Primary Words Stress And Utterance Intonation Flashcards
Segmental aspects of English
Vowels and consonants which make up syllables
Non segmental features of English
Stress
Speed
Resonance
Prosody
Stress
Higher pitch and loudness
Speech
Rate
Resonance
The quality of sound
Prosody
Difference pitches, rhythms and tones of voice
Lexical stress
Emphasis on syllable within a single word
Prosodic stress
Emphasis at the level of the phrase of sentence
Fixed stress
Where stress is located on the same syllable in each word eg first or penultimate syllable
Free stress
Where stress placent is variable across words
What kind of stress does English have?
Fixed stress or free stress?
English has free stress. This means it doesn’t occur on the same syllable in all words.
Assignation of stress happens in English on all words of 2 syllables and more (primary stress)
How do we produce lexical stress
Increased air pressure generated in the lungs
Increased effort in articulatory movements in the vocal tract
What do stressed syllables tend to do when we produce lexical stress
Show pitch prominence
Be longer
Be louder
What is pitch prominence
A pitch level that is different from that of neighbouring syllables
What are the 3 rules about the use of stress in English
- For bi syllabic words, nouns and adjectives have the stress on the first syllable, whereas verbs have the stress on the second syllable eg table (noun), special (adjective), demand (verb).
- Words ending in ‘ic’, ‘tion’, ‘sion’ always place their stress on the penultimate syllable eg supersonic, dedication, attention.
- Most words ending in ‘ous’ with 4 syllables usually have their stress on the second syllable eg anonymous, superfluous, luxurious.
Primary stress
- Primary stress- The loudest syllable in the word.
Most one syllable words have primary stress except for sum short function words such as ‘the’ or ‘a’ which may not be stressed at all.
Marked with ̍ at the beginning of the syllable.
Secondary stress
- Secondary stress- Syllables that aren’t completely unstressed but aren’t as loud as the primary stress.
Marked with a lowered vertical line at the beginning of the syllable.
Unstressed
- Unstressed- Syllables that have no stress at all.
In English almost all of these have a schwa for their nucleus or a sonorant consonant.
Syllable reduction
- Syllable reduction- usually results in use of a schwa (centralised vowel, sometimes /ɪ/ or a syllabic consonant (or omission of the syllable completely)
Vowel reduction
Vowel reduction- is where vowel in a syllable (usually) becomes a schwa or syllabic consonant- this only occurs in the unstressed syllable
Why is awareness of stress important
- An awareness of stress is important- because stressed/accented syllables form the framework for intonation (the melodic pattern of an utterance)
- In an English utterance there ill be one word which carries the main stress but there will still be unstressed syllables in that word
Syllable timed
- Syllable timed.
Syllables are perceived as being approximately equal in length.
Little variation in word stress and no reduced vowels
Eg French, Spanish, Welsh
Stress timed
- Stress timed.
Syllables can last different amounts of time- but there appears to be a fairly constant amount of time between stressed syllables.
Eg English, German, Russain
The stressed syllable in a word can change when its put into a sentence eg:
Dessert vs Chocolate dessert
Waterloo vs Waterloo station
Tone unit structure
- Each utterance is composed of a ‘tone unit’
- There are four elements: pre head, head, nucleus and tail.
- Only the nucleus (tomic syllable) must be present.
- The nucleus is the most significant syllable in the tone unit (non necessarily the loudest or most prominent stress)
- The nucleus is where the main intonation or ‘tune’ of the utterance starts.
