Discourse analysis session 12 and 13_07-12_12_2021 Stress and intonation in discourse.pdf
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This document provides information about stress and intonation in English discourse. It discusses topics like word stress patterns, stressed vs. unstressed syllables, content vs. function words, different types of stress (primary, secondary, etc.), stress shifts between verbs and nouns, stress in multi-word expressions, and intonation patterns in statements, questions, exclamations. It also provides examples of different intonation tones like fall, rise, fall-rise and links to additional online resources about English pronunciation.
![NOTATION:
Different systems exist for indicating syllabification and stress.
In IPA, primary stress is indicated by a high vertical line before
the syllable, secondary stress by a low vertical line.
Example: [sɪˌlæbəfɪˈkeɪʃən] or /sɪˌlæbəfɪˈkeɪʃən/. In English
dictionaries which do not use IPA, stress is typically marked with
a prime mark placed after the stressed syllable: /si-lab′-ə-fi-kay′-
shən/.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/discourseanalysissession12and1307-12122021stressandintonationindiscourse-230112075428-fc6ca2bd/85/Discourse-analysis-session-12-and-13_07-12_12_2021-Stress-and-intonation-in-discourse-pdf-22-320.jpg)
Discourse analysis session 12 and 13_07-12_12_2021 Stress and intonation in discourse.pdf
- 1. Department of English Language and Literature Major: English Language and Literature Discourse Analysis Session 12, 13 & 14: Stress and intonation in discourse Dr. Badriya Al Mamari Academic year 2021/2022
- 2. •See the supportive videos • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNbeSPp8RYKmHUliYBUDizg (Oxford online English) • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIapQVNq3D4 (JenniferESL: English with Jennifer) • Syllables and Word Stress - English Pronunciation Lesson
- 3. • In some ways, speaking a language is like singing a song. There are words, a melody and a rhythm. • Every language has its own music. • Even if you don't speak other languages, you can probably recognize them based on what you hear. • If you want to sound more natural in English, then you have to listen carefully to the musical quality of the English language.
- 4. • English is a stress-timed language. • For example, English words of two or more syllables have stressed and unstressed sounds. • For example “English”,(DA-da) “Eng_lish” • “Comm uni cation” • English sentences have stressed and unstressed words, too.
- 5. • We stress content words. Like nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs...Words that carry meaning. • Function words, like articles and prepositions, are normally unstressed. We say the more softly and generally faster. • Our content words fall on the beat. • Function words are off beat.
- 6. STRESS • In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIapQVNq3D4&list=RDCMU CEKXieT70wByfvZwP1CxdPQ&index=1 Also see : • https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/pte- success/0/steps/157550
- 7. Understanding Syllables To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables. Every word is made from syllables. Each word has one, two, three or more syllables. WORD NUMBER OF SYLLABLES Dog Dog 1 Quiet Qui-et 2 Expensive Ex-pen-sive 3 Interesting In-ter-est-ing 4 Unexceptional Un-ex-cep-tion-al 5
- 8. • Stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. • In English, stressed syllables are louder than non-stressed syllables. Also, they are longer and have a higher pitch. • English is a stress-timed language. That means that stressed syllables appear at a roughly steady tempo, whereas non- stressed syllables are shortened.
- 9. Examples • holiday, • alone, • admiration, • confidential, • degree, • weaker, • nervous, • parents
- 10. • In spoken language, grammatical words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, articles, …) usually do not receive any stress. • Lexical words, however, (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, …) must have at least one stressed syllable. • You can look up the word in a dictionary that provides IPA transcript. The symbol ' in front of a syllable indicates that the following syllable is stressed.
- 11. • In the English language, there is one phenomenon concerning stress that you can observe: • There are many verbs that consist of two syllables. Mostly, the stress is on the second syllable. • Due to historical developments, the same word has become a noun. The noun, however, is stressed differently: the stress is on the first syllable.
- 12. Examples: • to record = a record • to permit = a permit • to address = an address • to export = an export • to transport = a transport • to transfer = a transfer
- 13. TYPES OF STRESS: The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent. In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non- stressed syllables — so-called pitch accent (or musical accent). In other languages, they may bear either higher or lower pitch than surrounding syllables (a pitch excursion), depending on the sentence type. There are also dynamic accent (loudness), qualitative accent (full vowels) and quantitative accent (length). Stress may be characterized by more than one of these characteristics. Further, stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes the difference between the acoustic signals of stressed and unstressed syllables may be minimal.
