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Intonation and Stress - Key to
  Understanding and Being Understood
By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • improving pronunciation
   • intonation
   • word stress

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Correct intonation and stress are the key to speaking English fluently with good
pronunciation. Intonation and stress refers to the music of the English language. Words
that are stressed are key to understanding and using the correct intonation brings out the
meaning. After students have learned basic consonant and vowel sounds, they should
move on to learning to differentiate between individual sounds by using minimal pairs.
Once they are comfortable with individual words, they should move on to intonation and
stress exercises such as sentence markup. The following exercise can be used by students
and teachers to further help with pronunciation by focusing on the stressing content
words rather than function words in the exercise below.


Minimal Pair Pronunciation Lesson
By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide

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   • pronunciation examples
   • improving pronunciation
   • minimal pairs

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Minimal pairs are pairs of words that have one phonemic change between them. For
example: "let" and "lit". Using these pairs to help students recognize the minor
differences between English muted vowel sounds can greatly help not only pronunciation
skills, but also comprehension.

Aim: Improve pronunciation and recognition skills

Activity: The use of minimal pairs to help students distinguish minor differences
between English vowel sounds

Level: Pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate depending on students' capabilities

Outline:
•   Introduce the idea of "minimal pairs" by writing a list on the board of a number of
       minimal pairs. For example: but - boot, sit - set, caught - cut, sing - song, etc.
   •   Practice comprehension skills by using the provided lists of minimal pairs. Each
       list contains one minimal pair with a number of examples.
   •   Once students are comfortable with the sounds, read sentence examples (for
       example: The call took a long time to go through - for the first pair) using one
       word of the pair provided. Ask students to identify which word of each pair was
       used.
   •   Continue using the list of pairs by asking students to practice the lists.
   •   Ask students to identify two vowel sounds which they want to focus on, for
       example: 'eh' and 'uh', and have them create their own list of minimal pairs.
   •   Have pairs exchange lists and practice reading the others' lists aloud.
   •   If appropriate, continue lesson by a more extended look into the IPA
       (International Phonetic Alphabet, see IPA Lesson)

Back to lessons resource page


Minimal Pairs Listening and
 Pronunciation Practice
This minimal pairs listening comprehension can help you improve recognition and
pronunciation of similar English sounds. First listen to the pairs of words pronounced one
after the other. Next, do the quiz that follows testing the differences between the minimal
pairs.




Target pair:

Click on the audio symbol and listen to the following pairs of words. When you have
listened, try repeating the words yourself.



   •   blessed blast
   •   commended commanded
   •   deft daft
   •   left laughed
   •   lest last
   •   leather lather
   •   pest passed
   •   vest vast
Click on the audio symbol and listen to the sentences. Choose which of the target words
has been used in sentence. Click on the arrow next to "Text" to see the text read.



blessed blast
Text:

commended commanded
Text:

deft daft
Text:

left laughed
Text:

lest last
Text:

leather lather
Text:

pest passed
Text:

vest vast
Text:

Continue Intermediate English Course Unit 3 Present Continuous, Plurals, Countable and Uncountable,
'Some' and 'Any' words, Minimal Pairs

More pronunciation practice with minimal pairs

Intonation and Stress - Exercise Introduction



Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes.

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.

Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Now, try speaking this sentence aloud.

He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.
Time required? Probably about 5 seconds.

Wait a minute the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence!

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance
He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening

You are only partially right!


This simple exercise makes a very important point about how we speak and use English.
Namely, English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are
considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to
certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other
languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is
stress, but each syllable has its own length).

Many speakers of syllabic languages don't understand why we quickly speak, or swallow,
a number of words in a sentence. In syllabic languages each syllable has equal
importance, and therefore equal time is needed. English however, spends more time on
specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

Let's look at a simple example: the modal verb "can". When we use the positive form of
"can" we quickly glide over the can and it is hardly pronounced.

They can come on Friday . (stressed words underlined)

On the other hand, when we use the negative form "can't" we tend to stress the fact that it
is the negative form by also stressing "can't".

They can't come on Friday .

As you can see from the above example the sentence, "They can't come on Friday" is
longer than "They can come on Friday" because both the modal "can't" and the verb
"come" are stressed.

So, what does this mean for my speaking skills?

Well, first of all, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we
do not stress. Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as

   •   Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
   •   (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct
   •   Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
   •   Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as
   • Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few
   • Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were
   • Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite
   • Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as
   • Pronouns e.g. they, she, us



Let's return to the beginning example to demonstrate how this affects speech.

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance . (14 syllables)

He can come on Sunday s as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening .
(22 syllables)

Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the
sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each
sentence. From this example, you can see that you needn't worry about pronouncing
every word clearly to be understood (we native speakers certainly don't). You should
however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly.

Now, do some listening comprehension or go speak to your native English speaking
friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving
importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand and
communicate more because you begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words.
All those words that you thought you didn't understand are really not crucial for
understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to
excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.

I hope this short introduction to the importance of stress in English will help you to
improve your understanding and speaking skills.



Practice Stress and Intonation
By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • improving pronunciation
   • pronunciation examples
   • beginning dialogues
   • speaking skills
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I am often surprised at how focusing on the "stress - timed" quality of English helps
students improve their pronunciation skills. Students often focus on pronouncing each
word correctly and therefore tend to pronounce in an unnatural manner. By focusing on
the stress - timed factor in English - the fact that only content words such as proper
nouns, principle verbs, adjectives and adverbs receive the "stress" - students soon begin
sounding much more "authentic" as the cadence of the language begins to ring true. The
following lesson focuses on raising awareness of this issue and includes practice
exercises.

