Lesson 2: Phonetics and Phonology
Prosodic Features and Conclusions
In addition to stress, intonation, tempo and rhythm called ‘prosodic features’, we have other effects produced by the alteration of the quality of the voice, which makes it breathy or husky , thus changing the timbre. All these are seen as paralinguistic features. Stress or loudness is necessary to give emphasis, combined with other things such as changes of tone and tempo.
The aim of stress is to convey certain kinds of meaning in reference to semantics and pragmatics. It can show us ‘urgency’ or ‘anger’ or ‘command’. Intonation deals with the tone of voice. We have different levels of pitch: if we want to ask a question, we use a rising intonation, while if we wish to make a simple statement, we use a falling intonation.
Tempo, on the contrary, is the speed at which we speak and can be quick or slow. All this may depend on the situation in which we find ourselves. It can also reflect some kinds of meaning or attitude when we are giving, for instance, a real answer to a question, being perhaps so rapid as to convey distraction or rage.
Rhythm includes patterns of stress, tempo and pitch. We find formal and repetitive rhythm in music, rap, poetry , but more or less all speech has rhythm.
The accent is unique and personal, too, and the use of our sound system can be adapted to different situations.
However, we think that accents serve to mark out people by geographical region, by social class and by education. Moreover, the so - called received pronunciation (RP) is a special accent, a regionally neutral accent employed as a standard for broadcasting and some other kinds of public speaking.
The syllable however plays an important role in the prosody. What follows now is a scheme to clarify the main features of Prosody itself: “Length”: the relative duration of a number of successive syllables or the duration of a given syllable in one environment relative to the same syllable in a different environment. It can be measured by using the spectrogram. There are some confounding factors such as difficulty in determining syllable boundaries or the intrinsic length of some vowels versus others ‘tense versus lax’. “Loudness”: there are changes of loudness that occur within one syllable or the relative loudness of a number of successive syllables that are formed by variations in air pressure which comes from the lungs. It is used in English as a basic means to indicate word stress even if differences can also be obvious in length and pitch.
Factors that confound can be seen in intrinsic loudness of some vowels versus others ‘/a/ versus /i/. “Pitch”: the varying height of the pitch of the voice over one syllable or over a series of syllables which are created by changes in the rate of vocal vibration. Factors that confound can be seen in intrinsic pitch of some vowels versus others /i/ versus /o/. “Intonation”: it means melody of speech and implies rhythmic structure of language. Its unity of analysis consists in ‘tone group’, ‘foot’, ‘tonic syllable’ and the Tone Group Boundary Criteria is composed of: Presence of a pause; Major Pitch Movement; Lengthening of a word-final syllable; Register or voice quality change.
The human language is characterized by a complex system of signs. The linguistic system, with the many functions peculiar to it, represents from our earliest age an effective means of communication made up of symbols, arbitrary and conventional representations endowed with a “double articulation” system which allows man linguistic creativity. “ Double articulation “is the property by means of which languages are organized in two different structural levels.
The phonic units (without meaning),when combined, result in a unity of a superior level endowed with meaning. The level of sounds (without meaning) is called the second articulation, while the superior level (with meaning) is called the first articulaton. As the Italian linguist ‘De Mauro’ says in his book "Linguistica elementare" written in 1998, in language there is something which is considerably different from walking, breathing, feeding, and this difference derives from the existence of a very large number of languages that are highly different even among themselves. Thus, the complexity of language as a mental and psychological phenomenum is such that we cannot understand all the aspects if we only adopt one point of view.