- 14. • In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focussed or accented words. • For instance, consider the dialogue "Is it brunch tomorrow?" "No, it's dinner tomorrow." • In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the syllables of "tomorrow" would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of "dinner", the emphasized word. • In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as "din" in "dinner" are louder and longer. They may also have a different fundamental frequency, or other properties. • Unstressed syllables typically have a vowel which is closer to a neutral position, while stressed vowels are more fully realized. • Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. • Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress is accompanied by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract.
- 15. Emphatic Stress One reason to move the tonic stress from its utterance final position is to assign an emphasis to a content word, which is usually a modal auxiliary, an intensifier, an adverb, etc. Example: Compare the following examples. 1.It was very BOring. (unmarked) 2.It was VEry boring. (emphatic) 1.You mustn't talk so LOUDly. (unmarked) 2. You MUSTN'T talk so loudly. (emphatic) Some intensifying adverbs and modifiers (or their derivatives) that are emphatic by nature are Indeed, utterly, absolute, terrific, tremendous, awfully, terribly, great, grand, really, definitely, truly, literally, extremely, surely, completely, barely, entirely, very (adverb), very (adjective), quite, too, enough, pretty, far, especially, alone, only, own, -self.
- 16. 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: 1.I think I prefer this color. Do you want these or those curtains? 2.Do you like this one or THAT one? b) I like THIS one.
- 17. Tonic Stress An intonation unit almost always has one peak of stress, which is called 'tonic stress', or 'nucleus'. Because stress applies to syllables, the syllable that receives the tonic stress is called 'tonic syllable'. The term tonic stress is usually preferred to refer to this kind of stress in referring, proclaiming, and reporting utterances. Tonic stress is almost always found in a content word in utterance final position. Examples: I'm going. I'm going to London. I'm going to London for a holiday. A question does arise as to what happens to the previously tonic assigned syllables. They still get stressed, however, not as much as the tonic syllable, producing a three level stress for utterances. Then, the following is arrived at., where the tonic syllable is further capitalized: I'm going to London for HOliday.
- 18. New Information Stress In a response given to a wh-question, the information supplied, naturally enough, is stressed,. That is, it is pronounced with more breath force, since it is more prominent against a background given information in the question. The concept of new information is much clearer to students of English in responses to wh-questions than in declarative statements. Therefore, it is best to start with teaching the stressing of the new information supplied to questions with a question word: a)What's your NAME b) My name's GEORGE. a) Where are you FROM? b) I'm from WALES. a) Where do you LIVE b) I live in BONN a) When does the school term END b) It ends in MAY. a) What do you DO b) I'm a STUdent. The questions given above could also be answered in short form except for the last one, in which case the answers are: George, Wales, in Bonn in May
- 19. DEGRESS OF STRESS: Primary stress: It is the stronger degree of stress. Primary stress gives the final stressed syllable. Primary stress is very important in compound words. Secondary stress: Secondary stress is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word. Secondary stress gives the other lexically stressed syllables in a word. Secondary stress is important primarily in long words with several syllables
- 20. Tertiary stress: It includes the fully unstressed vowels. An unstressed vowel is the vowel sound that forms the syllable peak of a syllable that has no lexical stress. Quaternary stress: It includes the reduced vowels. Vowel reduction is the term in phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word which are perceived as "weakening”.
- 21. Two Word Stress • Knowing when and where to stress the words you use is very important for understanding, and therefore, as part of a good accent. • In an ordinary expression the two words are used to describe something like a "white HOUSE" (meaning a house that is painted white, and not blue or gray). • In this case the most important note is the noun because we are talking about a house that happens to be white. Similarly, a "fat BOY" is an overweight young male.
- 22. NOTATION: Different systems exist for indicating syllabification and stress. In IPA, primary stress is indicated by a high vertical line before the syllable, secondary stress by a low vertical line. Example: [sɪˌlæbəfɪˈkeɪʃən] or /sɪˌlæbəfɪˈkeɪʃən/. In English dictionaries which do not use IPA, stress is typically marked with a prime mark placed after the stressed syllable: /si-lab′-ə-fi-kay′- shən/.
- 23. Where do I put a word stress? These rules are rather complicated! Probably the best way to learn where to put a word stress is from experience. Listen carefully to spoken English and try to develop a feeling for the "music" of the language. When you learn a new word, you should also learn its stress pattern. All dictionaries give the phonetic spelling of a word. This is where they show which syllable is stressed, usually with an apostrophe (') just before or just after the stressed syllable.