Aim: Improving pronunciation by focusing on the stress - time nature of spoken English

Activity: Awareness raising followed by practical application exercises

Level: Pre - intermediate to upper intermediate depending on student needs and
awareness

Outline:

      •   Begin awareness raising activities by reading an example sentence aloud to the
          students (for example: The boys didn't have time to finish their homework before
the lesson began). Read the sentence the first time pronouncing each word
       carefully. Read the sentence a second time in natural speech.
   •   Ask students which reading seemed more natural and why it seemed more natural.
   •   Using the ideas students come up with, explain the idea of English being a "stress
       - timed" language. If the students speak a syllabic language (such as Italian or
       Spanish), point out the difference between their own native language and English
       (theirs being syllabic, English stress - timed). Just this awareness raising can make
       a dramatic difference in such students abilities.
   •   Talk about the differences between stressed words and non-stressed words (i.e.
       principle verbs are stressed, auxiliary verbs are not).
   •   Write the following two sentences on the board:
           o The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.
           o He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework
               in the evening.
   •   Underline the stressed words in both sentences. Ask students to try reading aloud.
       Point out how each sentence seems to be approximately the same length in "stress
       - time".
   •   Ask students to look through the example sentences and underline the words that
       should be stressed in the worksheet.
   •   Circulate about the room asking students to read the sentences aloud once they
       have decided which words should receive stresses.
   •   Review activity as a class - ask students to first read any given sentence with each
       word pronounced followed by the "stress - timed" version. Expect a surprise at the
       quick improvement students make in pronunciation (I am every time I do this
       exercise)!!

Another approach can help students improve their stress and intonation skills is sound
scripting. Sound scripting has students highlight content words using a word processor.

These two quizzes can also be used to help students test their knowledge of which words
are function or content words.

Content or Function Words - Quiz 1
Content or Function Words - Quiz 2

Pronunciation Help - Sentence Stress

Take a look at the following list of stressed and non-stressed word types.

Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as

   •   Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
   •   (most) principle verbs e.g. visit, construct
   •   Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
   •   Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as
   • Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few
   • Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were
   • Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite
   • Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as
   • Pronouns e.g. they, she, us

Mark the stressed words in the following sentences. After you have found the
stressed words, practice reading the sentences aloud.

      •   John is coming over tonight. We are going to work on our homework together.
      •   Ecstasy is an extremely dangerous drug.
      •   We should have visited some more castles while we were traveling through the
          back roads of France.
      •   Jack bought a new car last Friday.
      •   They are looking forward to your visiting them next January.
      •   Exciting discoveries lie in Tom's future.
      •   Would you like to come over and play a game of chess?
      •   They have been having to work hard these last few months on their challenging
          experiment.
      •   Shakespeare wrote passionate, moving poetry.
      •   As you might have expected, he has just thought of a new approach to the
          problem.


stress
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • phonetics




In these three pairs of words, the noun has the stress on the first syllable and the verb has
the stress on the second syllable.

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Definition:

In phonetics, the degree of emphasis given a sound or syllable in speech.

One of the main functions of stress is to provide a way of distinguishing degrees of
emphasis or contrast in sentences or

Etymology:
From the Latin, "draw tight"

Examples and Observations:

      •   "[O]ne of the functions of phonetic stress is to make words understandable. This
          kind of stress, known as word-level stress, is actually part of a word's
          pronunciation. It may also serve to differentiate words that are similar. For
          example, We're going to record a record, the two similar words are stressed
          differently so that the first record is stressed on the second syllable (vowel
          reduction in the first syllable also assists in helping us to assign stress to the
          second syllable), whereas the second record is stressed on the first syllable (with
          vowel reduction in the second syllable). All words of more than one syllable have
          a prominent or stressed syllable. If we pronounce a word with appropriate stress,
          people will understand us; if we use the wrong stress placement, we run the risk
          of being misunderstood.

          "Phrase or sentence stress is tied to meaning, and this is the second function of
          stress. As we focus a camera on some item of interest, phonetic stress helps us
          focus our listener's attention on what is most important in our message."
          (Harold T. Edwards, Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English, 3rd ed.
          Thomson, 2003)
•   "Stresses tend to recur at regular intervals. But the sound pattern of English does
    not make it an overriding necessity to adjust the lengths of syllables so as to
    enforce complete regularity. The interval between stresses is affected by the
    number of syllables within the stress group, by the number and type of vowels
    and consonants within each syllable, and by other factors such as the variations in
    emphasis that are given to each word."
    (Peter Ladefoged and Keith Johnson, A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed. Wadsworth,
    2011)



•   Stress With Content Words and Function Words
    "[T]he words most likely to receive sentence stress are those termed content
    words (also called 'lexical words'), namely nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and main
    verbs. These are the words that normally carry a high information load. We can
    contrast these with function words (also called 'grammar words' or 'form words'),
    namely determiners (e.g. the, a), conjunctions (e.g. and, but), pronouns (e.g. she,
    them), prepositions (e.g. at, from), auxiliary verbs (e.g. do, be, can). Function
    words carry relatively little information; their role is holding the sentence
    together. . . . Unlike content words, function words for the most part carry little or
    no stress. Only two types of function words are regularly stressed: the
    demonstratives (e.g. this, that, those) and wh- interrogatives (e.g. where, who,
    which, how). Note, however, that when wh- words and that are used as relatives
    they are unstressed, e.g. the girl who lent me the yellow hat that I wore to your
    wedding."
    (Beverley Collins and Inger M. Mees, Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A
    Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2003)



•   Lexical Diffusion
    "Some linguistic change first manifests itself in a few words and then gradually
    spreads through the vocabulary of the language. This type of change is called
    lexical diffusion. A well-attested example in English involves an ongoing change
    in the stress pattern of words such as convert, which can be used as either a noun
    or a verb. Although the stress originally fell on the second syllable regardless of
    lexical category, in the latter half of the sixteenth century three such words, rebel,
    outlaw, and record, came to be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable
    when used as nouns. . . .

    "This change has still not diffused through the entire vocabulary of English. There
    are about a thousand nouns of the relevant sort that still place the stress on the
    second syllable (e.g., report, mistake, and support)."
    (William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th ed.
    Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
content word
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • grammatical and rhetorical terms




The italicized words in Hedberg's sentence are content words.

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Definition:

A word that conveys information in a text or speech act. Also known as a lexical word.

Content words--which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--belong to
open classes of words: that is, new members are readily added. Contrast with function
word.

