The components of utterance prosody and units of its analysis

Pitch

The pitch component of intonation or speech melody is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place with voiced sounds. It is present in every word (inherent prominence) and in the whole sentence, because it serves to delimit sentences into sense groups, or intonation groups. The delimitative (con­stitutive) function of melody is performed by pitch variations jointly with pausation, be­cause each sentence is divided into intonation groups (on the auditory and acoustic level) or into sense groups (on the semantic level).

To describe the melody of an utterance it is necessary to determine the relevant pitch levels, pitch ranges, directions and rate of pitch movement in each intonation group.

The pitch I e v e I of the whole utterance (or intonation group) is de­termined by the pitch of its highest—pitched syllable. It shows the degree of semantic importance the speaker attaches to the utterance (or intonation group) in comparison with any other utterance (or intonation group), and also the speaker's attitude and emotions.

The number of linguistically relevant pitch levels in English has not been definitely established yet: in the works of different phoneticians it varies from three to seven. In unemphatic speech most phoneticians distinguish 3 pitch levels: low, mid and high. These levels are relative and are produced on different registers depending on the individual peculiarities of the voice.

The pitch range of an utterance is the interval between its highest-pitched syllable and its lowest—pitched syllable. According to cir­cumstances the speaker changes his voice range. It may be widened and nar­rowed to express emphasis or the speaker's attitudes and emotions. For example, if "Very good" is pronounced with a narrow (high) range it sounds less enthusiastic. Pronounced with a tow narrow range it sounds sincere, but not emotional. If said with a wide range it sounds both sincere and enthusiastic.

Most phoneticians distinguish three pitch ranges - wide, mid and nar­row.

The rate of pitch variations may be different depending on the time, during which these variations take place, and on the range of the variations. Differences in the rate of pitch variations are semantically important. When the rate of the fall is fast, the falling tone sounds more categoric and definite than when the rate of the fall is slow.

The basic unit used to describe the pitch component is the ton e. De­pending on whether the pitch of the voice varies or remains unvaried tones are subdivided into kinetic and static. Static tones may have dif­ferent pitch level of the voice — the high static tone, the mid static tone, the low static tone. The differentiation of kinetic tones as high falling and low falling, high rising and low rising, etc. is also based on the differentiation of the pitch level of their initial and final points.

As to the direction of pitch movement, kinetic tones are subdivided into simple and complex. Simple tones are unidirectional: the falling and the rising tones. Complex tones are bidirectional: the falling—rising tone, the rising-falling tone, and the rising-falling-rising tone.

Rhythm

An essential feature of connected speech is that the peaks of prominence - the stressed syllables - are inseparably connected with non-prominent syllables. The latter are attached to the stressed syllables, they never exist by themselves. The simplest example of a close relationship between the stressed and unstressed syllables is a polysyllabic word-utterance which is a phonetic and semantic entity incapable of division, e.g.:

`Excellent. To`morrow. `Certainly.

Thus an utterance is split into groups of syllables unified by a stressed syllable, i.e. stress-groups, each of which is a semantic unit - generally a word, often more than a word.

An important feature of English pronunciation is that the prominent syllables in an utterance occur at approximately equal periods of time. It means more or less equal time for each of the stressed groups:I'd 'like to 'give you a 'piece of ad`vice.

When the number of syllables in adjacent stress-groups is not equal, the speed of utterance will be the highest in the group having the largest number of syllables and, vice versa, the tempo is noticeably slower in a group having fewer syllables. Thus the perceptible isochrony of stress-groups is based on the speakers tending to minimize the differences in thelength of stressed groups in an utterance.

Thus it has been shown that stress in English performs an important function of 'organizing' an utterance, providing the basis for its r h у t h m i с structure which is the realization of rhythm as a prosodic feature of speech.

Rhythm is defined in different languages in largely the same terms. The notion of rhythm implies, first of all, a certain periodicity of phonological events. For an English utterance these events, as has been made clear, are the stressed syllables. Such a periodicity is a peculiarity of English. English speech is therefore often described as more 'rhythmic' than, for example, Russian.

It follows that the units of the rhythmic organization of an utterance are stress-groups, which may be as well called rhythmic groups.

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