Suprasegmentals and Others Tools in Speech and Theatre Arts

Suprasegmental features
and Prosody
Lect 6A&B LING1005/6105
Prosody
 An informal definition: The ‘music’ of a language, its
characteristic ‘melody’ and ‘rhythm’.
 A more formal definition: The system of prosodic
contrasts that a language employs.
 Supra-segmental features: Phonetic features that span
more than a single speech segment. Features that span a
whole syllable or are only apparent when one syllable is
compared with others in its neighbourhood.
 Typical suprasegmental features:
– Voice pitch
– Loudness or vocal effort
– Length or relative duration of a syllable
 Suprasegmental features realize or express prosodic
contrasts.
English Prosody
 Made up of three prosodic systems:
– Stress: operates at the level of the word
– Rhythm
– Intonation: operates at the level of the phrase or
whole utternace.
 Stress: the relative prominence of a syllable.
 Rhythm: patterns of stress in time.
 Intonation: the pitch pattern of an utterance.
Some complications
 Prosody in languages that are related to English can be
analysed under three main headings (word stress,
rhythm, intonation).
 However, for tone languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, and
many others) or other languages whose prosodic system
is quite different from that of English (like Japanese),
the 3-way division of prosody into stress, rhythm and
intonation applies only in part.
 Prosodic interference or transfer effects (interference of
L1 prosody on L2) can be a major source of difficulty for
second language learners.
 More on this later.
English word stress
 Locate the main stress (most prominent syllable) in
these words:
electric electrician permit (n) permit (v)
   
 Locate the unstressed syllables in the words above.
 Unstressed syllables undergo vowel reduction.
 Syllables that are not reduced, but not the most
prominent in the word are called ‘secondary stressed’
syllables.
 
 
 Hence we may distinguish 3 levels of stress in
English words:
– Primary: main stress or accent
– Secondary: unreduced and not accented
– Tertiary: reduced or unstressed.
 Some word stress alternations in English:
diplomat diplomacy diplomatic
photograph photography photographic
  
  
 It is sometimes hard to distinguish between

secondary and tertiary levels of stress.
 or  ??
 There is some dialect variation with vowel reduction.
 English word stress ‘likes’ to follow an alternating pattern
of stressed and unstressed syllables:
  
S U S U S U S S U S U
Word stress is culminative in English.
 Polysyllabic words in English have a single center of
stress prominence, the accented syllable.
 Even in long words, which might be said to have two
primary stressed syllables:
psycholinguistics