Examples and Observations:
      •   "All morphemes can be divided into the categories lexical [content] and
          grammatical [function]. A lexical morpheme has a meaning that can be
          understood fully in and of itself--{boy}, for example, as well as {run}, {green},
          {quick}, {paper}, {large}, {throw}, and {now}. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
          adverbs are typical kinds of lexical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes, on the
          other hand--such as {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in}, and
          {ly}--can be understood completely only when they occur with other words in a
          sentence."
          (Thomas E. Murray, The Structure of English. Allyn and Bacon, 1995)
•   "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it."
       (George Carlin)



   •   "Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the
       distracted center."
       (Jon Stewart)



   •   "Trying is the first step towards failure."
       (Homer Simpson)



   •   "Grammatical words [function words] tend to be short: they are normally of one
       syllable and many are represented in spelling by less than three graphemes ('I,'
       'he,' 'do,' 'on,' 'or'). Content words are longer and, with the exception of 'ox' and
       American English's 'ax,' are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This
       criterion of length can also be extended to the production of the two sets of words
       in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often unstressed or generally
       de-emphasised in pronunciation."
       (Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature. Routledge, 1997)



   •   Content Words in Speech
       "Typically, the prominent syllable in a tone unit will be a content word (e.g. a
       noun or verb) rather than a function word (e.g. a preposition or article), since
       content words carry more meaning than function words. Function words will only
       be stressed if prominence on them is contextually warranted."
       (Charles F. Meyer, Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge Univ. Press,
       2010)

Also Known As: lexical word, lexical morpheme, substantive category, contentive


function word
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • glossary of grammatical and rhetorical terms
What Is Morphology? 2nd ed., by Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Anne Fudeman (Wiley-
Blackwell, 2010)

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Definition:

A word that expresses a grammatical relationship. Also known as a grammatical word.

Function words include determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions. Contrast with
content word.

See also:

      •   Closed Class
      •   Lexicology
      •   Lexis
      •   Morphology
      •   Wh- Words
      •   Word Class

Examples and Observations:
      •   "Function words are like thumbtacks. We don't notice thumbtacks; we look at the
          calendar or the poster they are holding up. If we were to take the tacks away, the
calendar and the poster would fall down. Likewise, if we took the function words
       out of speech, it would be hard to figure out what was going on:

       took function words speech hard figure going on

       That is what the previous sentence would look like if we took out all of the
       function words. . . .

       "[F]unction words are a closed class. A person cannot easily invent a new
       preposition or conjunction."
       (Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Anne Fudeman, What Is Morphology? Wiley-
       Blackwell, 2005)



   •   "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it."
       (George Carlin)



   •   "Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the
       distracted center."
       (Jon Stewart)



   •   "Trying is the first step towards failure."
       (Homer Simpson)



   •   "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read."
       (Mitch Hedberg)



   •   Function Words in Speech
       "Most monosyllabic function words, unlike content words, are unstressed . . ..
       Prepositions, conjunctions, and articles are regularly unstressed, and auxiliary
       verbs and adverbs are usually unstressed--though note that auxiliaries are often
       used for emphasis, in which case they are stressed: "I did pay the bills."
       (Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995)

Also Known As: grammatical word, grammatical functor, grammatical morpheme,
function morpheme
prosody
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • grammatical and rhetorical terms
   • phonetics

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Definition:

(1) In phonetics, the use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm in speech to convey
information about the structure and meaning of an utterance. Adjective: prosodic.

(2) In literary studies, the theory and principles of versification, especially as they refer to
rhythm, accent, and stanza.



See also:

      •   Intonation
      •   Intonation Phrase (IP)
      •   Phonology
      •   Stress

Etymology:
From the Greek, "song sung to instrumental music"
Examples and Observations (Definition #1):
  •   "There are no capital letters or full stops in speech: the job of breaking down the
      continuous flow into meaningful and manageable chunks is mainly done by using
      the resources of prosody (pitch, stress, loudness, tempo). To many inexperienced
      writers it is far from self-evident how to translate the primarily prosodic structure
      of speech into the syntactic structure of writing. . . .

      "Speech is organized into prosodic units, marked off by pauses and intonation
      contours: they may or may not have the syntactic structure of complete sentences.
      Writing, however, relies on the sentence as its basic unit."
      (Deborah Cameron, The Teacher's Guide to Grammar. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)



  •   "The term prosody refers to the stress patterns of a language. In English, stress is
      distinctive at the level of the individual word and at the level of phrases, clauses,
      and entire sentences."
      (C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed.
      Wadsworth, 2011)



  •   "Early studies of prosody (e.g. Pike 1945) focused on trying to assign meaning to
      prosodic features in much the way phonemes and morphemes are assigned
      meaning. . . . Studies of prosody and meaning moved on to points in which
      contextual factors were recognized as important. Crystal (1969) claimed that
      situational elements, such as kinesic activity and/or grammar and other situational
      factors, are intimately connected with pitch and tone, and called for a move away
      from describing and analyzing prosodic features as discrete units. . . .

      "Recent work in prosody has continued to expand on the ideas set up by Crystal
      (1969) and Coultahrd and Brazil (1982) by taking into consideration such aspects
      of interaction as how prosody can signal speakers' intentions in the discourse."
      (Rebecca L. Damron, "Prosodic Schemas," in Discourse Across Languages and
      Cultures, ed. by Carol Lynn Moder and Aida Martinovic-Zic. John Benjamins,
      2004)



  •   Prosodic Signals of Two Grammatical Differences
      "If someone is reciting a list of items, we know whether the list is complete or not
      by the pitch of the voice. If the pitch is rising . . ., there are more items to come. If
      it is falling . . ., there is nothing further to come. The difference is suggested in
      writing by the use of a series of dots instead of a full stop"

      I bought beer, whiskey, gin . . . I bought beer, whiskey, gin.
"The two types of relative clause can be distinguished by intonation:

       My brother / who's abroad / has written to me.
       (I have only one brother, and he's abroad)

       My brother / who's abroad / has written to me.
       (my brother who's in London / has not)"

       (David Crystal, Rediscover Grammar, 3rd ed. Pearson Longman 2003)



