ZAINAB ISHAQ

U1/21/NLHED/1733
In phonetics, a suprasegmental feature is a prosodic characteristic that is added over consonants and
vowels and often extends across syllables, words, or phrases. Examples of suprasegmental features
include stress, tone, and word junctures.
Término means "term," termno means "I terminate," and terminó means "he terminated," all of which are
distinguished in Spanish by the emphasis accent. Tone is a recognizable suprasegmental in Mandarin
Chinese; the word shih, when pronounced on a high, level note, signifies "to lose," on a small rising note,
"ten," on a falling note, "city, market," and on a falling-rising note, "history." The word junction
distinguishes "beer dripped" and "beard ripped" in English.
The aforementioned illustrations show functional suprasegmentals. Stress in French is an example of a
nonfunctional suprasegmental that does not alter the meaning of words or phrases. Contrary to consonants
and vowels, which are regarded as serially ordered parts of the spoken utterance, suprasegmentals are
referred to as such.
The pitch, loudness, and length of sounds are the three main components of suprasegmental information.
How high or low a sound is depends on its pitch. When our vocal folds vibrate at high frequencies, we
make high-pitched sounds; conversely, when they vibrate at lower frequencies, we produce lower-pitched
noises.
Pitch information can be used in some languages to indicate changes in word meaning. When pitch is
used in this manner, the pitch information is known as tone. These examples come from the Yoruba
language, which is used in Nigeria. These words appear to have all been transcribed the same way if you
only look at the segmental level. However, Yoruba speakers alter their pitch as they utter these words,
causing the word's meaning to shift based on whether the second syllable has a high, mid, or low tone.
The language with the most tones is probably Mandarin, which has five. The parts in these five words are
the same, as you can see, but the tones give each word its unique meaning.
Pitch can also be used in languages to indicate information at the discourse level, a speaker's emotion, or
attitude, rather than to alter the meaning of words. When employed in this fashion, pitch is referred to as
intonation rather than tone. Let's look at a few instances of how English employs pitch for intonation.

Sam got an A in Calculus.

Sam got an A in Calculus!
Sam got an A in Calculus?
Sam? got an A? in Calculus?
These sentences are all composed of the same words (and sentence segments), but by changing the
intonation, we can send a distinct message about the speaker's perspective on the statement's meaning. Be
aware that punctuation can occasionally be used in writing to provide hints about the prosody of a
sentence.
Sound length is another aspect of suprasegmental information. Different noises have different lengths.
Pay close attention to these two English terms. pound, bead. Both words have the high front tense vowel I
as their primary vowel sound. The vowel is a tiny bit longer in bead, though. In English, vowels lengthen
when the final consonant of the syllable has a voiced sound; this is a predictable process. the diacritic that
shows how long a section is.
As a result, a sound's length can alter as a result of a predictable articulatory process or, like intonation,
length might convey discourse-level details about an utterance. Think about the difference between the
phrases That test was easy and That test was extremely easy. Some languages contrastively use length,
which alters the meaning of a word. You can see how lengthening a vowel creates an entirely new word
with a new meaning in these Yapese words from the Western Pacific region. In these Italian words, the
length of the consonant can alter the meaning of a word; therefore, fatto might signify fact while fato can
mean fate.
In conclusion, prosody, often referred to as suprasegmental information, is sound information that is
above the level of the segment.
Suprasegmental Domains
Suprasegmental effects in phonetics operate over a number of different domains: some over stretches
of the signal that are syllable-sized, others over domains of many syllables. The most important
domains are defined below:
 Syllable: while syllables seem intuitive elements of speech production, it has proven hard to
give them a proper definition. We will use a typical phonological definition in terms of a
collection of segments arranged in the form of nuclear and marginal elements. The nuclear
elements at the centre of the syllable are sonorants, typically vowels. The marginal elements are
consonants. So a typical syllable is a vowel surrounded by zero or more consonants. Since the
nuclear elements are sonorants, they will be produced with a relatively unobstructed vocal tract
and so be a bit louder than the marginal elements on average. This gives the listener the feeling
that syllables are 'pulses' of sound, although it has proved difficult to build an algorithmic
procedure that parses the signal into syllables.
Syllables are domains for allophonic variation, for example plosives are only aspirated in
syllable-initial position. They are also domains for stress: compare "content"
as [kənˈtent] meaning "pleased", compared to [ˈkɒntent] meaning "contained material".
Syllables are domains for timing, with segmental durations varying depending on their position
in the syllable and the complexity of the syllable structure. Syllables are also the natural
domains of pitch movements: lexical tone and pitch accent as described below.
 Prosodic foot: the prosodic foot is a domain of timing or rhythm. It is of particular value in
languages that exploit a difference between "stressed" and "unstressed" syllables. A foot is a
sequence of syllables containing a stressed syllable followed by zero or more unstressed
syllables (Note: this definition is at odds with the definition of 'metrical foot' used in poetry,
which is about the pattern of strong and weak beats in a line of poetry). We can see this domain
operating when the size of the prosodic foot is changed. When additional unstressed syllables
are added to the end of a foot, the duration of the foot does not increase proportionately. For
example, [stɪk] is longest in "stick", shorter in "sticky" and shorter still in "stickiness". This
"foot-level shortening" binds the stressed and unstressed syllables together and creates a
tendency for prosodic feet to occur at more regular instances of time than they would otherwise
- in other words it enforces a certain rhythmical pattern.
 Prosodic phrase: when we speak long utterances, we naturally break them up into parts, just as
when we write, we use punctuation to break up long sentences into digestible sections.
The term "prosody" | refers to certain properties | of the speech signal ||
This "prosodic phrasing" has multiple functions: it helps the speaker plan the upcoming
material, it helps the speaker take breaths, and it helps the listener chunk the material into units
for interpretation. In some instances, the phrasing can help the listener choose between
alternative interpretations:
One of the ways in which listeners work out the syntactic or grammatical structure of spoken
sentences is by using prosodic cues in the form of stress, intonation, and so on. For example, in
the ambiguous sentence 'The old men and women sat on the bench,' the women may or may not
be old. If the women are not old, then the spoken duration of word 'men' will be relatively long
and the stressed syllable in 'women' will have a steep rise in speech contour. Neither of these
prosodic features will be present if the sentence means the women are old. (M. Eysenck and M.
Keane, Cognitive Psychology. Taylor & Francis, 2005)
The IPA chart recognises two levels of phrase break: major and minor. These may be marked
by pauses or intonation, but also may be marked solely by changes in duration that occur
leading up to the boundary, "phrase-final lengthening"

This list of domains is intriguing in part because none of them explicitly correspond to
morphological or syntactic domains. Word-level tone is an exception to the rule of
suprasegmental phenomena operating at the word level, and segmental or suprasegmental
 qualities are not typically used to delineate word boundaries. Similar to prosodic phrases,
prosodic phrases can contain many clauses or partition existing sentences, and they do not
always match up neatly with syntactical elements.
Last but not least, suprasegmental events shouldn't be seen as structure that has been put on top
of the segmental string. The aforementioned instances demonstrate how information can travel
both directions. Allophonic variations that depend on syllable location are an example of a
segmental effect, and occasionally suprasegmental domains define segmental effects (for
example, the amount of segmental material determines domains).
Reference.
Palmer F. R ( 1970) prosodic analysis. Oxford university press ISBN978-019-437036-3.
Bussmann 2006, p. 1038
Firth J. R. (1948) sound and prosodies transactions of the philogical society 47:127-152.