Outline

Today we will continue our exploration of suprasegmental phonology by looking

at the notions of rhythm, pitch and intonation.

Rhythm is about how we use a combination of stressed and unstressed words in

sentences. Sentences have strong beats (the stressed words) and weak beats (the
unstressed words). Intonation is the way the pitch of a speaker's voice goes up or
down as they speak.

We use intonation to help get our message across.

(See Kim Ballard, The Frameworks of English, pp. 267-288; David Crystal, Sounds
Appealing, pp. 137; 152; 187-191)

.
So far all the sounds we’ve been considering are segments: the
individual speech sounds that we represent with IPA symbols.
 Suprasegmental Phonology

In linguistics, prosody is concerned with those elements of

speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and
consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of
speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, tone,
stress, and rhythm. Such elements are known as
suprasegmentals.
 Above and Beyond
These features of spoken language are not easily identified as
discrete segments. Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams (2007) indicate
that prosodic or suprasegmental features are over and above the
segmental value since the word “supra” means above or beyond.
Therefore, suprasegmentals are units which govern more than one
sound in an utterance. They cannot occur by themselves but they
extend over the segments in words, phrases, and sentences.
A complete phonological description of a language includes all the
segmental phonemes and specifies which allophones occur in which
contexts. It also indicates which sequences of phonemes are possible in the
language and which are not: it will indicate, for example, that the sequences
/bl/ and /br/ are possible at the beginning of English words but not /bn/ or
/bm/. A phonological description also identifies and states the distribution of
the suprasegmental features.
But when we speak, we also include sounds that are above or beyond
the level of individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants).
These sounds are properties of syllables and larger units of speech,
including linguistic functions such as intonation, tone, stress, and
rhythm. Such elements are known as suprasegmentals.
 How We Use Suprasegmentals

«Suprasegmentals are important for marking all kinds of meanings, in

particular speakers’ attitudes or stances to what they are saying (or the
person they are saying it to), and in marking out how one utterance
relates to another (e.g. a continuation or a disjunction). Both the forms
and functions of suprasegmentals are less tangible than those of
consonants and vowels, and they often do not form discrete
categories.»

(Richard Ogden, An Introduction to English Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press,

2009)
 Pitch
The primary pieces of suprasegmental information are the pitch of
sounds, the loudness, and the length. The pitch of a sound is how high
or low it is. We produce high pitched sounds when our vocal folds
have a high-frequency vibration, and when our vocal folds vibrate
more slowly, the resulting sound is lower in pitch.
 Stress
Stress: intensity given to a syllable of speech by special effort in utterance,
resulting in relative loudness.

Stress is a main feature of supra-segmental (or: prosodic) phonology. It is

closely linked to rhythm and intonation, two other characteristics of prosody.
In a phonetic sense, stress is part of articulatory phonetics and is produced by
alternation of breath pressure, pitch, duration and sound quality (the
auditory counterpart of stress is prominence).

There are several reasons why we use stress in a language. In English the
main purpose is to place a prominence on certain words, to structure an
utterance and last but not least, stress can also have a contrastive function as
in subject /ˈsʌbdʒɛkt/– noun; /səbˈdʒɛkt/– verb.

Of course from an auditory point of view, stress also makes it easier to listen
and to understand.
 Word Stress

A word stress means a prominent syllable

word pattern

tea.cher •.

beau.ti.ful •..

un.der.stand ..•

con.ti.nue .•.
 How to pronounce word stress?

When a syllable is stressed, it is pronounced

• longer in duration
• higher in pitch
• louder in volume
 How do you say teacher?

Longer teeeeeeeeeeee cher

tea
Higher
cher
Louder TEA cher
All three TEEEEEEEEEEE
combined cher
 Word Stress
Concerning word stress, there are no really fixed rules of where to put the
stress in a word in English (it is a free-stress language). However stress is
closely linked to the field of syllables and vowels and sometimes it is possible
to predict the stress within a word because of these features.

The schwa-sound for example never occurs in stressed syllables. Furthermore

weak syllables are always unstressed, while unstressed syllables can be strong
and weak. Another interesting phenomenon is the reduction of (full or strong)
vowels. Here a shift in word class is brought about by a shift in stress which
leads to a reduction of the vowel. Take the word subject for instance. It is
stressed on the first syllable when we speak of the noun: ‘subject ['sʌbdʒekt]
and stressed on the second syllable when we speak of the verb: sub'ject
[səb'dʒekt]. As you can see in this example, the ʌ got reduced to a schwa
because of or rather in order to show the shift in word class and meaning.