   •   Functions of Prosody
       "The functions of prosody are manifold. . . . Prosody is for instance involved in
       matters such as sentence and word segmentation, syntactic phrasing, stress,
       accentuation, phonological distinctions in tone languages. Prosody also features
       pragmatic and expressive functions. A given sentence in a given context generally
       expresses much more than its linguistic content (the same sentence, with the same
       linguistic content may have plenty of different expressive contents or pragmatic
       meanings). Examples of expressive content are: the identity of the speaker, her/his
       attitude, mood, ages, sex, sociolinguistic group, and other extralinguistic features.
       Examples of pragmatic meaning encompass the speaker/listener attitudes
       (aggressive, submissive, neutral, etc.), the relationships of the speaker and her/his
       discourse (belief, confidence, assertiveness, etc.), and various other aspects of the
       specific speech act performed."
       (Christophe d'Alessandro (Orsay), "Voice Source Parameters and Prosodic
       Analysis." Methods in Empirical Prosody Research, ed. by Stefan Sudhoff.
       Walter de Gruyter, 2006)

Pronunciation: PROS-eh-dee


intonation phrase (IP)
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide

See More About:
   • phonetics
   • language
As explained by Ulrike Gut (see below), "Intonational phrasing in English can have a
meaning-distinguishing function." Sentence (a) has just one intonation phrase; sentence
(b) has two IPs.

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Definition:

In phonetics, a stretch (or chunk) of spoken material that has its own intonation pattern
(or tune).

The intonation phrase (IP) is the basic unit of intonation. In phonetic analysis, the vertical
bar symbol (|) is used to represent the boundary between two intonation phrases.

See also:

      •   Connected Speech
      •   Pause
      •   Prosody
      •   Punctuation Effect
      •   Speech (Linguistics)
      •   Stress
      •   Utterance

Examples and Observations:
      •   "When speakers produce words in a row, we can usually observe that they are
          structured: individual words are grouped together to form an intonation
          phrase. . . . Intonation phrases can coincide with breath groups . . ., but they do
          not have to. Often a breath group contains more than one intonation phrase. As
          with all other phonological units, it is assumed that speakers have a mental
representation of intonation phrases, i.e. they know how to produce speech
    structured into intonation phrases and they rely on this knowledge when listening
    to the speech of others.

    "Within an intonation phrase, there is typically one word that is most
    prominent. . . . Some utterances might contain just one intonation phrase, others
    might contain several of them. Moreover, speakers can put utterances together to
    form larger stretches of speech or discourse. . . .

    "Intonational phrasing in English can have a meaning-distinguishing function.
    Consider utterances 11a and 11b:

    (11a) He washed and fed the dog.
    (11b) He washed | and fed the dog.

    If the intonation phrase 'He washed and fed the dog' is produced as one intonation
    phrase, its meaning is that a person both washed and fed a dog. Conversely, if the
    same utterance is produced as a sequence of two intonation phrases with an
    intonation boundary after washed (indicated by the symbol |), the meaning of the
    utterance changes into 'someone who washed himself and fed a dog.'"
    (Ulrike Gut, Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology. Peter Lang, 2009)



•   Intonation Contours
    "Intonation often does serve to convey information of a broadly meaningful
    nature . . .. For example, the falling pitch we hear at the end of a statement in
    English such as Fred parked the car signals that the utterance is complete. For
    this reason, falling intonation at the end of an utterance is called a terminal
    (intonation) contour. Conversely, a rising or level intonation, called a
    nonterminal (intonation) contour, often signals incompleteness. Nonterminal
    contours are often heard in the nonfinal forms found in lists and telephone
    numbers."
    (William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th ed.
    Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)



•   Tonality (Chunking)
    "The speaker does not necessarily have to follow the rule of an IP for each clause.
    There are many cases where different kinds of chunking are possible. For
    example, if a speaker wants to say We don't know who she is, it is possible to say
    the whole utterance as a single IP (= one intonation pattern):

    We don't know who she is.
But it is also possible to divide the material up, in at least the following possible
       ways:

       We don't know | who she is.
       We | don't know who she is.
       We don't | know who she is.
       We | don't know | who she is.

       Thus the speaker may present the material as two, or three, pieces of information
       rather than a single piece. This is tonality (or chunking)."
       (J. C. Wells, English Intonation: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press,
       2006)



   •   Position of Intonation Phrase Boundaries
       "The position of intonation phrase boundaries shows a good amount of
       variability. These have been studied in English on the basis of positions of
       possible pauses within clauses (Selkirk 1984b, Taglicht 1998 and references
       there) and positions of obligatory pauses (Downing 1970). . . . The core result is
       that root clauses, and only these, are bounded by obligatory intonation phrase
       breaks. (Root clauses are clauses [CPs] not imbedded inside of a higher clause
       that has a subject and a predicate.)"
       (Hubert Truckenbrodt, "The Syntax-Phonology Interface." The Cambridge
       Handbook of Phonology, ed. by Paul de Lacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Also Known As: intonation group, phonological phrase, tone unit, tone group, word
group


phrasing
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phras·ing
[frey-zing] Show IPA
noun
1.
the act of forming phrases.
2.
a manner or method of forming phrases; phraseology.
3.
Music. the grouping of the notes of a musical line into distinct phrases.
Relevant Questions
What Is A Phrase?
What Is An Infinitive Ph...
What Is A Verbal Phrase?
What Is An Example Of A ...
Origin:
1605–15; phrase + -ing1

Dictionary.com Unabridged

phrase
[freyz] Show IPA noun, verb, phrased, phras·ing.
noun
1.
Grammar .
a.
a sequence of two or more words arranged in a grammatical construction and acting as a
unit in a sentence.
b.
(in English) a sequence of two or more words that does not contain a finite verb and its
subject or that does not consist of clause elements such as subject, verb, object, or
complement, as a preposition and a noun or pronoun, an adjective and noun, or an adverb
and verb.
2.
Rhetoric . a word or group of spoken words that the mind focuses on momentarily as a
meaningful unit and is preceded and followed by pauses.
3.
a characteristic, current, or proverbial expression: a hackneyed phrase.
4.
Music. a division of a composition, commonly a passage of four or eight measures,
forming part of a period.
5.
a way of speaking, mode of expression, or phraseology: a book written in the phrase of
the West.
verb (used with object)
8.
to express or word in a particular way: to phrase an apology well.
9.
to express in words: to phrase one's thoughts.
10.
Music.
a.
to mark off or bring out the phrases of (a piece), especially in execution.
b.
to group (notes) into a phrase.
verb (used without object)
11.
Music. to perform a passage or piece with proper phrasing.
Origin:
1520–30; (noun) back formation from phrases, plural of earlier phrasis < Latin phrasis
 diction, style (plural phrasēs ) < Greek phrásis diction, style, speech, equivalent to phrá (
zein ) to speak + -sis -sis; (v.) derivative of the noun

Related forms
mis·phrase, verb (used with object), mis·phrased, mis·phras·ing.
un·phrased, adjective

Can be confused: frays, phrase (see synonym study at the current entry).

