User:Calvacr/Prosody (linguistics)

Prosodic features are suprasegmental, since they are properties of units of speech that are defined over groups of sounds rather than single segments. When talking about prosodic features, it is important to distinguish between the personal characteristics that belong to an individual's voice (for example, their habitual pitch range, intonation patterns, etc.) and the independently variable prosodic features that are used contrastively to communicate meaning (for example, the use of changes in pitch to indicate the difference between statements and questions). Personal characteristics that belong to an individual are not linguistically significant while prosodic features are. It is not clear which aspects of prosody are found in all languages and which are specific to particular languages and dialects.

Intonation
Some writers (e.g., O'Connor and Arnold) have described intonation entirely in terms of pitch, while others (e.g., Crystal) propose that "intonation" is a combination of several prosodic variables. English intonation is often said to be based on three aspects:


 * The division of speech into units
 * The highlighting of particular words and syllables
 * The choice of pitch movement (e.g., fall or rise)

The choice of pitch movement and the highlighting of particular words to create different intonation patterns can be seen in the following English examples:

"That's a cat?"

"Yup. That's a cat."

"A cat? I thought it was a mountain lion!"

The example above is an example of using intonation to highlight particular words and to employ rising and falling of pitch to change meaning. If read out-loud, the pitch of your voice moves in different directions on word "cat." In the first line, the pitch goes up indicating a question. In the second line, pitch falls indicating a statement or confirmation. Finally, in the third line, a complicated rise-fall pattern indicates incredulity. Each pitch/intonation pattern communicates a different meaning.

An additional pitch-related variation is pitch range; speakers are capable of speaking with a wide range of pitch (this is usually associated with excitement), while at other times with a narrow range. English makes use of changes in key; shifting one's intonation into the higher or lower part of one's pitch range is believed to be meaningful in certain contexts.

Stress
Stress functions as the means of making a syllable prominent. Stress may be studied in relation to individual words (named "word stress" or lexical stress) or in relation to larger units of speech (traditionally referred to as "sentence stress" but more appropriately named "prosodic stress"). Stressed syllables are made prominent by several variables. Stress is typically associated with the following:


 * pitch prominence (a pitch level that is different from that of neighboring syllables, or a pitch movement)
 * increased length (duration)
 * increased loudness (dynamics)
 * differences in timbre: in English and some other languages, stress is associated with aspects of vowel quality (whose acoustic correlate is the formant frequencies or spectrum of the vowel). Unstressed vowels tend to be centralized relative to stressed vowels, which are normally more peripheral in quality

Some of these cues are more powerful or prominent than others. Cruttenden, for example, writes "Perceptual experiments have clearly shown that, in English at any rate, the three features (pitch, length and loudness) form a scale of importance in bringing syllables into prominence, pitch being the most efficacious, and loudness the least so".

When pitch prominence is the major factor, the resulting prominence is often called accent rather than stress.

There is considerable variation from language to language concerning the role of stress in identifying words or in interpreting grammar and syntax.