uttered with great energy, with more breath force. The total effect is that the stressed
syllable seems louder than the others. English is full of loud syllables like that; they make

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any English utterance sound jerky compared with the even flow of many other languages,
such as Spanish. In this sense, stress is when we give more emphasis to some parts of an
utterance, whether they be syllables or words. The notation of stress is the high mark
demonstrated in the examples:

Take as an example the sentence He didn't know the reason why. As a plain statement it will
be pronounced as follows: [hi 'didn't 'nau 6a 'ri:zn 'wai]. It has four stressed and four
unstressed syllables, and they are evenly distributed so that unstressed and stressed
syllables alternate. It is the stresses that give an English sentence its characteristic rhythmic
pattern; this particular sentence has an iambic rhythm characteristic of the English language:
up-down-beat-down. As far as the rhythm goes, it might be a line of verse. We have exactly
the same pattern in I 'thought I 'knew him 'well e'nough and in it 'must have 'cost at 'least a
'pound. When these sentences are uttered by English speakers, the student can listen to the
regular movement of the rhythm, the alternation of weak and strong beats. Stressed
syllables are prominent and prominence is, as mentioned above, the sum of different factors
such as loudness, length, pitch and quality. There are three possibilities of stress in a word:

- a primary stress characterised by prominence. As mentioned above, stressed syllables

notation, when transcribed, is a high mark ('), which stands for the most prominent syllable.
- A secondary stress weaker than the primary stress but stronger than that of the
unstressed syllable. In transcriptions this is normally notated by a low mark (,)
- Unstressed syllables, defined by the absence of any prominence. Unstressed syllables
normally have the closed short vowels or schwa /a/.
Note the word photographic, in which the three different kinds of stress is realized:
photo'graphic. Those syllables which have not been marked stand for unstressed syllables:

The quantity of the vowels varies depending on the position they take within the word;
those vowels with a primary stress tend to be longer:
Ex.:
1. Give it to her
2. Did you give it to her?
In sentence number 1, her takes primary stress and is longer than her in sentence number 2.
This example show that vowel sounds in the prominent syllables are generally longer than
those in non-prominent syllables. In short, vowels in stressed position are more voiced in
the same way as short vowels are pronounced with more weight, as if they were longer.

2.1. Word Stress

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Incorrect stress placement is the major cause of intelligibility problems for foreign learners,
and is therefore a subject that needs to be treated seriously. Thus, where does stress lie in
English?
One syllable words: when pronounced in isolation, they receive the primary stress, for there
is no other syllable competing with it:
haus 0ir)
Two syllable words: the tendency is to place the stress on the first syllable; nevertheless, it
is subject to change:
- Two-syllable words of Old English origin place the stress on the first syllable, i.e. it takes the
/1 0/ pattern or trochaic pattern: 'brother, 'wonder, 'wander, 'island. Native words and early
French adoptions tend to have the main stress on the root syllable and keep it there,
regardless of the affixes that word formation may add:
'stand under'stand misunder'stand

This contrasts with more recent additions to the language where the place of stress varies
according to the affixation: 'transport trans'portable transportation
- Two-syllable words with inflectional or derivational suffix also take the pattern /1 0/:
'thinking, 'older, 'eldest, 'kingdom, 'tasteful, 'kindly.
- Non-native (French or Romance) two-syllable words take the stress on the second
syllable, /0 1/. This is the so-called iambic pattern: e'xam.
- Verbs formed by a prefix + stem also take the iambic pattern /0 1/: be'gin, re'ject.
- Some borrowings tend to adopt the native English trochaic pattern /1 0/: 'certain, 'village,
'coffee, 'ballet, 'marriage, 'message.
- Two-syllable verbs derived from nouns or adjectives formed by a prefix + stem take the /0
1/ pattern. The stress determines category of the word:

