ENS 501G English Phonetics II

In linguistics, as you would expect, we talk about language quite a lot.

 Normally, language does not talk about itself. Georg Gadamer , in
"Man and Language", has suggested that one of the essential
properties of language is that its users are ideally unaware of it. In
discussing the price of petrol, people are usually unaware of the words
they are speaking and hearing – the train of ideas occupies their
conscious minds, or at least the concepts involved are manifested at a
higher level of consciousness than the linguistic forms. But when
discussing and writing about linguistics we are applying language to
itself, and the train of ideas consciously moves into areas which are
normally unconscious.
This produces some interesting effects.
 ENS 501G English Phonetics II
• Segmental phonology
• Word prosody
• intensity (loudness)
• Sentence prosody
• pitch (intonation)
• Discourse prosody
• Metrical prosody

Etymonline (look up segment)

(Look up prosody)
• Segmental phonology
ban
Features:
manner: plosive manner: nasal
place: bilabial place: alveolar
voicing: voiced voicing: voiced

manner: vowel
place: front
place: open
voiced
unrounded
 Segmental phonology

ban
lips together
phonation (voicing)
nasal passage open

tongue on alveolar
ridge
 Segmental phonology

ban
• Are phonemes “really there”?
• Do illiterate language users segment
language?
• The “idealism” of phonology
 Segmental phonology

h0um
diphthong starting mid-centtre and moving towards close back
phonation (voicing)
nasal passage open
lips together
• Features which span more than one segment
are known as suprasegmental features
• Prosody as a complex of
suprasegmental features
A suprasegmental feature: intensity
A suprasegmental feature: pitch
Intensity and pitch shown together
 Prosody
• Segmental phonology
• Word prosody
• intensity (loudness)
• Sentence prosody
• pitch (intonation)
• Discourse prosody
• Metrical prosody

Etymonline (look up prosody)

 Word Prosody
• In any word, only one syllable takes the main
stress.

penny
deny
photograph
photography
 Word Prosody
Cockfosters • Monument
Embankment • Picadilly
Edgware Road • Southgate
Googe Street • South Hamstead
Bakerloo • Southampton
Heathrow • Westminster
Marble Arch • Avonbridge
Marylebone • Aberdeen
 Word Prosody
• Roach, chapters 10 and 11
• Handout on Word Stress
 Prosody

• Word prosody
• intensity (loudness)
• Sentence prosody
• pitch (intonation)
• Discourse prosody
• Metrical prosody
 Sentence Prosody
• Word categories (Parts of Speech)
• Weak syllables and weak forms
• Tone Group (Intonation Phrase)
• Nucleus and nucleus position
• Tones on the nucleus
• Preheads, Heads and Tails
 Prosody

• Word prosody
• intensity (loudness)
• Sentence prosody
• pitch (intonation)
• Discourse prosody
• Metrical prosody
 Discourse Prosody
• Old and new information
• Broad and Narrow Focus
• Deaccentuation
 Prosody

• Word prosody
• intensity (loudness)
• Sentence prosody
• pitch (intonation)
• Discourse prosody
• Metrical prosody
 Metrical Prosody
• Old Germanic metre
• Classical English metres
• Modern poetry