The Suprasegmentals or Prosodic Feature of A Language.

GOOD DAY!!!
PRESENTED BY: GROUP 4
Maychel Dumago
Jerry Baldesma
Gwyneth Francisco
Rovic Igloria
Lee Ann Manapo
The
suprasegmentals
or Prosodic Feature of a Language

What is suprasegmentals?
Suprasegmental, also called prosodic
feature, in phonetics, a speech feature
such as stress, tone, or word juncture
that accompanies or is added over
consonants and vowels; these features
are not limited to single sounds but often
extend over syllables, words, or phrases.
LANGUAGE
Language is more than just a series of
typical speech sounds put together to
derive with meaningful units. A number of
features like tone, or intonation, beat ,
stress and juncture are considered
phonemic, since changing any of them
would result in a change in meaning of a
word or an utterance.
https://www.slideshare.net/dewiitusurya/suprasegmental-or-prosodic-properties
The three main patterns of
Intonation are: falling
intonation, rising intonation and
fall-rise intonation.
Falling Intonation
Falling intonation describes how the voice falls on the final
stressed syllable of a phrase or a group of words. A falling
intonation is very common in wh-questions.
* Where’s the nearest p↘ost-office?
* What time does the film f↘inish?
We also use falling intonation when we say something definite, or

when we want to be very clear about something:
* I think we are completely l↘ost.
* OK, here’s the magaz↘ine you wanted.
Rising Intonation
Rising intonation describes how the voice
rises at the end of a sentence. Rising
intonation is common in yes-no questions:
* I hear the Health Centre is expanding.
So, is that the new d↗octor?
* Are you th↗irsty?
Fall-rise intonation
Fall-rise intonation describes how the voice falls and then rises. We use
fall-rise intonation at the end of statements when we want to say that we
are not sure, or when we may have more to add:
* I do↘n’t support any football team at the m↘om↗ent. (but I may
change my mind in future).
* It rained every day in the firs↘t w↗eek. (but things improved after that).
We use fall-rise intonation with questions, especially when we request

information or invite somebody to do or to have something. The
intonation pattern makes the questions sound more polite:
* Is this your cam↘er↗a?
* Would you like another co↘ff↗ee?
In the aspect of intonation,
“Excuse Me” if uttered in 3
different ways would bring three
different functions expressing
three different messages. The line
shows the rise and fall of the
voice.
UTTERANCE FUNCTIONS MESSAGE
Excuse me Apologizing I’m sorry
Excuse me Attracting
Attention
Please pay
attention to me
Excuse me Expressing
displeasure
How dare you
Likewise, intonation is essential for
interpreting single word phrases. If the
word “right” is said with the pitch of the
rising voice, it is likely heard as a question
or as an invitation to a speaker to
continue.
While, falling pitch is more likely heard
as confirmation or agreement.
Beats or stress
is the relative emphasis that
may be given to certain syllables
in a word or to certain words in
a phrase or sentence.
Degrees of Stress?
If a given word has more than one stress (or foot), are they all
equal, or some feet stronger than others?
No
complete agreement.
Ladefoged suggests that words are not marked as to which foot is
stronger, but rather this increased strength is due to
(independent) other factors.
Degree of composed of:
full vs. reduced vowel
stressed vs. unstressed syllables
(pitch-)accented vs. unaccented: last stressed syllable in phrase
receives tonic accent.
With regards to speech, differences between
phonemes are not caused by many significant
sound contrast
For example, stress is significant when the
word “record” pronounced with the first
syllable sounding stronger than the second.
English speakers hear it as a noun, but when
the second syllable is stronger , the word is
heard as a verb.
KINDS OF
STRESS
*Tonic stress
*Emphatic stress
*Contrastive stress
*New information stress
Tonic Stress
Tonic stress refers to the syllable in a word which
receives the most stress in an intonation unit. An
intonation unit has one tonic stress. It's important to
remember that a sentence can have more than one
intonation unit, and therefore have more than one
tonic stress.
Here are some examples of intonation units with the tonic stress
bolded:
He's waiting
He's waiting / for his friend
He's waiting / for his friend / at the station
Generally, the final tonic stress in a sentence receives the most
stress. In the above example, 'station' receives the strongest stress.
There are a number of instances in which the stress changes from

this standard.
Emphatic Stress
• If you decide to emphasize something, you
can change the stress from the principal
noun to another content word such as an
adjective (big, difficult, etc.), intensifier
(very, extremely, etc.) This emphasis calls
attention to the extraordinary nature of
what you want to emphasize.
For example:
*That was a difficult test. - Standard statement
*That was a difficult test. - Emphasizes how difficult the test was
There are a number of adverbs and modifiers which tend to be used to

emphasize in sentences that receive emphatic stress:
*Extremely
*Terribly
*Completely
*Utterly
*Especially
Contrastive Stress
Contrastive stress is used to point out the difference
between one object and another. Contrastive stress tends
to be used with determiners such as 'this, that, these and
those'.
For example:
*I think I prefer this color.
*Do you want these or those curtains?
Contrastive stress is also used to bring out a given word in a sentence
which will also slightly change the meaning.
*He came to the party yesterday. (It was he, not someone else.)
*He walked to the party yesterday. (He walked, rather than drove.)
*He came to the party yesterday. (It was a party, not a meeting or
something else.)
*He came to the party yesterday. (It was yesterday, not two weeks ago or
some other time.)
New Information Stress
• When asked a question, the requested information is naturally
stressed more strongly.
For example:
• Where are you from? - I come from Seattle, in the USA.

• What do you want to do? - I want to go bowling.
• When does class begin? - The class begins at nine o'clock.
Juncture
the set of features in speech that enable a
hearer to detect a word or phrase boundary.
An important type of juncture is the
suprasegmental phonemic cue by means of
which a listener can distinguish between two
otherwise identical sequences of sounds that
have different meanings.
THE
END

The Suprasegmentals or Prosodic Feature of A Language.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Suprasegmentals or Prosodic Feature of A Language.

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Suprasegmentals or Prosodic Feature of A Language.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

GOOD DAY!!!

PRESENTED BY: GROUP 4

or Prosodic Feature of a Language

We also use falling intonation when we say something definite, or

We use fall-rise intonation with questions, especially when we request

Excuse me Apologizing I’m sorry

There are a number of instances in which the stress changes from

There are a number of adverbs and modifiers which tend to be used to

• Where are you from? - I come from Seattle, in the USA.

You might also like