English phonetics Intonation Rythm and stress Rhythm

English phonetics Intonation Rythm and stress

Rhythm • In English rhythm is based on the contrast of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Rhythm • The rhythmic beat will consist of stressed syllables. Any unstressed syllables occurring between the stressed syllables will be compressed as far as possible in order to allow the next stressed syllable to come in the regular beat.

Rhythm • As the stressed syllables are not divided by an equal number of unstressed syllables, the compression of unstressed syllables will be different.

Rhythm • And the degree of compression will be highly dependant of their number: the more unstressed syllables occur between the stressed ones the quicker they are pronounced.

Rhythm • Rhythm in English is not just something extra added to intonation and pronunciation of vowels and consonants, but it is the guide to the structure of intonation in the spoken message.

Rhythm • Formally, there may exist rhythmic patterns with 2, 3, 4, 5 and even 6 stressed syllables fully pronounced. The 5 -and 6 -stress pattern mainly occur in reading, where the beat is more regular. • E. g. Most topics are bored enough to allow more than a single approach, so students need to decide what points to emphasize.

Rhythm • In speech 2 - or 3 -stress pattern is considered to be more effective and less obscure for the speaker as well as for the listener who interprets the message. E. g. - But I have a FEEling, + perhaps the WRONG one, + that’s the right way to solve this PROBlem. - He WASN’T the inter. VIEWER

Rhythm • It may be objected that we have no way of knowing that the native speaker relies especially on hearing the stressed words in an utterance in order to be able to interpret it.

Stress • Stress, a greater degree of prominence given to a syllable, can be viewed from a perceptible point of view. - Accordingly, any syllable on which the pitch of the voice moves (rises or falls) will be stressed. - Any syllable which is markedly longer than the surrounding syllables will also be stressed.

Stress • Sometimes stressed syllables are said to be produced with more force than unstressed syllables, but experiments show that this basic notion is not enough to state the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables. • One valuable guide to distinguish stressed syllable from unstressed one is the degree of explicitness of articulation of the syllable. This is the feature of both slow colloquial and informal speech.

Stress • The distribution of stress in an utterance is determined by the interaction of two factors: semantic and rhythmic, which represent the functional and formal aspects of an utterance, respectively.

Stress • Semantically, the occurrence of stresses in any given utterance varies according to the context and highly depends on the pragmatic intentions the speaker has. E. g. The company's ТRADE balance + was in the RED + by a hundred and ninety five million POUNDS.

Stress • Rhythmically, the distribution of stresses in an utterance may involve even grammatical words into the rhythmic patterning; grammatical words having no semantic value in themselves. Cf. : E. g. Is 'Mary here? 'Is sh here?

Stress • The location of nuclear stress in an utterance is not entirely semantically based but very often determined by rhythmic factors. E. g. And 'finally she 'bought the thing she wanted.