Lecture 6 The Prosodic Level of Contemporary English

Lecture 6 The Prosodic Level of Contemporary English

Plan 1. Intonation and Prosody 2. Prosodic Units 3. Prosodic Subsystems: Pitch, Utterance Stress, Rhythm, Tempo, Pauses

List of Terms intonation n prosody n rhythmic group n intonation group n utterance n supraphrasal unit n speech melody (pitch): pitch level, pitch range n utterance stress n rhythm n tempo n pauses n

Phonemes, syllables and words, as lower-level linguistic units, are grouped by various prosodic means into a higher unit - the utterance. Every concrete utterance, alongside of its phonemic and syllabic structures has a certain prosodic structure, or intonation.

Intonation (in a broad sense) – is a complex unity of five components, which enables a speaker to express his thoughts, emotions and attitudes towards the contents of an utterance and a hearer: (1) speech melody (pitch) (2) utterance stress (3) tempo (4) rhythm (5) voice timbre Intonation (in a narrow sense) is reduced only to one component – speech melody (pitch)

The notion of prosody is broader than the notion of intonation. "Prosody" and "prosodic" denote all non-segmental phenomena, those which do not enter into the system of segmental phonemes (the utterance, the intonation group, the rhythmic group, the syllable). Prosody of the utterance and intonation are equivalent notions.

The Hierarchy of Prosodic Units na syllable the smallest prosodic unit which has no meaning of its own, but it is significant for constituting hierarchically higher prosodic units; prosodic features of a syllable (tone, stress, duration) depend on its position and function in a rhythmic unit and an utterance na rhythmic (accentual) group (unit) is either one stressed syllable or a stressed syllable with a number of unstressed ones grouped around it; the stressed syllable is the nucleus of a rhythmic unit, the unstressed syllables are clitics (proclitics and enclitics); there as many rhythmic units in an utterance as there are stressed syllables in it

§an intonation group is a meaningful complex prosodic unit that structurally consists of one or several syllables and rhythmic groups and has a certain phonetic contour: stress, pitch, duration; minimally, an intonation group consists of one (stressed) syllable — the nucleus and maximally, it contains the prehead, the nucleus and the tail; the prehead, head and tail are non-obligatory elements of an intonation group, whereas the nucleus is an obligatory and the most important functional element

§an utterance is a higher unit in which prosodic features are actualized, the main prosodic communicative unit which is characterized by semantic unity expressed by all the language means: lexical, grammatical, prosodic §a supraphrasal unit (hyperutterance) is formed by grouping utterances into complexes occupying a certain slot in the semantic structure of the text §a phonetic paragraph §a text

Prosodic Subsystems n pitch (speech melody) is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place with voiced sounds • the pitch level is determined by the pitch of the highestpitched syllable in an utterance; in unemphatic speech most phoneticians distinguish 3 pitch levels: high, mid, low. • the pitch range is the interval between the highest-pitched and the lowest-pitched syllable in an utterance. • the rate of speech variations may be different depending on the time during which these variations take place and on the range of the variations

The basic unit used to describe the pitch component is the tone depending on whether the pitch of the voice varies or remains unvaried. Tones are divided into static: *high *mid *low kinetic (terminal) *simple (falling (F), rising(R) *complex (R-F, F-R, R-F-R)

nutterance stress is the special prominence given to one or more words in an utterance The means, with the help of which the special prominence is achieved and the effect of stress is produced, are variations of pitch, loudness, length and quality. The subsystem of English utterance stress includes three basic subtypes: * nuclear stress * non-nuclear stress * partial stress

The distribution of stresses in an utterance depends on several factors: semantic, grammatical and rhythmical Stress in an utterance fulfills the same three functions as other components of prosody: § Constitutive § Distinctive § Identificatory

n rhythm is regularity or periodicity in the occurrence of a particular phenomenon in an utterance Languages differ in their rhythm mainly because of this phenomenon: in some languages the recurring phenomena are stresses, in others - syllables. English is considered to be mostly a language with stress-timed rhythm. Stress-timed rhythm presupposes that the utterance stress serves as a basis for the rhythmical organization of speech and that stresses segment the speech continuum into units of more or less equal length. These are accentual, or rhythmic units.

Acoustically, rhythm is a complex of variations in frequency, intensity and duration.

Special investigations show that the intervals of time between stressed syllables (peaks of prominence) are not absolutely equal. The question is how to divide utterances into rhythmic units. §A. CIasse, D. Abercrombie, H. Halliday, J. Pring, others define the unit of rhythm as a sequence of syllables from one stressed syllable to another (e. g. se ǁ mantic im ǁ portance) §G. Torsuyev, V. Vassilyev, R. Kingdon, J. O'Connor, W. Jassem, others consider that the boundaries between rhythmic units are determined by the semantic and grammatical relations between the words of an utterance (e. g. semantic ǁ importance)

ntempo is the rate at which utterances and their smaller units are pronounced On the acoustic level tempo is generally measured by the number of syllables per second. Tempo of speech may be determined by different factors: the size of audience, the acoustic qualities of the room, the individuality of the speaker. But most significant for linguistic study is how variations in tempo correlate with changes in meaning. Everybody's speech has some norm of tempo, so phoneticians generally distinguish normal tempo and two deviations from it: fast and slow.

npauses divide the speech continuum into units of different length and size. The main function of a pause is to segment connected speech into utterances and intonation groups and to delimit one utterance or intonation group from another. Phoneticians distinguish 3 main types of pauses: n silent pauses n pauses of perception n voiced (filled) pauses

List of Literature 1. 2. 3. Борисова, Л. В. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: учеб. пособ. для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. / Л. В. Борисова, А. А. Метлюк; под ред. Л. В. Борисовой. – Минск: Выш. шк. , 1980. – 144 с. Леонтьева, С. Ф. Теоретическая фонетика современного английского языка: учеб. для студентов педагогических вузов и университетов / С. Ф. Леонтьева. – М. : Издательство «Менеджер» , 2004. – 336 с. Соколова, М. А. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: учеб. для студ. высш. учеб. заведений / М. А. Соколова, К. Г. Гинтовт, И. С. Тихонова, Р. М. Тихонова. – М. : Гуманитар. Изд. Центр ВЛАДОС, 2004. – 289 с.