9. The rhythm of English

Definition: in phonetics: the perceived regularity of prominent units in speech. This regularities may be stated in terms of pattern of stressed vs. unstressed syllables, syllable length (ling vs. short), or pitch (high vs. low)

Stress –times vs. syllable-timed rhythm

English is a stressed time language. In stressed-time language its claimed that the stressed syllable recur at regular intervals of time, regardless of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. This is called isochrony.

• In syllable timed languages, the syllables are the same length and the number of syllables determines the length of time required to say something.

• In a stressed timed language, the unstressed syllables are spoken faster to keep the rhythm.

• If there are no unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, the stressed syllables are stretched out to space them equally.

Rules of sentence stress

Different words in a sentence have stronger stress and are pronounced longer and other words are weaker and shorter. This pattern of strong and weak stress and short and long pronunciation gives English its rhythm.

Words that have the most stress in English are called content words. Content words are usually the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. These words are important to express the main meaning of the sentence.

Function words are those words that are weaker and shorter. They include auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and pronouns. These words are less important n expressing the meaning of the sentence.

• Foot – the unit of rhythm.

• The foot begin with a stressed syllable and includes all following unstressed syllables up to ( but not including) the following stressed syllable.

• In stressed timed languages all the feet are supposed to e roughly of the same duration.

• Stressed-timed rhythm is not characteristic of every style. Public speaking is more rhythmic than hesitant colloquial speech.

10. Syntactic prosody

A system of prosodic features of English

Terms and their explanation, definition (pitch, pitch-movement, pitch range, diapason, loudness, tempo, pausation).

pitch level(уровень тона) – high, mid, low; pitch movement( tones and tunes) of the voice (fall, rise, fall-rise, rise fall, descending, ascending, scale, etc.)

The functions of each on the syntactic level. Examples

Билет 11

Voice quality settings are conditioned by the long-term position of the larynx, pharynx, jaw, tongue, velopharyngeal system and lips.

Description of voice quality have traditionally consisted of qualitative terms such as warm, shrill, twangy, creaky, shrieky, breathy, yawny, gravelly, hoarse, ringing, dull, nasal, resonant, rough and pressed. While commonly used in both clinical and non-clinical situations, the acoustic and articulator correlates of these terms have not been well defined.

Characteristics of vocal registers:

- modal, fry, falsetto - in speech

- chest, head (mixed), falsetto, whistle - in singing

Voice quality usually understood to have two components: an organic component and a setting component.

The organic component refers to the sound that are determined by particular speaker’s vocal tract anatomy and physiology (vocal tract length; the volume of nasal cavity)

The setting component refers to habitual muscular settings that an individual adopts when they speak. Because these setting features are deliberately adopted, they differ from the first component in being under a speaker’s control.