Supra-segmental Units

The second part of this unit is a continuation of the study of the phonological level of linguistic analysis, only this session will analyze the supra-segmental units: stress, intonation, and rhythm –also known as the prosodic elements of language, force, melody, and tempo. The best starting point for these prosodic units is precisely the fact that we consider them phonological units of the language, thus give them the status of “phonemes” too in the sense that they also, as well as the segmental units or sounds, are distinctive i.e. they can affect communication.

In linguistics, prosody describes all the acoustic (heard) properties of speech that cannot be predicted from the orthographic or similar spelling. So, prosody is relative to a default pronunciation of a phoneme/ segment/syllable.

A precise definition of prosody and its effects depends upon the language. For instance, some languages make lexical distinctions (noun from verb) based on stress E.g. Spanish {término (N) - termino (V - in present) –terminó (V – in past). 

Vowels are generally more completely realized in accented (stressed) or focused (important) syllables. From an acoustic point of view, it means that the formant structure is farther from the structure of a neutral vowel (typically the schwa), and closer to the vowels that one might see in the stressed syllables of a carefully spoken word. Thus, the precise formant structure of vowels normally contains a mixture of prosodic and lexical information.

The prosodic features of a unit of speech, whether a syllable, word, phrase, or clause, are typically called supra-segmental features because they typically affect all the segments (sounds) of the unit.
Prosodic units do not always correspond to grammatical units, although both may reflect how the brain processes speech. Phrases and clauses are grammatical concepts, but they may have prosodic equivalents, commonly called http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prosodic_unit&action=edit prosodic units or intonation units.

One common prosodic distinction is between continuing prosody, which in English orthography we might mark with a comma, and final prosody, which we might mark with a full stop (period). This is the common usage of the IPA symbols for "minor" and "major" prosodic breaks. See American English

Pronunciation
It can be assumed that many people can communicate and interpret extensibly using the supra-segmental or prosodic elements in their voice to extend emotions and clever nuances in conversation. However, it should be noted that not everyone is assumed to be able to fully understand or even acknowledge such extensive tonal characteristics in particular speech, even in their native language.

STRESS
Stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word (word stress) or in a sentence (sentence stress). The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense; although in ELT we prefer to leave that term to make reference to a more general use of prosody involving all supra-segmental units.
The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent. In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed syllables — so-called pitch accent (or musical accent) in most oriental languages. In other languages, they may bear either higher or lower pitch than surrounding syllables depending on the sentence type. There are also dynamic stress languages (loudness), qualitative accent or stress (full vowels), and quantitative accent or stress (length) as English and Spanish.

In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue

-"Is it brunch tomorrow?"  -"No, it's dinner tomorrow."

In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the syllables of "tomorrow" would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of "dinner", the emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as "din" in "dinner" are louder and longer. Unstressed syllables typically have a vowel which is closer to a neutral position (the schwa), while stressed vowels are more fully realized. In contrast, stressed and unstressed vowels in Spanish share the same quality—unlike English, Spanish has no reduced vowels. Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress (as in English and Spanish) is accompanied by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract.

Although there are linguists and particularly phoneticians who do not like to refer to stress rules in English due to the variability  of its prosody, especially for pragmatic reasons, for applied linguistics and teachers in general, these simple “unstable” rules come very at handy with ELL’s; Some of them are the following:

• Two syllable words are usually stressed on the first syllable. In French for example the tendency is towards the last syllable.

E.g., never, Tuesday, dinner, pencil

• Compound verbs are usually stressed on the second syllable.

E.g., understand, overlook, outrun, undertake

• Compound nouns are usually stressed on the first syllable.

E.g., drugstore, textbook, weatherman, newspaper

• For words that have “converted” from nouns to verbs or vise versa, nouns are stressed on the first syllable and verbs on the second (accentual conversion)

E.g., conduct (N), conduct (V) – contrast (N), contrast (V) – progress (N), progress (V)
The most important rule, however, is the one that affects the sentence stress pattern because it is the one that will influence the rest of the supra-segmental units in speech.

• In English sentences, in normal utterances where there is no other emotive intention or subliminal message, the words that carry sentence stress are only content words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns and interjections) whereas function words (articles and determiners in general, prepositions, and conjunctions) usually go unstressed forming an accentual cluster around the stressed content words.

E.g. I need to see your parents today.

• Finally, for the same above mentioned rule, any alteration of the “normal” sentence stress distribution will change the intended “meaning” of the message in question.

E.g.  I need to see your parents today. (normal)
        I need to see your parents today. (not the principal, but I)
       I need to seeyour parents today. (not Susan’s)
       I need to see your parents today. (not tomorrow)