Synonyms
1. Phrase, expression, idiom, locution all refer to grammatically related groups of words.
A phrase is a sequence of two or more words that make up a grammatical construction,
usually lacking a finite verb and hence not a complete clause or sentence: shady lane (a
noun phrase); at the bottom (a prepositional phrase); very slowly (an adverbial phrase).
In general use, phrase refers to any frequently repeated or memorable group of words,
usually of less than sentence length or complexity: a case of feast or famine—to use the
well-known phrase. Expression is the most general of these words and may refer to a
word, a phrase, or even a sentence: prose filled with old-fashioned expressions. An
idiom is a phrase or larger unit of expression that is peculiar to a single language or a
variety of a language and whose meaning, often figurative, cannot easily be understood
by combining the usual meanings of its individual parts, as to go for broke. Locution is a
somewhat formal term for a word, a phrase, or an expression considered as peculiar to or
characteristic of a regional or social dialect or considered as a sample of language rather
than as a meaning-bearing item: a unique set of locutions heard only in the mountainous
regions of the South.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source
|
Link To phrasing
00:05
Phrasing is always a great word to know.
So is quincunx. Does it mean:
     a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp.
     ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.
    an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner
    and one in the middle.
LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Collins
World English Dictionary
phrase (freɪz)


—n
1. clause noun phrase Compare verb phrase a group of words forming an immediate
   syntactic constituent of a clause
2. a particular expression, esp an original one
3. music a small group of notes forming a coherent unit of melody
4. (in choreography) a short sequence of dance movements


— vb
5. music to divide (a melodic line, part, etc) into musical phrases, esp in performance
6. to express orally or in a phrase


[C16: from Latin phrasis, from Greek: speech, from phrazein to declare, tell]


phrasing (ˈfreɪzɪŋ)


—n
1. the way in which something is expressed, esp in writing; wording
2. music the division of a melodic line, part, etc, into musical phrases

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source
Etymonline
Word Origin & History

phrase
1530, "manner or style of expression," also "group of words with some unity," from L.L.
phrasis "diction," from Gk. phrasis "speech, way of speaking, phraseology," from
phrazein "to express, tell," from phrazesthai "to consider," of unknown origin. The
musical sense of "short passage" is from 1789. The
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source
American Heritage
Cultural Dictionary

phrase definition


A group of grammatically connected words within a sentence: “ One council member left
in a huff ”; “She got much satisfaction from planting daffodil bulbs .” Unlike clauses,
phrases do not have both a subject and a predicate.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
Intonation and stress
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Intonation and stress

