CHAPTER 6: Suprasegmentals and Narrow Transcription Flashcards
SUPRASEGMENTALS
A phonetic effect that extends over more than one segment in an utterance.
Of or relating to significant features (as stress, pitch, or juncture) that occur simultaneously with vowels and consonants in an utterance.
A similar term is prosody.
The term suprasegmentals is regarded as the overarching category, with prosody being a major component.
PARALINGUISTICS
The aspects of spoken communication that do not involve words. These may add emphasis or shades of meaning to what people say. Some definitions limit this to verbal communication that is not words.
MELODY
Sometimes used as a synonym for prosody.
Melody conveys the basic idea that prosody pertains to the intonation and rhythm of spoken languages.
INTONATION
The pattern or melody of pitch changes in utterances.
Some definitions of intonation refer to the patterns of rises and falls, but even flat or unchanging intervals are part of the picture.
PITCH LEVEL
The relative level of pitch that characterizes an utterance as a whole.
That is, a speaker can produce an utterance with a pitch that is high, medium, or low.
INTONATION CONTOUR
Also called a pitch contour.
The pattern of pitch changes over an utterance.
PITCH DECLINATION
Also called sentence declination.
An important aspect of pitch declination.
An overall fall in pitch over an utterance such as a sentence.
When we speak, we usually begin at a relatively high pitch then gradually reduce the pitch over an utterance. This pitch is one way of signaling the sentence structure of conversation–start high and end low.
LINEAR DECLINATION THEORY
States that vocal fundamental frequency (f0) falls gradually and linearly throughout a sentence or clause.
BREATH-GROUP THEORY
A declarative sentence can be divided into nonterminal and terminal parts, and variation of vocal fundamental frequency (f0) is permitted only in the terminal part of the f0 contour.
PITCH RESETTING
Pitch reset occurs at the boundaries between prosodic units.
Over the course of such units, the median pitch of the voice declines from its initial value, sometimes reaching the lower end of the speaker’s vocal range. At this point it must reset to a higher level if the person is to continue speaking.
In non-tonal languages, this sudden increase in pitch is one of the principal auditory cues to the start of a new prosodic unit.
STRESS
The degree of prominence or emphasis associated with a particular syllable in a word or a word in a phrase, clause, or sentence.
Acoustically, stress is conveyed by some combination f0, intensity, and duration (all of which depends on the speaker and utterance).
CONTRASTIVE STRESS
Used when we wish to deviate from the usual or expected pattern of stress in an utterance.
It is used to draw attention to a word.
Ex. Consider the stress given to the word of in the phrase: Government of the people, by the people, for the people.
LEXICAL STRESS
A stress pattern intrinsic to a word.
Ex. A frequently used example is the noun vs verb forms of words such as protest, object, project, imprint, and research. Each of these words has a noun or verb form that is distinguished by the stress pattern of the word. When the stress is placed on the first syllable, the word is understood as a noun.
PHRASAL STRESS
Stress that is assigned beyond the level of lexical stress to apply in syntactic groupings of words, such as phrases, clauses, or sentences.
Stress is not uniform across the words in a phrase.
NEW VERSUS GIVEN INFORMATION
A contrast related to the kind of information in a message, specifically, whether the information is expected to be new to the listener or already known by the listener.
TEMPO
The speed at which a musical piece is or should be played.
Tempo is the rate of some activity.
The tempo of spoken language is its rate, commonly expressed in units such as syllables/min or words/min.
We often change the tempo of our speech depending on emotion, communicative setting, and other factors.
RHYTHM
Refers to the distribution of events in time, such as the temporal pattern of syllables or other speech units.
ISOCHRONY
Literally, equal duration.
Refers to the impression of equalized or uniform durations of rhythmic units such as pairs of strong and weak syllables.
STRESS-TIMED RHYTHM
A form of speech rhythm having relatively constant intervals between stressed syllables.
The syllables are not similar in length.
Languages like English, German, and Dutch are said to have a stress-timed rhythm.
SYLLABLE-TIMED RHYTHM
A rhythm in which syllables have pretty much the same length regardless of whether they are stressed.
The syllables are similar in length.
Languages such as Spanish and French are said to have syllable-timed rhythm.
MORA
A unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing.
The definition of a mora varies.
James D. McCawley defined it as “something of which a long syllable consists of two and a short syllable consists of one”.
The term comes from the Latin word for “linger, delay”, which was also used to translate the Greek word chronos (time) in its metrical sense.
Languages such as Japanese and Estonian are reported to have a mora-timed rhythm.
MORA-TIMED RHYTHM
A form of speech rhythm having relatively constant duration of syllable types.
PAUSE
An interval of silence in an utterance.
BOUNDARY or EDGE EFFECTS
Phonological or phonetic characteristics that appear at the margins of a linguistic unit, such as a phrase.
LOUDNESS
The perceived magnitude or strength of sound.
VOCAL EFFORT
The amount of physiologic energy that a speaker adjusts according to the distance between the speaker and listener.
PROSODIC CONTOUR
A prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour (pitch and rhythm contour).
INTONATIONAL UNIT
The combined pattern of f0 and rhythm, typically for a multisyllabic sequence.
“MOTHERESE”
Or infant-directed speech or parentese.
A style of speech that adults use when speaking to infants, typically characterized by a higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, and increased repetition of words or other units.
CLEAR SPEECH
A type of speech used to ensure effective communication under difficult conditions, such as speaking over background noise.