There are also some syllables that indicate the word stress, the suffix -ity for
example leads to a stress on the antepenultimate syllable, e.g. pro’fanity.
 Word Stress Rule
Where is the
Word type Examples
stress?
center
on the first
Nouns object
syllable
flower
Two syllables
release
on the last
Verbs admit
syllable
arrange
desktop
Nouns
pencil case
(N + N) on the first part
bookshelf
(Adj. + N)
greenhouse
well-meant
Compound Adjectives
hard-headed
(Adj. + P.P.)
on the last part old-fashioned
(the verb part) understand
Verbs
overlook
(prep. + verb)
outperform
 Word type Where is the stress? Examples

turn off
Phrasal Verbs on the particle buckle up
hand out
economic
-ic Geometric
the syllable before the electrical
ending Technician
-tion, -cian, -sion graduation
Word with cohesion
added
ending Photography
-phy, -gy, -try, -cy, -fy,
biology
-al
the third from the last geometry
syllable Parameter
-meter Thermometer
barometer
Finally there are three general stress rules:

1. Monosyllabic words: These words are always stressed (of course

looking at isolated words, not words within an utterance).

2. Polysyllabic words:
Noun rule: stress the penultimate syllable if heavy. If the penultimate
syllable is light, stress the antepenult: a'tonement; 'syllable.
Verb rule: stress the final syllable if heavy. If the final syllable is light,
stress the penultimate syllable: o'bese, a'ccuse; 'meddle

3. Compounds: Compounds, that means, words, that are composed of

two independent words are stressed on the first syllable:
'blackboard
 Sentence Stress or the ‘music’ of English

Sentence stress (also called prosodic stress) refers to the emphasis

placed on certain words within a sentence.

This varying emphasis gives English a cadence, resulting in a natural

songlike quality when spoken fluently.

Sentence stress is generally determined by whether a word is

considered a “content word” or a “function word,” and the vocal
space between stressed words creates the rhythm of a sentence.
 Content Words vs. Function Words

In the most basic pattern, content words will

always be stressed, while function words will
often be unstressed. Let’s briefly discuss the
difference between the two.
 Content Words

• A content word (also known as a lexical word) is a word that

communicates a distinct lexical meaning within a particular context—that
is, it expresses the specific content of what we’re talking about at a given
time. Nouns (e.g., dog, Betty, happiness, luggage), most* verbs (e.g., run,
talk, decide, entice), adjectives (e.g., sad, outrageous, good, easy), and
adverbs (e.g., slowly, beautifully, never) all have meaning that is
considered lexically important.
• Content words will always have at least one syllable that is emphasized in
a sentence, so if a content word only has a single syllable, it will always be
stressed.
 Function words

• A function word (also known as a structure word) is a word that primarily serves
to complete the syntax and grammatical nuance of a sentence. These include
pronouns (e.g., he, she, it, they), prepositions (e.g., to, in, on, under), conjunctions
(e.g., and, but, if, or), articles (e.g., a, an, the), other determiners (e.g., this, each,
those), and interjections (e.g., ah, grr, hello).
• In addition to these parts of speech, function words also include a specific subset
of verbs known as auxiliary verbs, which add structural and grammatical meaning
to other main verbs. These include the three primary auxiliary verbs be, do, and
have, as well as a number of others known as modal auxiliary verbs, such as can,
may, must, will, and others.
• Finally, function words, especially those with only one syllable, are commonly (but
not always) unstressed in a sentence—since they are not providing lexical meaning
integral to the sentence, we often “skip over” them vocally. For example, in the
sentence, “Bobby wants to walk to the playground,” the particle to, the
preposition to, and the definite article the are all said without (or without much)
stress. The content words (Bobby, wants, walk, and playground), on the other
hand, each receive more emphasis to help them stand out and underline their
importance to the meaning of the sentence.
If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will
probably still understand the sentence.

If you remove the content words from a sentence, you will not
understand the sentence. The sentence has no sense or meaning.
Imagine that you receive this telegram message:

This sentence is not complete. It is not a "grammatically correct"

sentence. But you probably understand it. These 4 words
communicate very well.
Somebody wants you to sell their car for them because they
have gone to France.
We can add a few words:
The new words do not really add any more information. But they
make the message more correct grammatically. We can add even
more words to make one complete, grammatically correct
sentence. But the information is basically the same:
In our sentence, the 4 key words (sell, car, gone, France) are
accentuated or stressed.

• Why is this important for pronunciation? It is important because it

adds "music" to the language. It is the rhythm of the English
language. It changes the speed at which we speak (and listen to)
the language. The time between each stressed word is the same.

In our sentence, 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.
 Determining stress based on word type

One common pronunciation convention many guides provide is

that nouns and adjectives with two or more syllables will have
stress placed on the first syllable, while verbs and prepositions tend
to have their stress on the second syllable.
 Initial-stress-derived nouns

When a word can operate as either a noun or a verb, we often

differentiate the meanings by shifting the stress from the second
syllable to the first (or initial) syllable—in other words, these nouns
are derived from verbs according to their initial stress.
 Word stress dictated by suffixes

While the stress in many words is very difficult to predict, certain

suffixes and other word endings will reliably dictate where stress
should be applied within the word, either on the suffix itself, one
syllable before the suffix, or two syllables before the suffix. Other
suffixes, however, don’t impact word stress at all.
 Sentence Stress vs. Word Stress

While function words are often unstressed in a sentence, those that

have more than one syllable still have internal word stress on one of
their syllables. For example, the word because has two syllables
(be·cause), with stress placed on the second syllable (/bɪˈkɔz/).
However, in a sentence with a normal stress pattern, because will have
less overall emphasis than the content words around it, which helps
maintain the cadence and flow of the sentence in everyday speech.
• Likewise, multi-syllable content words will have even more
emphasis placed on the syllable that receives the primary stress. It
is this syllable that is most articulated within a sentence, with the
rest of the word being unstressed like the function words.
Examples of normal sentence stress

• Let’s look at some examples, with function words in italics and the primary
stress of content words in bold:
• “I have a favor to ask.”
• “Jonathan will be* late because his car broke down.”
• “I’m going to the store later.”
• “We do not agree with the outcome.”
• “Please don’t tell me how the movie ends.”