  • 1. Intonation and Stress - Key to Understanding and Being Understood By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide See More About: • improving pronunciation • intonation • word stress Ads English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! Audio English Pronunciationwww.DictionaryBoss.comTranslations, Word Definitions & More With Dictionary Boss App! Enjoy Summer in Japanjp-sjs.ac.jpJoin our Summer course and have your Japanese experience here! More English as 2nd Language Ads • English Pronunciation • Stress Release Exercises • English Grammar Exercises • Learning English Speaking • Learn English Listening Ads Connect with Classroomswww.ePals.com/JoinEasily Connect with classrooms all over the world, Join ePals today! ESL Teaching Jobswww.tefl.net/esl-jobsNew ESL teaching jobs daily. ESL jobs abroad and online Correct intonation and stress are the key to speaking English fluently with good pronunciation. Intonation and stress refers to the music of the English language. Words that are stressed are key to understanding and using the correct intonation brings out the meaning. After students have learned basic consonant and vowel sounds, they should move on to learning to differentiate between individual sounds by using minimal pairs. Once they are comfortable with individual words, they should move on to intonation and stress exercises such as sentence markup. The following exercise can be used by students
  • 2. and teachers to further help with pronunciation by focusing on the stressing content words rather than function words in the exercise below. Minimal Pair Pronunciation Lesson By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide See More About: • pronunciation examples • improving pronunciation • minimal pairs Ads Connect with Classroomswww.ePals.com/JoinEasily Connect with classrooms all over the world, Join ePals today! The French Languagelearnfrencheasy.infoLearn to speak French fluently. Fun Easy and Quick! Lowest Prices. English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! More English as 2nd Language Ads • ESL Lesson • English Pronunciation • Lesson Plans • English Lesson • ESL Pronunciation Minimal pairs are pairs of words that have one phonemic change between them. For example: "let" and "lit". Using these pairs to help students recognize the minor differences between English muted vowel sounds can greatly help not only pronunciation skills, but also comprehension. Aim: Improve pronunciation and recognition skills Activity: The use of minimal pairs to help students distinguish minor differences between English vowel sounds Level: Pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate depending on students' capabilities Outline:
  • 3. Introduce the idea of "minimal pairs" by writing a list on the board of a number of minimal pairs. For example: but - boot, sit - set, caught - cut, sing - song, etc. • Practice comprehension skills by using the provided lists of minimal pairs. Each list contains one minimal pair with a number of examples. • Once students are comfortable with the sounds, read sentence examples (for example: The call took a long time to go through - for the first pair) using one word of the pair provided. Ask students to identify which word of each pair was used. • Continue using the list of pairs by asking students to practice the lists. • Ask students to identify two vowel sounds which they want to focus on, for example: 'eh' and 'uh', and have them create their own list of minimal pairs. • Have pairs exchange lists and practice reading the others' lists aloud. • If appropriate, continue lesson by a more extended look into the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet, see IPA Lesson) Back to lessons resource page Minimal Pairs Listening and Pronunciation Practice This minimal pairs listening comprehension can help you improve recognition and pronunciation of similar English sounds. First listen to the pairs of words pronounced one after the other. Next, do the quiz that follows testing the differences between the minimal pairs. Target pair: Click on the audio symbol and listen to the following pairs of words. When you have listened, try repeating the words yourself. • blessed blast • commended commanded • deft daft • left laughed • lest last • leather lather • pest passed • vest vast
  • 4. Click on the audio symbol and listen to the sentences. Choose which of the target words has been used in sentence. Click on the arrow next to "Text" to see the text read. blessed blast Text: commended commanded Text: deft daft Text: left laughed Text: lest last Text: leather lather Text: pest passed Text: vest vast Text: Continue Intermediate English Course Unit 3 Present Continuous, Plurals, Countable and Uncountable, 'Some' and 'Any' words, Minimal Pairs More pronunciation practice with minimal pairs Intonation and Stress - Exercise Introduction Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes. The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance. Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Now, try speaking this sentence aloud. He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.
  • 5. Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Wait a minute the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence! The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening You are only partially right! This simple exercise makes a very important point about how we speak and use English. Namely, English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length). Many speakers of syllabic languages don't understand why we quickly speak, or swallow, a number of words in a sentence. In syllabic languages each syllable has equal importance, and therefore equal time is needed. English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words. Let's look at a simple example: the modal verb "can". When we use the positive form of "can" we quickly glide over the can and it is hardly pronounced. They can come on Friday . (stressed words underlined) On the other hand, when we use the negative form "can't" we tend to stress the fact that it is the negative form by also stressing "can't". They can't come on Friday . As you can see from the above example the sentence, "They can't come on Friday" is longer than "They can come on Friday" because both the modal "can't" and the verb "come" are stressed. So, what does this mean for my speaking skills? Well, first of all, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we do not stress. Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as • Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter • (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct • Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting • Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
  • 6. Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as • Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few • Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were • Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite • Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as • Pronouns e.g. they, she, us Let's return to the beginning example to demonstrate how this affects speech. The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance . (14 syllables) He can come on Sunday s as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening . (22 syllables) Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each sentence. From this example, you can see that you needn't worry about pronouncing every word clearly to be understood (we native speakers certainly don't). You should however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly. Now, do some listening comprehension or go speak to your native English speaking friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand and communicate more because you begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words. All those words that you thought you didn't understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English. I hope this short introduction to the importance of stress in English will help you to improve your understanding and speaking skills. Practice Stress and Intonation By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide See More About: • improving pronunciation • pronunciation examples • beginning dialogues • speaking skills
  • 7. Ads English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! English Jobs in Asiaasia.careercross.comSearch English jobs in All of Asia Register now and apply today! Audio English Pronunciationwww.DictionaryBoss.comTranslations, Word Definitions & More With Dictionary Boss App! More English as 2nd Language Ads • Practice English • English Pronunciation • Stress Release Exercises • English Grammar Exercises • ESL Teaching English Ads Connect with Classroomswww.ePals.com/JoinEasily Connect with classrooms all over the world, Join ePals today! ESL Teaching Jobswww.tefl.net/esl-jobsNew ESL teaching jobs daily. ESL jobs abroad and online I am often surprised at how focusing on the "stress - timed" quality of English helps students improve their pronunciation skills. Students often focus on pronouncing each word correctly and therefore tend to pronounce in an unnatural manner. By focusing on the stress - timed factor in English - the fact that only content words such as proper nouns, principle verbs, adjectives and adverbs receive the "stress" - students soon begin sounding much more "authentic" as the cadence of the language begins to ring true. The following lesson focuses on raising awareness of this issue and includes practice exercises. Aim: Improving pronunciation by focusing on the stress - time nature of spoken English Activity: Awareness raising followed by practical application exercises Level: Pre - intermediate to upper intermediate depending on student needs and awareness Outline: • Begin awareness raising activities by reading an example sentence aloud to the students (for example: The boys didn't have time to finish their homework before