Compound words: these normally take the trochaic pattern /1 0/; yet, this is not always so.
For this reason we shall distinguish between true-compounds and pseudo-compounds. The
former are those in which the first part subcategorizes the second part as opposed to
normal noun phrase stress patter: 'lighthouse vs. light'house. Besides, both parts form a
whole, just one meaning: 'green-house, 'sleeping-bag, 'black-bird. On the contrary, pseudo-
compounds do not form a single meaning; the first part is an adjunct or localizer to the
second part. For this particular case, the pattern shifts /0 1/: sea'shore, sea 'wall.
Note the difference between 'English teacher and English 'teacher:

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'English teacher: true-compound. This is a teacher who teaches English.
English 'teacher: pseudo-compound. This is a teacher from England. Besides, if a compound
is used as an element of another compound, the same overall pattern is retained:
'lighthouse-,keeper.
Affixes also have a great impact on the placement of stresses:
-ion: nouns ending in -ion take the stress on the syllable before this affix: Civili'zation -ity:
nouns ending in -ity take the stress on the previous syllable: natio'nality.
-ian: the same goes for -ian: poli'tician.
-ic: adjectives ending in -ic bear the stress on the previous syllable: biblio'graphic. -iar: the
same goes for -iar: fa'miliar -ial: the same goes for -ial: po'tential -ette: the affix takes the
stress: ciga'rette -ese: the affix takes the stress: Japa'nese

2.2. Sentence Stress

Having analysed word stress we should now turn our attention to sentence stress. English is
a language of widely different degrees of stress; strongly marked stresses occur at more or
less regular intervals of time separated by syllables bearing little stress. It is in these
unstressed syllables that we must look for change. In the sentence 'what are you 'going to
'do 'today? There are four stressed and five unstressed syllables; the unstressed words
pronounced separately would be different. are becomes [a], you becomes [ju] and to
becomes [to]. Vowels are reduced to a kind of neutral vowel under the influence of the
stress and rhythm of the connected sentences.
It is important to distinguish between word-stress and sentence-stress. Each word in English,
which consists of more than one syllable, has a fixed stress pattern. Normally one of the
syllables will have stronger stress than the rest. But sentence-stress is not as fixed as that.
When several words are put together in a sentence, they are seldom of equal importance,
and so more are given more stress than others. Normally each word preserves its word-
stress, its individual stress pattern, but it may happen that the stressed syllable of a
particular word is relatively weak in relation to the stressed syllables of other words in the
sentence. Then, stress distribution provides a firm basis for distinguishing between different
underlying relations, as in the example mentioned above (the English teacher).
Above all, the same string of words can be accented in different ways.
[marianna made the marmalade] [marianna made the marmalade]
In an ordinary statement, the most important words of the sentence, called content words,
are stressed: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, demonstrative & interrogative pronouns,
adverbs. On the contrary, form words do not normally bear the stress. These are: auxiliary
verbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, articles.
Yet, this is not always so, since form words can also take a stressed form when the speaker
wants to highlight or stress something. Where it is desired to emphasize one idea above
others in a sentence, the word expressing that idea receives an extra amount of stress, and
the surrounding words lose a good deal of their stress. Thus, what are the conditions which
may cause a normally unstressed word to become stressed, and vice versa? They are the
special meanings and contrast that may be implied in any particular sentence. For instance,
in give him the book, him is not normally stressed. But if there is a contrast between various
people who might receive the book, and if the whole point of the utterance is to emphasize
that I want this particular person and nobody else to have it, the stress should be placed on
him and no other word (contrastive stress). Contrast between two ideas expressed or

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unexpressed may be shown by varying the normal stress: 'rice 'puding but I want 'rice
pudding (not plum pudding).
As mentioned previously, strongly marked stresses occur at more or less regular intervals of
time separated by syllables bearing little stress. But, what happens when a sentence is
formed by content words? do they all carry the primary stress? Since rhythm intervenes in
every utterance, two strong syllables cannot occur in English together. Thus, stress
retraction is found (also called leftward hoo or de-stressing)
This stress retraction is to avoid the presence of two strong stresses together: Eg.: sea-shore
shell — sea-shore shell
0 1 12 31
The strong tendency to strong-weak patterning in English can explain a number of stress
shifts. Thus, stress may also move to preserve the rhythm:
Eg.: The Japanese flew here — The Japanese flew here