(*Note that be is technically a content word here—it is the main verb in the
phrase will be late—but it remains unstressed like a function word. Because
they are often used as auxiliary verbs to form verb tense, conjugations
of be are almost always unstressed in sentences irrespective of their technical
grammatical function.)
 Rhythm
English is what’s known as a stress-timed language, which means that
we leave approximately the same amount of time between stressed
syllables in a sentence to create a natural cadence. These are
sometimes referred to as the “beats” of a sentence.
This rhythm is easier to hear in sentences in which content words and
function words alternate regularly, as in:
“I have a favor to ask.”
Things become more complicated when a sentence has multiple
content or function words in a row.
Generally speaking, when multiple function words appear together, we
vocally condense them into a single beat, meaning that they are
spoken slightly faster than content words on either side.
When multiple single-syllable content words appear together, the
reverse effect occurs: a greater pause is given between each word to
create natural beats while still maintaining the proper amount of
emphasis. (Content words with more than one syllable are usually not
affected, since at least one part of the word is unstressed.)
• “Jonathan will be late because his car broke down.”
• After the first syllable of the content word Jonathan is stressed, the
words will be and the last two syllables of Jonathan are all
unstressed and spoken together quickly to form a beat before the
next content word, late. The next two words, because his, are also
unstressed and spoken quickly to form the next beat. The next
three words, car broke down, are all content words, and they are
each stressed separately. Because of this, we add a slight pause
between them to help the rhythm of the sentence sound natural.
• This rhythmic pattern between stressed and unstressed words
occurs when a sentence is spoken “neutrally”—that is, without any
additional emphasis added by the speaker. However, we can add
extra stress to any word in a sentence in order to achieve a
particular meaning. This is known as emphatic stress.
 Emphatic Stress
The convention regarding the stress and rhythm of content words and function words
is consistent in normal (sometimes called “neutral”) sentence stress. However, English
speakers often place additional emphasis on a specific word or words to provide
clarity, emphasis, or contrast; doing so lets the listener know more information than
the words can provide on their own. Consider the following “neutral” sentence, with
no stress highlighted at all:

• “Peter told John that a deal like this wasn’t allowed.”

• Now let’s look at the same sentence with emphatic stress applied to different
words, and we’ll see how its implied meaning changes accordingly:
• “Peter told John that a deal like this wasn’t allowed.” (Clarifies that Peter, as
opposed to someone else, told John not to make the deal.)
• “Peter told John that a deal like this wasn’t allowed.” (Emphasizes the fact that
John had been told not to make the deal but did so anyway.)
• “Peter told John that a deal like this wasn’t allowed.” (Clarifies that John was told
not to make the deal, not someone else.)
• “Peter told John that a deal like this wasn’t allowed.” (Emphasizes that Peter said
the deal was not allowed, indicating that John thought or said the opposite.)
 Pitch
Pitch changes in focus words
Along with placing a stronger stress on the focus
word, you’ll also need to raise the pitch—that is,
make the sound of your voice higher.
To understand this better, let’s watch this video that shows how stress and
pitch placed on different words in the same sentence can completely change
the meaning of the sentence.
 Rhythm
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/rhyt
hm
 Exceptions
• The rules above are for what is called "neutral" or normal stress.
But 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."
• Note also that when "be" is used as a main verb, it is usually
unstressed—even though as a main verb it is also a content word.
 Intonation
When a person speaks, intonation (pitch) of their voice keeps changing
and so it can be high or low. Without changing intonation any spoken
utterance would have sounded extremely monotonous and it would
have been difficult, if not impossible, to recognise the most important
part of a speech. Pitch is used in all languages to add special
significance to what is said, but it is not the same in all languages.
No words are distinguished only by their intonation in English
language. In fact, any English word may have almost any intonation
depending on the context or the situation. English intonation is
something that is added to the utterance due to a special personal
colouring and/or meaning regardless whether a single word or a whole
sentence is spoken.
Perfect example can be a a single word yes used as a separate
utterance in reply to a question: if uttered in a falling tone (a glide
from a high to a low note) it means a definite affirmative and there are
no doubts or uncertainities from the side of a speaker, but if a tone of
a speaker is rising it may suggest that there is some hesitation or
reservation on the interlocutor’s side.

These tones (rising or falling) can be added to other utterances (such

as no or maybe) to express the same shades of meaning. Thus, English
intonation forms part of the whole utterance because it suggests the
interlocutorìs attitudes, opinions, moods, and emotions to what they
are saying.