It usually is characterized by a combination of prosodic and articulatory changes.
CONVERSATIONAL SPEECH
Everyday, casual speech, as contrasted with clear speech.
PARALANGUAGE
The various nonverbal properties of speech that convey information about a speaker’s emotion, attitude and demeanor.
VOCAL QUALIFIER
The tone of voice that conveys emotion or attitude.
VOCAL DIFFERENTIATOR
A vocal expression of emotion, such as laughing or crying.
DIACRITIC MARK
Accent marks.
Ex. Nasalized vowels are represented with the diacritic mark ~ over them.
STRESS SYMBOLS
There are three degrees of stress marked with the numberals 1, 2, or 3 placed above the main symbol, which must be a VOWEL.
When stress is marked with this number system, the top line of the transcription is reserved for stress marks.
PRIMARY STRESS
Or first-level stress.
The number 1 is placed over a vowel.
This is the highest degree of stress in an utterance.
SECONDARY STRESS
Or second-level stress.
The number 2 is placed over a vowel.
It is possible for a multisyllable utterance to have two or more syllables with secondary stress.
TERTIARY STRESS
Or third-level stress.
The number 3 is placed over a vowel.
This is the lowest degree of stress in an utterance.
NASAL SYMBOLS
These symbols describe aspects of velopharyngeal function that is, the valving between the oral cavity and the nasal cavity.
NASALIZED
“Talking through the nose.”
Produced with nasal resonance, which is created by an open velopharyngeal port allowing voicing energy to radiate through the nasal cavity.
In English, we normally nasalize vowels produced before or after nasal consonants. Compare the /æ/ sounds in man and bad, the former of which is nasalized and the latter of which is not.
DENASALIZED
Produced without nasalization or without an appropriate degree of nasalization.
In normal English speech, this symbol rarely would be used, but it might be used for a speaker who failed to open the velopharyngeal port when it normally would open.
For example, if a child with cerebral palsy did not open the velopharynx for a vowel that is normally nasalized in English, one could mark that vowel as denasalized.
A denasalized quality also may be heard for speakers with nasal congestion.
LABIALIZED
This consonant is produced with a constriction, or narrowing, of the lips (very much like rounding in the case of a vowel).
In English, we tend to labialize many consonants when they are followed by a rounded vowel or by the /w/ sound.
Thus, in the word queen, it is natural for a speaker to say a labialized /k/ in anticipation of the lip narrowing and protrusion for the /w/.
This symbol is easy to remember if you recall that the /w/ is labialized and the diacritic mark is like a small w placed over the phonetic segment.
INVERSION
Inversion involves curling of the lip.
In extreme inversion, the lip may be pulled back over the teeth. Inversion is not a common articulatory modification and is observed more often in neurologically or structurally impaired speakers than in normal speakers.
DENTALIZED
A dentalized consonant is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the back of the upper teeth.
We normally dentalize the stop /d/ in words like width, where a dental fricative follows the stop.
There is a difference in the posititon of the tongue for the /d/ in width and the /d/ in lid.
Normally, the /d/ is articulated as a lingua-alveolar stop.
PALATIZED
The blade, or front part of the tongue minus the tip, is close to the palatal area just behind the alveolar ridge.
LATERALIZED
The distinguishing property of a lateralized sound is the release of air through the sides (or at least one side) of the mouth.
A lateralized /s/ is characterized by emission of the fricative air around the sides of the tongue, rather than through a narrow groove or slit in the midline of the articulator.
RHOTACIZED
R coloring is a complicated articulation that takes at least two forms. One form is literally retroflexion, involving a backward (retro-) turning (flexion) of the tongue tip.
The other form, takes the appearance of a bunching of the tongue in the front of the mouth, essentially in the palatal area.
Ladefoged uses the term rhotacized to describe r coloring, whichever articulation may be involved.
It is sufficient to say that a sound with a reftroflex modification has an r coloring or r similarity. This modification normally occurs in the word harsher, for which the /ʃ/ is rhotacized owing to the influence of the preceding and following r sounds.
VELARIZATION
A constriction of the vowel tract between the dorsum of the tongue and the posterior palate, or velum.
Most speakers of English use a velarized [l], the so called dark l, whenever /l/ is in postvocalic position at the end of a word. This /l/ usually is made with an elevated and back tongue body position and frequently without an anterior contact by the tongue tip.
CENTRALIZED
[wɪndo]
When a vowel is centralized, the tongue body is displaced toward the central region of the oral cavity. In its extreme form, centralization leads to a substitution of the schwa [ə] for the target sound.
For example, with progressive centralization of the final vowel in window, the word would change from [wɪndo] to [wɪndo] to [wɪndə]. Notice that the particular direction of tongue displacement during centralization depends upon the articulation of the target sound.
To some degree, centralization is a natural consequence of increased speaking rate or reduced stress.
RETRACTED
The tongue body is drawn back from the vowel target position.
For example, a retracted /æ/ has a tongue position drawn back toward that for /ɑ/, without of course actually moving as far back as /ɑ/.
FRONTED
A fronted consonant is one in which the place of articulation is unusually forward, but the exact modification is difficult to determine.
Fronting applies to the place of consonant articulation, whereas advancement refers to general tongue body position (usually for vowels but also for some consonants, like /k g/, involving the tongue body).
BACKED
One in which place of articulation is unusually back, or posterior, but the exact modification is difficult to determine.
A back sound has a constriction that is in some sense farther back than the expected constriction for the phoneme symbol that is being modified.
