Lecture 4

Introducing Phonetics and Linguistics

Prosody

Morphology

Lecture 4

Prosody

Morphology

• Prosody is the name of the speech elements of stress, rhythm and intonation, and they extend over stretches of utterances longer than segments (phonemes).
• They are also called ‘suprasegmentally’ features or features beyond the sound segment.
• All elements of prosody, stress, rhythm and intonation are used in spoken forms of language to represent speakers’ feelings or attitudes.
• Stress are of two types: word stress (lexical stress) and stress in connected utterances (sentence stress).
• Word stress: it is defined as the degree of the breath force placed on each syllable in a word. Strong stress is represented by the [’] placed before the stressed syllable. Factors such as loudness and higher pitch are involved in making a stressed syllable prominent.

        1. Each word has only one primary stress marked by the superscript marker [’].

        2. Some longer words may have a secondary degree of stress.

3. Unstressed syllables are not marked

        4. As a rule, the number of stressed syllables in a word corresponds to the number of vowels and diphthongs in it.  

The following are some word stress rules

1. Stress is placed on the first syllable of most nouns and adjectives consisting of two syllables. e.g., absence, India
2. The majority of verbs consisting of two syllables are stressed on the last syllable. e.g., record, expect
3. Stress is placed on the second last syllable  in words with –ic; -tion; or –sion at the end as in  e.g.,  magic, exhibition, division, etc.

• In many English words consisting of two syllables, the change of stress alters the grammatical classification of the word as in the following table. (see page 65)
• The change of stress alters grammatical classification but does not change any vowel or diphthong. (see p.65 table 2)

Sentence Stress is used in English where content words (nouns, adjectives, main or lexical verbs and adverbs) are stressed, and other words usually, the smaller function words (pronouns, articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions) are not stressed. Function words are also called grammatical words.

• When a syllable is not stressed (weak) in English, the schwa /e/ is a very likely sound.

Elision: It is the omission of a final or initial sound across word boundary or in the same word. When the sound /t/ or /d/  is used b/w two consonants, it is often omitted. e.g., pos(t)man, win(d)mill

Sentence focus: For emphasizing a certain part of a sentence, perhaps

For contrast or in answer to a previous question, we use extra stress or focus. e.g., John found the key

• You can emphasize any of the three elements, John, found, key Rhythm: It can be defined as a regular pattern of stress beats. It is repeated in a tempo-like fashion. It is achieved through the patterning of stressed and unstressed syllables as in poetry. e.g., My ’sister had been ’offered a ’good ’job ’earlier.    

• English is classified as a stress-timed language because in speech roughly the same time is needed for a native speaker to proceed from each stressed syllable to the next one.  
• Intonation deals primarily with the rise and fall of voice pitch. When the vocal cords vibrate faster the pitch rises, and when their vibration slows down, the pitch falls.
• Changes in intonation are used for expressing numerous shades of meaning. e.g., He’s coming (can be a statement or a question)
• An intonation group generally corresponds to a clause. e.g., /What are you reading?/

        In the following case, two intonation groups

        e.g., /What?/      /Are you reading?/

Morphology

• It is the study of word formation. The relationship between words and morphemes is like this:
• ‘Friend’ – a word with one morpheme
• ‘Uninteresting’- a word with three morphemes (un+inteerst+ing)

• A morpheme or morph is defined as the minimal meaningful unit. Eg, the word ‘impossible’ consists of two meaningful morphs ‘im + possible’. It cannot be further subdivided into any more meaningful units.

Free Morphemes: like the word possible, which has meaning and can stand on its own.  It is also called a stem or a root word. It is usually a lexical word.

Bound Morphemes: like the prefix –im in the word impossible. It cannot stand on their own. They have to join another morph to become meaningful.

Affixes, Prefixes, Suffixes

• Bound morphemes are grammar units that need to attach to a root to become meaningful. This process is called affixing.
• It can come at the beginning of a root word [un+kind] or at the end of it [kind+ness]
• Prefixes: an affix (bound morphemes) that is added at the beginning of a root word is called a prefix [unhappy, unseen]
• Suffixes: An affix  that is added at the end of a root word[teach+er]

• Inflectional Affixes: The bound morphemes that are affixed to a root word are not part of the original word form. They are prefixed or suffixed to it. They do not have a lexical meaning of their own, eg, the plural ‘s’ added to the singular  nouns or the past tense –ed added to the base form of the verb. [boy+s, clean+ed]
• Derivational Affixes: Some suffixes change the class of the root word to which they are added. These are called derivational affixes.

1. Suffixes added to nouns and adjectives change them into adverbs.

        Noun into Adverb: hour--hourly, week – weekly

        Adjective into Adverb: quick—quickly, intelligent—intelligently

2. Suffixes added to verbs or adjectives  change the verb or adjective into a noun

        Verb into Noun: teach—teacher, argue--argument

        Adjective into Noun: wise—wisdom, kind—kindness.

III. Suffixes added to adjectives change the adjective into a verb         length –lengthen, wide--widen.