 One syllable in the word tends to carry the accent in the
intonation contour of a whole utternace.
   (incredulous)
 The stress pattern of a word ‘culminates’ in a single
syllable – the one that potentially carries phrase accent.
Compound words
 Words that are composed of words:
hot-dog hot dog
[htdg] [ht dg]
compound phrase
look-in look in
[lk] [lk ]
<opportunity> <look in>
 Compound word has initial stress.
 The second element of the compound is de-
accented. (Compared with the 2nd element of the
phrase)
 Only one accented syllable per word.
Stress is important for the sound pattern of
English words
 Non-native speakers of English should
practice hearing and producing these
stress contrasts:
an insult to insult
an overflow to overflow
an increase to increase
a walkout to walk out
 See exercises from Peter Ladefoged.
Stress and word class in English
 All major lexical items carry primary stress (have
an accentable syllable).
 Function words are normally unstressed
(reduced)
John was sure that the keys were on the table.
 The preposition ‘on’ which carries primary stress,
is an exception to the rule in this case.
 The accented syllables on lexical items and the
unstressed function words set up a rhythmic
pattern in English utterances.
English rhythm
 Stressed syllables tend to occur at regular
intervals of time.
Stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time.
 You can usually tap in regular time to the primary
stressed syllables in a fluent English phrase.
 English is said to be a ‘stress-timed’ language.
 Other languages are said to be ‘syllable timed’ (e.g.
French) or ‘mora timed’ (Japanese, Finnish).
 No language is perfectly rhythmic (isochronous) and this
classification of types of language rhythm remains
controversial.
Summarizing: English stress
 Three levels of prominence (stress) in English
words.
 Depending on whether a syllable may carry
accent, or undergo reduction:
Accented Reduced
Primary stress yes no stressed
Secondary stress no no stressed
Tertiary stress no yes unstressed
 English stress is culminative.
 Alternating stressed and unstressed syllables set
up rhythmic patterns in speech.
 English is said to be stress-timed.
Phonetic expression of stress in English.
 Is complex and involves several supra-segmental
features:
 Pitch prominence: accented syllables carry the
main changes of voice pitch in the utterance.
 Loudness: stressed syllables are louder.
 Length: stressed syllables are longer in duration.
 Gestural magnitude: Length and loudness
differences may reflect a common factor that
prominent syllables are produced with larger
articulatory and vocal gestures, which resist
reduction and coarticulation effects – properties
of unstressed syllables.
Tone
 Tone languages use voice pitch (and
possibly voice quality) to make lexical
contrasts (to distinguish words).
 The domain of tone is the syllable (Hence
tone is a supra-segmental feature).
 The number of tones a language uses is
quite limited.
 Tone and word stress tend to be
‘competing’ prosodic systems.
Vietnamese tones
350
300
250 a
á
200
à
150 ạ
ả
100 ã
50
0
Types of tone language
 (Standard) Chinese and Vietnamese are
examples of contour tone languages.
 Their tones are made up of dynamic voice
pitch changes (along with voice quality).
 Register tone languages (predominating in
Africa) have level tones, usually in just
two pitch registers: high and low.
A West African register tone language
Tone and word stress
 May be regarded as competing systems of word prosody. Why
might this be so?
 The phonetic features which carry tone and stress are similar.
 Tonal contrasts and stress contrasts may make competing
requirements on the speech mechanism.
 In English, there is only one accent bearing syllable per word.
Some syllables undergo reduction.
 Stress contrasts exist between syllables in different positions
in a word: permit permit
 In Vietnamese, every syllable carries a tone. Syllables are not
reduced.
 Tone contrasts would be threatened by syllable reduction.
 Does Vietnamese have word stress? A controversial issue.
Intonation
 The melody of a phrase or whole utternace.
 What would an utterance sound like without its
intonation contour?
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
 This utterance was generated by a speech
synthesiser, where voice pitch can be separately
controled from other parameters of speech
production.
 Changes in voice pitch are the main phonetic
cue for intonation.
 But the duration and pausing pattern in an
utterance are also crucial cues for intonation.
The elements of an intonation contuour
 The major pitch peaks and voice pitch changes, which
are known as ‘accents’.
 The shape and location of these accents.
 The relative duration of segments and the location of
pauses (junctures).
spectrogram
Voice pitch trace

bird hand two bush
Meaning and the shape of pitch accents
 The meaning of a pitch accent will be strongly
affected by the context in which it appears.
 But some generalizations can be made about the
meanings of basic accent types:
yes yes yes yes yes
fall low rise level high rise risefall
‘agree’ ‘go on’ bored surprise insist

‘assert’ impatient question
neutral
Functions of intonation: What does
intonation do?
 Illocutionary: marking speaker’s attitude and intended
purpose of the utterance.
– Asserting, pleading, insisting, inquiring,…
 Demarcative: marking phrase boundaries.
– Related to syntactic parsing, identifying phrase boundaries
 Highlighting: marking ‘new’ or ‘important’ information.
– When a topic is first introduced into discourse, it is likely to be
placed at the intonational centre of the phrase, to be thus
highlighted to draw the listener’s attention. On subsequent
mention, the item shifts out of intonational focus. It is now old
information.
Some intonational contrasts to analyse
 Would you like tea or coffee? A: B:

 A lion is a mammal. A: B:
 Your mom will marry a lawyer.
 Go on. A: B:
 When danger threatens your children call
the police. A: B:
 Jenny gave Peter instructions to follow.
A: B:

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Suprasegmental features

 It is sometimes hard to distinguish between

Voice pitch trace

‘agree’ ‘go on’ bored surprise insist

 Would you like tea or coffee? A: B:

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