3. RHYTHM

Rhythm is the pattern formed by the stresses (primary or secondary) perceived as peaks of
prominence occurring at more or less regular intervals of time. In other words, it is the
regular succession of strong and weak stresses in utterances which occur at regular intervals
of time.
Rhythm, or the grouping of elements into larger units, is a property of all languages. The
particular rhythm of a language is the result of the interaction of a set of components, such
as the relative length, pitch, and segmental quality of accented and unaccented syllables,
and phonological components, such as syllable structure and the function of accent. A
system of rating whereby these components are broken down into features which can be
assigned a plus or minus value allows us to compare the rhythm of languages or language
varieties. Languages which have "strong stress" or which have been labelled "stress-timed"
share certain features.

3.1. Stressed-timed and syllable-timed languages

Many non-English languages (Spanish) tend to use a rhythm which is more closely related to
the syllable than the regular stress-timed type of English; in this case, it is the syllables,
instead of the stresses, which tend to come at more-or-less evenly recurrent intervals - so
that, as a result, phrases with extra syllables take proportionately more time, and syllables
or vowels are less likely to be shortened and modified.
If the unstressed syllables are each made quite abrupt, the unit becomes somewhat
STACCATO. If the unstressed syllables are more or less equally timed, and somewhat
prominent, but glided or smoothed together, the impression is that of a SPOKEN CHANT

3.2. The rhythmic group

English sentences are spoken with recurrent bursts of speed, with long or short pauses or
with intonation breaks between. A sentence or part of a sentence spoken with a single rush
of syllables uninterrupted by a pause is a RHYTHM UNIT.
The timing of rhythm units produces a rhythmic succession which is an important
characteristic of the English phonological structure. The units tend to follow one another in
such a way that the lapse of time between the beginning of their prominent syllables is
somewhat uniform. The tendency toward uniform spacing of stresses in material which has

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uneven numbers of syllables within its rhythm groups can be achieved only by destroying
any possibility of even time spacing of syllables. Since the rhythm units have different
numbers of syllables, but a similar time value, the syllables of the longer ones are crushed
together, and pronounced very rapidly, in order to get them pronounced at all, within that
time limitation. This rhythmic crushing of syllables into short time limits is partly responsible
for many abbreviations - in which syllables may be omitted entirely - and the obscuring of
vowels; it implies, also, that English syllables are of different lengths, with their length of
utterance controlled not only by the lexical phonetic characteristics of their sounds but also
by the accident of the number of syllables in the particular rhythmic unit to which they
happen to belong at that moment.
Rhythmic groups can be:
- a combination of weak and strong syllables: a PEN
- two weak syllables prevailing the rhythmic group: THINK about it
- three or more weak syllables within the rhythmic group: the 'interest of the 'subject was
crucial.
The most important stressed syllable in an utterance such as David is at work is known as
the accented syllable or nucleus.
The stressed syllables within the breath groups occur at almost regular intervals of time, and
however many or few unstressed syllables there may be between the stresses, they seem to
fit in to the time allowed. But, in order to achieve these regular intervals of time, or, in other
words, if a number of syllables have to fit within the rhythmic group, some syllables change
both their quality and quantity, depending on whether they belong to content or form
words.

3.3. Quantity and Quality in a Rhythmic Group

Vowels and continuant consonants in accented syllables in a rhythmic group are shortened
to unaccented syllables. The quantity and the quality of unaccented words tend to change.
As mentioned above, content words generally retain most of the quality and quantity of the
word uttered in isolation. Yet, many form words have two or more quantitative patterns.
It is important to note that the quantity and quality of vowels and consonants of accented
syllables slightly change within the rhythmic group. In this sense, they are generally
shortened and / or reduced to unaccented. Besides, we should not forget that while content
words tend to retain the quantity and quality of that same word uttered in isolation, form
words have two or more qualitative and quantitative patterns according to whether they are
unaccented or accented (weak and strong forms): and, for example, could be pronounced as
/32nd, 9nd, p,.../. The unaccented varieties are normally reduced to /i, u, d/ and the elision
of vowels and consonants. The following are generally reduced: indefinite and definite
articles, prepositions, modal auxiliaries, relative pronouns, verb to be...

