Prosody (linguistics)
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In linguistics, prosody is the intonation, rhythm, and lexical stress in speech. The prosodic features of a unit of speech, whether a syllable, word, phrase, or clause, are called suprasegmental features because they affect all the segments of the unit. These features are manifested, among other things, as syllable length, tone, and stress.
Prosodic units need not correspond to grammatical units, although both may reflect how the brain processes speech. Phrases and clauses are grammatical concepts, but they may have prosodic equivalents, commonly called prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units, which are the actual phonetic spurts or chunks of speech, and which may exist as a hierarchy of levels. Such units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries.
Different schools of linguistics describe somewhat different prosodic units. One common distinction is between continuing prosody, which in English orthography we might mark with a comma, and final prosody, which we might mark with a period (full stop). This is the common usage of the IPA symbols for "minor" and "major" prosodic breaks (American English pronunciation):
- Jack, preparing the way, went on.
[ˈdʒæk
- Jacques, préparant le sol, tomba.
[ˈʒak
The pipe symbols are phonetic, and so will often disagree with English punctuation, which only partially correlates with prosody.
However, the pipes may also be used for metrical breaks -- a single pipe being used to mark metrical feet, and a double pipe to mark both continuing and final prosody, as their alternate names "foot group" and "intonation group" suggest. In such usage, each foot group would include one and only one heavy syllable. In English, this would mean one and only one stressed syllable:
- Jack, preparing the way, went on.
[ˈdʒæk ‖ pɹəˌpɛəɹɪŋ
In transcriptions of non-tonal languages, the three symbols pipe, comma, and period may also be used, with the pipe representing a break more minor than the comma, the so-called list prosody often used to separate items when reading lists, spelling words, or giving out telephone numbers.
See also
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