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ELT 7
SPEECH AND THEATRE ARTS
Chapter 4 Prosodic Features

Physical Parameters of Speech Sounds

The production of speech sounds involves

· some amount of energy
· present at some frequency (vocal fold vibration)
· for some period of time

These three parameters are perceived by humans as

· loudness

· pitch
- the faster the vocal folds vibrate, the higher the pitch
- shorter vocal folds vibrate faster
· children & women: smaller larynx & shorter vocal folds higher pitched voices than
men, in general

· duration (length)

These three parameters define three linguistic categories

· stress
· tone
· length

So far, we have mainly been looking at features concerning individual sounds or phonemes.
If we investigate phonetic or phonological detail in this way, we are working on the
segmental level since each phoneme is usually assumed to be one segment of speech. Once
we move on to look at larger chunks of speech that span a number of segments, such as
whole words or phrases, etc., we are dealing with features on the suprasegmental level. As
suprasegmental phonetics & phonology represent fairly complex areas of research, we can
only explore them very superficially here by taking a brief look at the two phenomena of
word stress and intonation.
Prosodic Features

Suprasegmental features are over and above features inherent in individual speech sounds
or segmental features of sounds (voicing, place & manner of articulation)

· prosodic (from poetry) – refers to the metric structure of verse

Prosodic, or suprasegmental features of sounds, such as length, stress and pitch.

• Length: in some languages, such as Japanese, the length of a consonant or a vowel

can change the meaning of a word:

– biru [biru] “building” biiru [biːru] “beer”

– saki [saki] “ahead” sakki [sakːi] “before”

• Stress: stressed syllables are louder, slightly higher in pitch, and somewhat longer
than unstressed syllables

– The noun digest has the stress on the first syllable

– The verb digest has the stress on the second syllable

– English is a stress-timed language, meaning that at least one syllable is stressed in

an English word

In every word one syllable is the loudest - stressed syllable

ready utter willing English

 fixed – assigned to a particular syllable in words

- first syllable in Czech
-last but one (penultimate) syllable in Polish & Swahili
- last syllable in French

 variable – assigned to different syllables in words

- English has variable stress

WRIter beCAUSE

 longer English words à various levels of stress

primary - disapPOINTing

secondary - ,DISapPOINTing
  stress in English can be contrastive

- changing the stressed syllable of an English word can change its

meaning

'contrast vs. cont'rast

'proceeds vs. pro'ceeds

'project vs. 'project

a 'black 'board vs. a 'black,board

Tone and Intonation

• Tone languages are languages that use pitch to contrast the meaning of words
• For example, in Thai, the string of sounds [naː] can be said with 5 different pitches and
can thus have 5 different meanings:

• Intonation languages (like English) have varied pitch contour across an utterance,
but pitch is not used to distinguish words

Intonation - shaping intonation contours of phrases and sentences

- questions in English

You gave the book to Mary? - a rising pitch

 making words in a sentence prominent (by raising the pitch, making them longer,
and making them louder)

You gave MARY the book!

– However, intonation may affect the meaning of a whole sentence:

• John is here said with falling intonation is a statement

• John is here said with rising intonation is a question