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 1
4. INTONATION

The messages that we convey to one another depends just as much on how we say
something as on what it is that we actually say. In the study of intonation, pitch, loudness
and length are the most important factors, since they work together to give certain syllables
prominence over the others.
Intonation is the term given to the rise and fall in the pitch of the voice in speech, or in other
words, the association of relative prominence with pitch, the aspect of sound which we
perceive in terms of high and low. Change in pitch is due to differing rates of vibration of the
vocal cords. Intonation varies somewhat from individual to individual, and considerably from
district to district, each part of the country having its distinctive speech melody - a melody
which often remains in the speech when all other signs of local dialect are absent. It should
also be noted how different kinds of feeling can be expressed by the "tune" of a sentence.
1
Intonation, then, can be narrowly described as the movements or variations in pitch to
which we attach familiar labels describing levels (e.g. high/low) and tones (e.g.
falling/rising), etc. Another important component is the phenomenon called prominence,
which is the tendency for speakers to makes some syllables more noticeable than others.
This is accomplished by pronouncing them louder and longer, by assigning them a different
pitch, or by articulating the phonemes (especially the vowel) more distinctly. Prominence is
also sometimes referred to as emphasis, focus, main stress, nucleus or tonic accent.
Importantly, pitch level, pitch movement and prominence are all relative values.
Intonation is generally found in sequences of stressed and unstressed syllable, though it can
be a single word as in please.

There are five clearly discernable intonation patterns that are used on a regular basis in
English: FALLING, RISING, FLAT, FALL-RISE, RISE-FALL.
Both stress and intonation clearly influence the manner and meaning of what we say and
yet they do not alter the individual phonemes or sounds. The way we transcribe the
phonemes is unchanged by stress or intonation. However, stress and intonation clearly have
a role in the way in which we speak and it has to be taken into consideration.

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 1
4.1. Intonation pattern

The pattern of intonation is realized in tone units (also called intonation phrase). A tone
unit is a stretch of speech which contains one nucleus and which may contain other stressed
syllables, normally preceding the nucleus. The boundaries of each tone unit is marked by
the following sign: | | : eg.: | When you are ready | come and call me |
The nucleus is the peak of greatest prominence, which marks a major change of pitch
direction. Thus, it is always a stressed syllable, or rather, it is an accented syllable which is
2
stressed and pitch prominent (accented vs. stressed syllable) . The type of pitch change
which takes place on the nucleus is called tone. The nucleus can be:
2
The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called pitch contour.
• Rise ('): if it is a high-rise, the glide goes from low to mid, or from mid to high if it is a low-
rise. It gives the impression that something else is to follow, or that we require some
information from the listener. In normal speech it is used in questions when a yes/no is
required (Are you 'Spanish?), wh- questions to show interest or politeness (Where's your
'mummy? Would you like anything 'else?).
• Fall ( ) : this type of nucleus can either be a high fall or a low fall. The falling glide starts
from the highest or mid pitch of the speaking voice and fall to the lowest pitch. It expresses
the end of the speaker's intervention and the listener's turn to speak. In normal speech, it is
used in statements (He's 'Spanish), wh- questions (What's the 'time?), commands (Come
'here!), exclamations (What an Idiot!), short answers ( Yes/ No) or strong assertions (You go
don't come with me 'anywhere).
• Fall-rise Q: this glide, taking place within one syllable, starts at mid level and ends at
roughly the same level. Extremely common in English, it is used to indicate uncertainty,
hesitation or doubt. It is applied in apologies (I'm so"rry) or in ironic sentences (You don't
like ' chocolate - I "don't).