  • 8. the lesson began). Read the sentence the first time pronouncing each word carefully. Read the sentence a second time in natural speech. • Ask students which reading seemed more natural and why it seemed more natural. • Using the ideas students come up with, explain the idea of English being a "stress - timed" language. If the students speak a syllabic language (such as Italian or Spanish), point out the difference between their own native language and English (theirs being syllabic, English stress - timed). Just this awareness raising can make a dramatic difference in such students abilities. • Talk about the differences between stressed words and non-stressed words (i.e. principle verbs are stressed, auxiliary verbs are not). • Write the following two sentences on the board: o The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance. o He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening. • Underline the stressed words in both sentences. Ask students to try reading aloud. Point out how each sentence seems to be approximately the same length in "stress - time". • Ask students to look through the example sentences and underline the words that should be stressed in the worksheet. • Circulate about the room asking students to read the sentences aloud once they have decided which words should receive stresses. • Review activity as a class - ask students to first read any given sentence with each word pronounced followed by the "stress - timed" version. Expect a surprise at the quick improvement students make in pronunciation (I am every time I do this exercise)!! Another approach can help students improve their stress and intonation skills is sound scripting. Sound scripting has students highlight content words using a word processor. These two quizzes can also be used to help students test their knowledge of which words are function or content words. Content or Function Words - Quiz 1 Content or Function Words - Quiz 2 Pronunciation Help - Sentence Stress Take a look at the following list of stressed and non-stressed word types. Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as • Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter • (most) principle verbs e.g. visit, construct • Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting • Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
  • 9. Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as • Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few • Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were • Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite • Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as • Pronouns e.g. they, she, us Mark the stressed words in the following sentences. After you have found the stressed words, practice reading the sentences aloud. • John is coming over tonight. We are going to work on our homework together. • Ecstasy is an extremely dangerous drug. • We should have visited some more castles while we were traveling through the back roads of France. • Jack bought a new car last Friday. • They are looking forward to your visiting them next January. • Exciting discoveries lie in Tom's future. • Would you like to come over and play a game of chess? • They have been having to work hard these last few months on their challenging experiment. • Shakespeare wrote passionate, moving poetry. • As you might have expected, he has just thought of a new approach to the problem. stress By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide See More About: • phonetics In these three pairs of words, the noun has the stress on the first syllable and the verb has the stress on the second syllable. Ads
  • 10. English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! Academic Englishwww.etc.ac.nzBest preparation for further studies at university! Learn Chinese Easilywww.ninhao.comVisual and practical Lessons make learning Chinese more easily. Ads Download Dictionary Freewww.DictionaryBoss.comFree Dictionary Toolbar with Word Of The Day, Translator & More Free! Spanish Languagelearnspanishonline.bizLearn and practice Spanish online with native speaker. Order Now! Definition: In phonetics, the degree of emphasis given a sound or syllable in speech. One of the main functions of stress is to provide a way of distinguishing degrees of emphasis or contrast in sentences or Etymology: From the Latin, "draw tight" Examples and Observations: • "[O]ne of the functions of phonetic stress is to make words understandable. This kind of stress, known as word-level stress, is actually part of a word's pronunciation. It may also serve to differentiate words that are similar. For example, We're going to record a record, the two similar words are stressed differently so that the first record is stressed on the second syllable (vowel reduction in the first syllable also assists in helping us to assign stress to the second syllable), whereas the second record is stressed on the first syllable (with vowel reduction in the second syllable). All words of more than one syllable have a prominent or stressed syllable. If we pronounce a word with appropriate stress, people will understand us; if we use the wrong stress placement, we run the risk of being misunderstood. "Phrase or sentence stress is tied to meaning, and this is the second function of stress. As we focus a camera on some item of interest, phonetic stress helps us focus our listener's attention on what is most important in our message." (Harold T. Edwards, Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English, 3rd ed. Thomson, 2003)
  • 11. "Stresses tend to recur at regular intervals. But the sound pattern of English does not make it an overriding necessity to adjust the lengths of syllables so as to enforce complete regularity. The interval between stresses is affected by the number of syllables within the stress group, by the number and type of vowels and consonants within each syllable, and by other factors such as the variations in emphasis that are given to each word." (Peter Ladefoged and Keith Johnson, A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed. Wadsworth, 2011) • Stress With Content Words and Function Words "[T]he words most likely to receive sentence stress are those termed content words (also called 'lexical words'), namely nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and main verbs. These are the words that normally carry a high information load. We can contrast these with function words (also called 'grammar words' or 'form words'), namely determiners (e.g. the, a), conjunctions (e.g. and, but), pronouns (e.g. she, them), prepositions (e.g. at, from), auxiliary verbs (e.g. do, be, can). Function words carry relatively little information; their role is holding the sentence together. . . . Unlike content words, function words for the most part carry little or no stress. Only two types of function words are regularly stressed: the demonstratives (e.g. this, that, those) and wh- interrogatives (e.g. where, who, which, how). Note, however, that when wh- words and that are used as relatives they are unstressed, e.g. the girl who lent me the yellow hat that I wore to your wedding." (Beverley Collins and Inger M. Mees, Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2003) • Lexical Diffusion "Some linguistic change first manifests itself in a few words and then gradually spreads through the vocabulary of the language. This type of change is called lexical diffusion. A well-attested example in English involves an ongoing change in the stress pattern of words such as convert, which can be used as either a noun or a verb. Although the stress originally fell on the second syllable regardless of lexical category, in the latter half of the sixteenth century three such words, rebel, outlaw, and record, came to be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable when used as nouns. . . . "This change has still not diffused through the entire vocabulary of English. There are about a thousand nouns of the relevant sort that still place the stress on the second syllable (e.g., report, mistake, and support)." (William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
  • 12. content word By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide See More About: • grammatical and rhetorical terms The italicized words in Hedberg's sentence are content words. Ads Dictionary Free Downloadwww.DictionaryBoss.comWord Definitions, Translate & More. Download Dictionary Boss Today! Study English in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! General Englishwww.etc.ac.nzStudy English in New Zealand Join our courses! Definition: A word that conveys information in a text or speech act. Also known as a lexical word. Content words--which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--belong to open classes of words: that is, new members are readily added. Contrast with function word. Examples and Observations: • "All morphemes can be divided into the categories lexical [content] and grammatical [function]. A lexical morpheme has a meaning that can be understood fully in and of itself--{boy}, for example, as well as {run}, {green}, {quick}, {paper}, {large}, {throw}, and {now}. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are typical kinds of lexical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand--such as {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in}, and {ly}--can be understood completely only when they occur with other words in a sentence." (Thomas E. Murray, The Structure of English. Allyn and Bacon, 1995)