- 24. Examples of IPA phonetics transcripts • ɡɑːdən = the first syllable is stressed: garden • ˈmɛdəʊ = the first syllable is stressed: meadow • ˈmʌʃˌrum = the first syllable is stressed: mushroom • θərˈməˌmitɚ = the second syllable is stressed: thermometer • juː'mɪdɪ.ti = the second syllable is stressed: humidity
- 25. Intonation • The entire variation of pitch while speaking is called intonation. A very obvious difference in intonation can be observed when looking at statements and questions. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6aE4nceJt8&t=269s
- 26. English has a number of intonation patterns which add conventionalized meanings to the utterance: -question, -statement, -surprise, -disbelief, -sarcasm, -teasing …..etc An important feature of English intonation is the use of an intonational accent (and extra stress) to mark the focus of a sentence.
- 27. • When someone utters an echo or asks declarative questions (He found it on the street?), the intonation (i.e. the voice) is rising to a higher pitch at the end. • When someone asks a wh-question (Where did he find it?) or utters a statement ( He found it on the street.), the intonation (i.e. the voice) is falling to a lower pitch at the end. • Yes or no questions (Did he find it on the street?) often have a rising end, but not always.
- 28. • Intonation also deals with the stress of words. Words are stressed to make a certain emphasis. A sentence can be spoken differently, depending on the speaker's intention.
- 29. Examples: • I did not read anything about the disaster. • I did not read anything about the disaster. • I did not read anything about the disaster. • I did not read anything about the disaster. • I did not read anything about the disaster. • I did not read anything about the disaster.
- 30. Cross-linguistic differences People have a tendency to think of intonation as being directly linked to the speaker's emotions. In fact, the meaning of intonation contours is as conventionalized as any other aspect of language. Different languages can use different conventions, giving rise to the potential for cross- cultural misunderstandings.
- 31. Tone in intonation A unit of speech bounded by pauses has movement, of music and rhythm, associated with the pitch of voice. This certain pattern of voice movement is called 'tone’. A tone is a certain pattern, not an arbitrary one, because it is meaningful in discourse. By means of tones, speakers signal whether to refer, proclaim, agree, disagree, question or hesitate, or indicate completion and continuation of turn-taking, in speech.
- 32. Types of tones • fall • low-rise • high-rise • fall-rise
- 33. Fall (A Falling Tone) A falling tone is by far the most common used tone of all. It signals a sense of finality, completion, belief in the content of the utterance, and so on. A speaker, by choosing a falling tone, also indicates to the addressee that that is all he has to say, and offers a chance (turn- taking) to the addressee to comment on, agree or disagree with, or add to his utterance.
- 34. Examples: 1.Consequences of his unacceptable behavior. I'll report you to the HEADmaster 2.A falling tone may be used in referring expressions as well. I've spoken with the CLEAner.
- 35. 3.Questions that begin with wh-questions are generally pronounced with a falling tone: Where is the PENcil? 4.Imperative statements have a falling tone. i) Go and see a DOCtor. 5.Requests or orders have a falling tone too. Please sit DOWN
- 36. 6.Exclamations: Watch OUT! 7.Yes/No questions and tag questions seeking or expecting confirmation a)You like it, DON'T you? b) YEES. 8.Here it is used when it is sure that the answer is yes. a)Have you MET him? b) YES.
- 37. Low Rise (A Rising Tone) This tone is used in genuine 'Yes/No' questions where the speaker is sure that he does not know the answer, and that the addressee knows the answer. Such Yes/No questions are uttered with a rising tone. For instance, consider the following question uttered with a rising tone, the answer of which could be either of the three options: A)Isn't he NICE? B) i) Yes. ii) No. iii) I don't know. Compare the above example with the following example, which is uttered with a falling tone, and which can only have one appropriate answer in the context: a) Isn't he NICE? b) YES. Other examples which are uttered with a rising tone are: Do you want some COFfee? Do you take CREAM in your coffee?
- 38. High Rise (A Rising Tone) If the tonic stress is uttered with extra pitch height, as in the following intonation units, we may think that the speaker is asking for a repetition or clarification, or indicating disbelief. Examples a)I'm taking up TAxidermy this autumn. b) Taking up WHAT? (clarification) a) She passed her DRIving test. b) She PASSED? (disbelief)
- 39. Fall Rise • Fall-rise signals dependency, continuity, and non-finality. It generally occurs in sentence non-final intonation units. Consider the following in which the former of the intonation units are uttered with a fall-rise tone (the slash indicates a pause): • Examples: • Private enterPRISE / is always EFficient. • A quick tour of the CIty / would be NICE. • PreSUmably / he thinks he CAN. • Usually / he comes on SUNday.
- 40. • References: • https://www.learning-english-online.net/pronunciation/stress-and-intonation/ • https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/pte-success/0/steps/157550