1 There are two types of tone sequence models: the British (model used here) and the American
school. The former is based on pitch movements, whereas the latter does it on pitch levels. See also
appendix.
2 Accented vs. stressed syllable: a stressed syllable has a full vowel and is perceived as involving a
rhythmic beat. An accented syllable is a syllable which is stressed and pitch prominent, which can be primary
(nuclear) accent, secondary (pitch prominent) accent, secondary accent without pitch prominence and
unaccented syllables. For this to take place one of the following must apply:
- Syllable produced with moving pitch.
- The syllable is part of a pitch jump from a preceding syllable or onto a following syllable.
- The syllable is at a point in the utterance where the direction of pitch movement changes. An important feature
of English intonation is the use of an intonational accent (and extra stress) to mark the focus of a sentence.
Normally this focus accent goes on the last major word of the sentence, but it can come earlier in order to
emphasize one of the earlier words or to contrast it with something else.

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•
Rise-fall ("): fall reinforced by an introductory rise. It is used to show complacency,
criticism, strong feelings of approval or disapproval, surprise or challenge (Have you ever
killed someone? - "No! Of course not!).
•
Level: it gives the impression of routine, boredom or lack of interest. A typical example
takes place in class: 'Allan? - ~Yes, 'Tom? - 'Here...
3
•
Rise-Fall-Rise
An important feature of English intonation is the use of an intonational accent (and extra
stress) to mark the focus of a sentence. Normally this focus accent goes on the last major
word of the sentence, but it can come earlier in order to emphasize one of the earlier words
or to contrast it with something else. The various degrees of accentuation in an utterance
may be signalled by means of intonation in the following way:
- Primary (nuclear) accent: by means of a change of pitch direction initiated by the syllable
receiving the accent.
- Secondary (pitch prominent) accent: by means of a change of pitch level (higher or lower)
on the accented syllable.
- Secondary accent without pitch prominence: secondary accent on some words may be
manifested by qualitative, quantitative or rhythmic prominence, without pitch prominence.
- Unaccented syllables: do not normally have pitch or other prominence and are unmarked.
And tones can also be: falling, rising, falling-rising.
So far, two basic elements of tone units have been examined, namely the nucleus and the
tones; yet, these should be studied in greater detail.
For a tone unit to exist, there must be a nucleus, which carries primary accent. In this sense,
the internal structure of the tone unit is determined by the location of accents. However,
other accented and non-accented syllables can also appear within the tone unit. According
to the British school there are two types of accent units:
(1) Prenuclear accent units; also called the head. The head comprises all prenuclear accent
units.
(2) Nuclear accent units; also called the nucleus. The nuclear accent unit is the last accent
unit in the intonation phrase.
• Head: it is the first pre-nuclear accented syllable.
• Body: these are the syllables between the head and the nucleus.
• Tail: these are the syllables preceding the nucleus.
• Unaccented syllables: any unaccented syllable.
But JOHN's never BEEN to Jamaica
Pre-head Pre-nuclear accent unit Nuclear accent unit j
HEAD NUCLEUS Stressed syllable
2 CHOICES 3 CHOICES 6 CHOICES
Pre-head Head Nucleus
2 3 6
High Falling Falling
Fall Rising Rising
Level Falling-rising
Rising-falling
Rising-falling-rising

3
This is not generally included in the study of intonation.

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 Level

COMPULSORY

In this sense, the pre-nuclear elements could comprise a head, the body and unaccented
syllables. The post-nuclear elements could consist of a tail and unaccented syllables. Stands
for unaccented syllables.

4.2. Functions of Intonation

It is a common truth that the way we say something can be just as important in conveying a
message as the words we use to say it. Intonation choices made by speakers carry linguistic
information and the various elements of intonation are seen to perform a variety of
functions. Crystal (1995) identifies six: emotional, grammatical, informational, textual,
psychological and indexical, whereas Roach points out four: attitudinal, accentual,
grammatical and discourse. Other descriptions have added conversation-management
functions as well. Roach's description will be considered in this study: accentual, unaccented
or grammatical, discourse and attitudinal.

a. Accentual function
It highlights the most important words in an utterance, together with stress: John likes fish
(although his wife does not), John 'likes fish (so why did not he eat?) (see previous section) b.
Grammatical function
When pitch variations constitute the only difference between a question and an assertion,
intonation has a grammatical function. This grammatical function is rather pragmatic in
nature as what it describes is how intonation can carry illocutionary force.

