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Copy of Copy of Suprasegmentals
Suprasegmental features
Rhythm is important in English
There are rules governing all three features.
English is a more stress-timed language - its stressed syllables tend to be spaced out more or less evenly.
Weaker syllables that fall in between the stress beats are pronounced more quickly and less strongly.
This can sound to learners as if we are "swallowing" our words.
The main stress in a sentence can be moved to change what the speaker wants to emphasize.
So if the stress is not carefully placed the wrong meaning might be conveyed.
Word stress remains on the same syllable all the time, unless the speaker wants to express contradiction.
Falls and rises in intonation follow rules about utterance type: statement, question, command
Intonation and stress can also be used to express emotion
All of these suprasegmentals are important because they carry part of the meaning.
A word or phrase can be misheard or not understood at all because the word stress was misplaced.
Misunderstandings can happen just because the intonation was not appropriate. (People can sound rude without meaning to.)
A non-native speaker can be hard work to listen to if their rhythm of speech is less pronounced than a native speaker.
We have moveable sentence stress in English
Individual words and phrases also have their own stress patterns, which are more fixed.
Some words have a stronger beat in the sentence rhythm than others. This is called sentence stress.
The rhythm is
linked to the
sentence stress
All utterances have a beat
Intonation
(the melody of our utterances)
Stress
Intonation is more like the "melody" of our speech.
Intonation is the way our voices rise and fall as we speak
We use intonation along with stress to show emphasis
intonation allows us to
express surprise, exasperation, boredom
etc. etc.
Rhythm
(the "beat" of our utterances)