Stresses in English

7/29/2019 Stresses in English

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Suprasegmental features

and ProsodyENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

WAJ 3102

WEEK 8


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Prosody An informal definition: The music of a language, its

characteristic melody and rhythm. A more formal definition: The system of prosodic

contrasts that a language employs.

Supra-segmental features: Phonetic features that span

more than a single speech segment. Features that spana whole syllable or are only apparent when one syllableis compared with others in its neighbourhood.

Typical suprasegmental features: Voice pitch

Loudness or vocal effort Length or relative duration of a syllable

Suprasegmental features realize or express prosodiccontrasts.


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English Prosody

Made up of three prosodic systems:

Stress: operates at the level of the word

Rhythm

Intonation: operates at the level of the phrase orwhole utternace.

Stress: the relative prominence of a syllable.

Rhythm: patterns of stress in time.

Intonation: the pitch pattern of an utterance.


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Some complications Prosody in languages that are related to English can be

analysed under three main headings (word stress,rhythm, intonation).

However, for tone languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, andmany others) or other languages whose prosodic system

is quite different from that of English (like Japanese), the3-way division of prosody into stress, rhythm andintonation applies only in part.

Prosodic interference or transfer effects (interference of

L1 prosody on L2) can be a major source of difficulty forsecond language learners.

More on this later.


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English word stress

Locate the main stress (most prominent syllable) inthese words:

electric electrician permit (n) permit (v)

Locate the unstressed syllables in the words above.

Unstressed syllables undergo vowel reduction.

Syllables that are not reduced, but not the most

prominent in the word are calledsecondary stressedsyllables.


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English word stress

Hence we may distinguish 3 levels of stress inEnglish words:

Primary: main stress or accent

Secondary: unreduced and not accented Tertiary: reduced or unstressed.

Some word stress alternations in English:

diplomat diplomacy diplomaticphotograph photography photographic


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English word stress

It is sometimes hard to distinguish betweensecondary and tertiary levels of stress.

There is some dialect variation with vowel reduction.

English word stress likes to follow an alternating patternof stressed and unstressed syllables:


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Word stress is culminative in English.

Polysyllabic words in English have a single center ofstress prominence, the accented syllable.

Even in long words, which might be said to have twoprimary stressed syllables:

psycholinguistics

One syllable in the word tends to carry the accent in theintonation contour of a whole utternace.

The stress pattern of a word culminates in a singlesyllable the one that potentially carries phrase accent.


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Compound words

Words that are composed of words:hot-dog hot dog

compound phrase

look-in look in

Compound word has initial stress. The second element of the compound is de-

accented. (Compared with the 2nd element ofthe phrase) Only one accented syllable per word.


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Stress is important for the sound pattern ofEnglish words

Non-native speakers of English shouldpractice hearing and producing thesestress contrasts:

an insult to insult

an overflow to overflow

an

increase to in

creaseawalkout towalkout

See exercises from Peter Ladefoged.
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter5/grammatical%20influences.htmhttp://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter5/grammatical%20influences.htm


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Stress and word class in English

All major lexical items carry primary stress (havean accentable syllable).

Function words are normally unstressed

(reduced)Johnwassurethatthekeyswereonthetable.

The preposition on which carries primary stress,

is an exception to the rule in this case. The accented syllables on lexical items and the

unstressed function words set up a rhythmicpattern in English utterances.


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English rhythm

Stressed syllables tend to occur at regularintervals of time.Stressedsyllablestend to occur atregularintervals oftime.

You can usually tap in regular time to the primarystressed syllables in a fluent English phrase.

English is said to be astress-timedlanguage.

Other languages are said to besyllable timed(e.g.

French) ormora timed(Japanese, Finnish). No language is perfectly rhythmic (isochronous) and this

classification of types of language rhythm remainscontroversial.


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Summarizing: English stress Three levels of prominence (stress) in English

words. Depending on whether a syllable may carry

accent, or undergo reduction:Accented Reduced

Primary stress yes no stressed

Secondary stress no no stressed

Tertiary stress no yes unstressed

English stress is culminative.

Alternating stressed and unstressed syllables setup rhythmic patterns in speech.

English is said to be stress-timed.


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Phonetic expression of stress in English.

Is complex and involves several supra-segmental features:

Pitch prominence: accented syllables carry themain changes of voice pitch in the utterance.

Loudness: stressed syllables are louder. Length: stressed syllables are longer in duration.

Gestural magnitude: Length and loudnessdifferences may reflect a common factor that

prominent syllables are produced with largerarticulatory and vocal gestures, which resistreduction and coarticulation effects propertiesof unstressed syllables.


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Tone

Tone languages use voice pitch (andpossibly voice quality) to make lexicalcontrasts (to distinguish words).

The domain of tone is the syllable (Hencetone is a supra-segmental feature).

The number of tones a language uses is

quite limited. Tone and word stress tend to becompeting prosodic systems.


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Vietnamese tones

0

50

100

150

200

250

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a


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Types of tone language

(Standard) Chinese and Vietnamese areexamples of contour tone languages.

Their tones are made up of dynamic voicepitch changes (along with voice quality).

Register tone languages (predominating inAfrica) have level tones, usually in justtwo pitch registers: high and low.


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A West African register tone language


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Tone and word stress

May be regarded as competing systems of word prosody. Why

might this be so? The phonetic features which carry tone and stress are similar.

Tonal contrasts and stress contrasts may make competingrequirements on the speech mechanism.

In English, there is only one accent bearing syllable per word.Some syllables undergo reduction.

Stress contrasts exist between syllables in different positionsin a word: permit permit

In Vietnamese, every syllable carries a tone. Syllables are notreduced.

Tone contrasts would be threatened by syllable reduction.

Does Vietnamese have word stress? A controversial issue.


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Intonation The melody of a phrase or whole utternace.

What would an utterance sound like without itsintonation contour?

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

This utterance was generated by a speechsynthesiser, where voice pitch can be separatelycontroled from other parameters of speechproduction.

Changes in voice pitch are the main phoneticcue for intonation.

But the duration and pausing pattern in anutterance are also crucial cues for intonation.


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The elements of an intonation contuour

The major pitch peaks and voice pitch changes, whichare known asaccents.

The shape and location of these accents.

The relative duration of segments and the location ofpauses (junctures).

bird hand two bushVoice pitch trace

spectrogram


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Meaning and the shape of pitch accents

The meaning of a pitch accent will be stronglyaffected by the context in which it appears.

But some generalizations can be made about themeanings of basic accent types:

yes yes yes yes yesfall low rise level high rise risefall

agree go on bored surprise insist

assert impatient questionneutral


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Functions of intonation: What doesintonation do?

Illocutionary: marking speakers attitude and intendedpurpose of the utterance.

Asserting, pleading, insisting, inquiring,

Demarcative: marking phrase boundaries.

Related to syntactic parsing, identifying phrase boundaries

Highlighting: marking new or important information.

When a topic is first introduced into discourse, it is likely to beplaced at the intonational centre of the phrase, to be thus

highlighted to draw the listeners attention. On subsequentmention, the item shifts out of intonational focus. It is now oldinformation.


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Some intonational contrasts to analyse

Would you like tea or coffee? A: B:

A lion is a mammal. A: B:

Your mom will marry a lawyer.

Go on. A: B:

When danger threatens your children callthe police. A: B:

Jenny gave Peter instructions to follow.A: B:

Stresses in English

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