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 4
Intonation, thus, identifies sentence types , such as declarative sentences, exclamations,
questions... It is here where the type of nucleus becomes relevant, in opposition to the
placement of the nucleus itself. Consider the difference between: You 're going. (statement)
You're going? (question) The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called its intonation contour.
The normal intonation contours for questions in English use:
• final rising pitch for a Yes/No question
o Are you coming today? 7\
• final falling pitch for a Wh-question
o When are you coming? Where are you going? ^1
Using a different pattern typically adds something extra to the question. E.g., falling
intonation on a Yes/No question can be interpreted as abruptness. Rising intonation on a
Wh-question can imply surprise or that you did not hear the answer the first time and are
asking to have it repeated.
Basically, there are two explicit ways to express interrogation: one is by the use of an explicit
interrogative sentence form and the other by intonation alone. But sometimes the
interrogative use has to be inferred from the lexical choices or the general context. The
conventional view is that yes/no-questions have a rising and wh-questions a falling contour.
c. Discourse function
Discourse intonation had its beginnings in the formal descriptions of Halliday but was
developed into a complete theory by Brazil (Coulthard 1985). In its most elemental form,
this theory states that all intonation choices made by speakers are a function of the
discourse developing between them. Intonation helps speakers show how each of their
utterances is related to other utterances and to the discourse as a whole. Moreover, all
intonation choices are tied to the context in which they occur. In contrast to the linguistic
universals of grammar-based descriptions, it would be impossible in the discourse approach
to isolate a stretch of speech from its context and make any generalizations about
intonational meaning.
All in all, intonation also conveys pragmatic information in marking whether a part of speech
is new or given information and in singling out important words in an utterance.
d. Attitudinal function
Intonation has often been represented by an attitudinal approach, that is to say, it points
out the emotional attitude on the part of the speaker. This attitudinal or expressive function
of intonation gives us an indication of the speakers' mood, feelings or attitude towards her
subject or audience.
People have a tendency to think of intonation as being directly linked to the speaker's
emotions. In fact, the meaning of intonation contours is as conventionalized as any other
aspect of language. Different languages can use different conventions, giving rise to the
potential for cross-cultural misunderstandings.
Across languages, an intonational rise signifies continuation or incompleteness, and a fall
means completion. These two functions, the signalling of continuation and completion,
belong to discourse management and turn-taking, and as such we can perhaps understand

4
Sentence types are syntactically different; however, it should be pointed out that there are correspondences
between the syntactic form and the illocutionary force (Speakers use language to perform different kinds of
speech acts or illocutionary acts, in the sense of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969); see also Lyons (1977). What
this means is that we perform acts in saying something).

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their universal status across languages, because continuation and completion is something
speakers of all languages have to do.
Asking a question is an example of an incomplete discourse and answering it illustrates
potential completion. Yes/no-questions are incomplete in themselves, without the answer,
and they use the rising tune. Declaratives are typically used to make assertions, which bring
in new information into the discourse, and they tend to have the completion-marking, falling
pattern. These two intonational shapes would then be the prototypical patterns for
questions and declaratives. Rises are also used in non-terminal items on lists and the final
item typically has a fall, signalling incompleteness and completion, respectively.
Wh-questions tend to come with a falling tune, but this goes together with the explicit wh-
word and word order change, which are further explicit signals of interrogation. Unlike
yes/no-questions, wh-questions contain a large amount of propositional presuppositions,
which places them in the middle-ground between declaratives and interrogatives. For
example, the interrogative sentence What time did John come? asks a question about the
time of an event whose existence is presupposed, i.e., John did come. This may explain why
the typical wh-pattern is falling: while they are asking for a specific piece of information,
they also give a large amount of information. Yes/no-questions are different from wh-
questions also in that any constituent can be made into a y/n-question exclusively by the
universal rising contour. Thus, the use of the rising and falling tunes to signal continuation
and completion, respectively, is not unique to English, but English manifests a strong
universal tendency, which is shared by numerous languages.

5. CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

A contrastive analysis between the L1 and the L2 helps scholars and students be aware of
those areas where both languages differ. And this helps them, too, understand and produce
the language accurately.
Each language has its own segmental and suprasegmental features; some might coincide,
but some others differ to a large extent. As a matter of fact and regarding the
suprasegmental features, it is worth mentioning that they convey meaning. Thus, this
should be learnt in order to avoid misunderstandings.
As for stress, most English words take a trochaic pattern /1 0/, unlike Spanish which takes an
iambic one /0 1/: 'brother vs. a'mor.
Also, English is a stress-timed language, and Spanish is a syllable-timed language. That is why
Spanish speakers sound "boring", or remind English speakers of the staccato beat. Nursery
rhymes, for instance, are a good example of how English sounds for this language mirrors
the pattern of these folk chants. English stress feet are left-headed.
Of course, it strikes Spanish students that what they hear has little relation to what is
written. This has to do with how connected speech affects the sounds: the alternation of
weak and strong syllables, assimilation, reduction etc.
Regarding intonation, English contours are specific of this language; yet, some of them
coincide not only with Spanish, but also with many other languages, such as a rise means
continuation or incompleteness, and a fall conveys completion. Similarly, the different
intonational nucleus should be taken into account for they provide the language one of its
characteristics.

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6. CONCLUSION

Over the course of this unit special attention has been paid to stress, rhythm and intonation
respectively as remarkable features of the English language. The study of the
suprasegmental features of the English language is an important aspect when learning the
language itself. The main focus of current approaches is communication itself; and stress,
rhythm and intonation carry an important form of meaning, which students should be aware
of in order to avoid misunderstandings. Practising these elements by means of repetition,
for instance, is a good exercise in order to grasp this peculiarity of the English language. It is
not only a matter of accuracy, but also one of comprehension and being able to make
oneself understood. Pictures, tongue-twisters and nursery-rhymes, among others, are both
good resource materials and good practice. Also, giving the students a single word and
making them say it using intonation which conveys the attitudinal function. A rubber band
can be used again to model the prominent syllable(s) in a word or utterance. It can be
stretched out during the stressed syllable and left short during other syllables. The point of
the exercise is to help certain students avoid transferring their syllable timed language to
their production of English.
Clapping, tapping or playing simple rhythm instruments can be an enjoyable way to
demonstrate and practise the prominence of content words in discourse or in rhymes. Using
natural discourse focuses attention on the often slightly irregular stress patterns that occur
in real discourse. Rhymes can be used as an initial demonstration of prominence but should
be followed up by real discourse, as their regular meter is in fact a contrivance.

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABERCROMBIE, D. Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

1980.
BALL, M.J.- RAHILLY, J. Phonetics: The Science of Speech. London: Arnold Publishers,
1999.
JONES, D. An Outline of English Phonetics. London: Heffer, 1967.
O' CONNOR, J.D. Phonetics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (Pelican), 1997, 1982.
ROGERS, H. The Sounds of Language. An Introduction to Phonetics. London: Longman
(Learning about Language), 2000.
DICTIONARIES
CRYSTAL, D. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (The
Language Library), 4th Edition, 5th Edition, 2002.
WEB PAGES
• http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonology/intonation/introduction.html
(for intonation, very interesting)
• http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/eptotd/cat-inton.htm

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APPENDIX

The prosodic phenomena which do organising include: stress, accent and nuclear accent;
and the constituents that they provide are: stress foot, accent foot and intonation phrase
respectively.
The first level of organisation is stress. The location of stressed syllables is specified in the
lexicon by means of a full vowel. Then, the phonetic correlate of stress is the full vowel.

The second level of organisation is accent. Stressed syllables can but do not have to be
accented; its phonetic correlate is pitch movement. The phonetic constituent provided is the
accent foot.

The third level of organisation is the nuclear accent. There is a wider choice of pitch
movements for the last accent in an intonation phrase than for preceding (phonetic
correlate). Its prosodic constituent is the intonation phrase. This structure is determined by
the location of accents in an intonation phrase.

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