PRACTICAL Ph&Ph 2:
Suprasegmental
pronunciation of English
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Prosodic (suprasegmental) features include:
•Stress
•Rhythm
•Intonation
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•… and secondary features such as voice quality, tempo and loudness.
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Suprasegmental features
•… influence all the segments in both their realisations and overall perceptions.
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•… are important indicators of the speaker‘s gender identity, age, level of education and social
status, more so than individual words and sounds.
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•… in lay terms, they could be characterised as the way a speaker uses his/her voice.
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Stress in English
a) Three basic facts
•The prominent syllable of each content word is stressed.
•Stress is a combination of loudness, pitch and sometimes longer duration (length).
•Grammar words and those considered unimportant to the utterrance are weak forms (reduced words and
syllables).
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Stress in English
b) Idiosyncracies
•The alterations of stressed (accented) and unstressed (reduced) syllables are referred to as
gradation and are the result of the historical development of English where the Germanic OE
underwent the influence of French.
•Compare the stress patterns of German, French and your mother tongue.
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Stress in English
c) Vowels as carriers of voice
•Vowels have their full qualities in stressed syllables. •Rarely, they have their full qualities as
strong vowels in words such as impact [ˈɪmpæʔt]. •The schwa /ə/ or the syllabic /n/, /l/, /r/ are
used in most unstressed syllables.
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•More in Gimson Word Stress in the course‘s Learning Materials in the IS.
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Rhythm in English
a) Timing of stresses
•Czech and Slovak are syllable-timed lanuages. Each syllable, stressed or unstressed, is allowed an
equal amount of time.
•English is a stress-timed language. Utterrances can be divided into stress groups, i.e. logical
segments of speech containing one stressed syllable plus no, one or more unstressed syllables
before and after it. Stress groups have the same duration no matter how many syllables they
contain, see e.g. a Halloween rhyme with stress groups divided by bar lines:
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Rhythm in English
b) Exercise
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•ˈTrick or   |ˈtreat         |ˈTrick or|ˈtreat|
•ˈGive me |ˈsomething|ˈnice to|ˈeat|
•ˈIf you      |ˈdon’t         |ˈI don’t |ˈcare|
•ˈI will        |ˈsmell your|ˈunder  |ˌwear.
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English stress and rhythm
c) The three rules
•You only stress words you wouldn’t leave out in a text message
•Stressed syllables are at constant distances from each other
•Any unstressed syllables at the beginning of a stress group are said very quickly.
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Rhythm in English
d) How it works
•Simple stress patterns are common in casual speech and their perception is key for
intelligibility.
•Regular stress and rhythm can be important in news reporting and lecturing where the regularity
and predictability contributes to comprehension.
•Try how the above rules work on a more complicated Halloween rhyme:
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Rhythm in English
e) Exercise
•Applying the rules above, try to read this other Halloween rhyme:
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Pin by Roberta Busdra on inglese | Halloween poems, Pumpkin poem, Halloween preschool
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Rhythm in English
f) More in the IS
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•For more practice, see Gimson Sentence Stress in the course‘s Learning Materials in the IS.
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Intonation in English
a) Why not treated here
•… can only be learned by observation of appropriate models.
•… will take care of itself if stress and rhythm are well grasped and the nucleus is correctly
signposted.
•… is often an indicator of a regional/social dialect.
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Intonation in English
b) The nucleus
•… is the key stress in a segment of speech. Cz/Sl = end, Eng = nucleus.
•Workout music source.
•- Let‘s go to the theatre.
•    – The Players‘ Theatre?
•This is a pre-recorded Halloween revision of suprasegmental behaviour in English.
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Prosodic behaviour in GenAm and GB compared
#1, #2
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•GenAm devotion to vowels;
•vowels more open, nasal setting
•GB devotion to consonants
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•voice carries more
•voice carries less
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#3, #4
•tempo slower, louder in vol.
•      tempo faster, quieter in
•                       volume
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•volume decreases during utterrance
•volume increases during utterrance
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#5, #6, #7
•more items stressed
•fewer items stressed
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•narrower pitch range
•wider pitch range
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•volume used for emphasis
•pitch used for emphasis
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Reflection point:
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•   Do the above speech habits indicate differences in mentalities, degree of speakers‘ confidence
or just generally accepted language behaviour?
•   In what ways do our mother tongues‘ suprasegmental behaviours differ?
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Have a spooky Halloween!
•Sources:
•Gimson‘s Pronunciation of English
•Gimson, A.C. A practical course of English pronunciation
•Collins and Mees Practical Phonetics and Phonology
•Meier, P. Accents and Dialects for the Stage and Screen
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COVID-19 might be scary, but many local establishments are still finding ways to celebrate
Halloween - East Idaho News
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