  • 13. "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it." (George Carlin) • "Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center." (Jon Stewart) • "Trying is the first step towards failure." (Homer Simpson) • "Grammatical words [function words] tend to be short: they are normally of one syllable and many are represented in spelling by less than three graphemes ('I,' 'he,' 'do,' 'on,' 'or'). Content words are longer and, with the exception of 'ox' and American English's 'ax,' are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This criterion of length can also be extended to the production of the two sets of words in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often unstressed or generally de-emphasised in pronunciation." (Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature. Routledge, 1997) • Content Words in Speech "Typically, the prominent syllable in a tone unit will be a content word (e.g. a noun or verb) rather than a function word (e.g. a preposition or article), since content words carry more meaning than function words. Function words will only be stressed if prominence on them is contextually warranted." (Charles F. Meyer, Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010) Also Known As: lexical word, lexical morpheme, substantive category, contentive function word By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide See More About: • glossary of grammatical and rhetorical terms
  • 14. What Is Morphology? 2nd ed., by Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Anne Fudeman (Wiley- Blackwell, 2010) Ads English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! Facebook® - Official SiteFacebook.comBrowse Profiles & Share Your World. Create a Facebook Profile for Free! Learn Chinese Easilywww.ninhao.comVisual and practical Lessons make learning Chinese more easily. Definition: A word that expresses a grammatical relationship. Also known as a grammatical word. Function words include determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions. Contrast with content word. See also: • Closed Class • Lexicology • Lexis • Morphology • Wh- Words • Word Class Examples and Observations: • "Function words are like thumbtacks. We don't notice thumbtacks; we look at the calendar or the poster they are holding up. If we were to take the tacks away, the
  • 15. calendar and the poster would fall down. Likewise, if we took the function words out of speech, it would be hard to figure out what was going on: took function words speech hard figure going on That is what the previous sentence would look like if we took out all of the function words. . . . "[F]unction words are a closed class. A person cannot easily invent a new preposition or conjunction." (Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Anne Fudeman, What Is Morphology? Wiley- Blackwell, 2005) • "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it." (George Carlin) • "Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center." (Jon Stewart) • "Trying is the first step towards failure." (Homer Simpson) • "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." (Mitch Hedberg) • Function Words in Speech "Most monosyllabic function words, unlike content words, are unstressed . . .. Prepositions, conjunctions, and articles are regularly unstressed, and auxiliary verbs and adverbs are usually unstressed--though note that auxiliaries are often used for emphasis, in which case they are stressed: "I did pay the bills." (Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995) Also Known As: grammatical word, grammatical functor, grammatical morpheme, function morpheme
  • 16. prosody By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide See More About: • grammatical and rhetorical terms • phonetics Ads English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! Jewish Educational Itemswww.jEducate.comGames, workbooks, CD's, DVD's, holiday items, study accessories Three Forks A Novel of TXwww.TomMarlin.com1836 - 1846 History of Dallas, Ft. Worth & N. Texas by Tom Marlin Ads General Englishwww.etc.ac.nzStudy English in New Zealand Join our courses! Dictionary Free Downloadwww.DictionaryBoss.comWord Definitions, Translate & More. Download Dictionary Boss Today! Definition: (1) In phonetics, the use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm in speech to convey information about the structure and meaning of an utterance. Adjective: prosodic. (2) In literary studies, the theory and principles of versification, especially as they refer to rhythm, accent, and stanza. See also: • Intonation • Intonation Phrase (IP) • Phonology • Stress Etymology: From the Greek, "song sung to instrumental music"
  • 17. Examples and Observations (Definition #1): • "There are no capital letters or full stops in speech: the job of breaking down the continuous flow into meaningful and manageable chunks is mainly done by using the resources of prosody (pitch, stress, loudness, tempo). To many inexperienced writers it is far from self-evident how to translate the primarily prosodic structure of speech into the syntactic structure of writing. . . . "Speech is organized into prosodic units, marked off by pauses and intonation contours: they may or may not have the syntactic structure of complete sentences. Writing, however, relies on the sentence as its basic unit." (Deborah Cameron, The Teacher's Guide to Grammar. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007) • "The term prosody refers to the stress patterns of a language. In English, stress is distinctive at the level of the individual word and at the level of phrases, clauses, and entire sentences." (C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 2011) • "Early studies of prosody (e.g. Pike 1945) focused on trying to assign meaning to prosodic features in much the way phonemes and morphemes are assigned meaning. . . . Studies of prosody and meaning moved on to points in which contextual factors were recognized as important. Crystal (1969) claimed that situational elements, such as kinesic activity and/or grammar and other situational factors, are intimately connected with pitch and tone, and called for a move away from describing and analyzing prosodic features as discrete units. . . . "Recent work in prosody has continued to expand on the ideas set up by Crystal (1969) and Coultahrd and Brazil (1982) by taking into consideration such aspects of interaction as how prosody can signal speakers' intentions in the discourse." (Rebecca L. Damron, "Prosodic Schemas," in Discourse Across Languages and Cultures, ed. by Carol Lynn Moder and Aida Martinovic-Zic. John Benjamins, 2004) • Prosodic Signals of Two Grammatical Differences "If someone is reciting a list of items, we know whether the list is complete or not by the pitch of the voice. If the pitch is rising . . ., there are more items to come. If it is falling . . ., there is nothing further to come. The difference is suggested in writing by the use of a series of dots instead of a full stop" I bought beer, whiskey, gin . . . I bought beer, whiskey, gin.
  • 18. "The two types of relative clause can be distinguished by intonation: My brother / who's abroad / has written to me. (I have only one brother, and he's abroad) My brother / who's abroad / has written to me. (my brother who's in London / has not)" (David Crystal, Rediscover Grammar, 3rd ed. Pearson Longman 2003) • Functions of Prosody "The functions of prosody are manifold. . . . Prosody is for instance involved in matters such as sentence and word segmentation, syntactic phrasing, stress, accentuation, phonological distinctions in tone languages. Prosody also features pragmatic and expressive functions. A given sentence in a given context generally expresses much more than its linguistic content (the same sentence, with the same linguistic content may have plenty of different expressive contents or pragmatic meanings). Examples of expressive content are: the identity of the speaker, her/his attitude, mood, ages, sex, sociolinguistic group, and other extralinguistic features. Examples of pragmatic meaning encompass the speaker/listener attitudes (aggressive, submissive, neutral, etc.), the relationships of the speaker and her/his discourse (belief, confidence, assertiveness, etc.), and various other aspects of the specific speech act performed." (Christophe d'Alessandro (Orsay), "Voice Source Parameters and Prosodic Analysis." Methods in Empirical Prosody Research, ed. by Stefan Sudhoff. Walter de Gruyter, 2006) Pronunciation: PROS-eh-dee intonation phrase (IP) By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide See More About: • phonetics • language
  • 19. As explained by Ulrike Gut (see below), "Intonational phrasing in English can have a meaning-distinguishing function." Sentence (a) has just one intonation phrase; sentence (b) has two IPs. Ads Improve GMAT Verbale-gmat.comVerbal SC+CR prep, 2500+ questions 100+ free questions, Free Trial English Class in Torontowww.lsbf.ca/EnglishCourses for all levels. Improve your vocabulary and fluency! The Proverbs of Solomonwww.LetGodBeTrue.comPractical, hard-hitting, spiritual commentary on Bible Proverbs. Ads ESL Teaching Jobswww.tefl.net/esl-jobsNew ESL teaching jobs daily. ESL jobs abroad and online General Englishwww.etc.ac.nzStudy English in New Zealand Join our courses! Definition: In phonetics, a stretch (or chunk) of spoken material that has its own intonation pattern (or tune). The intonation phrase (IP) is the basic unit of intonation. In phonetic analysis, the vertical bar symbol (|) is used to represent the boundary between two intonation phrases. See also: • Connected Speech • Pause • Prosody • Punctuation Effect • Speech (Linguistics) • Stress • Utterance Examples and Observations: • "When speakers produce words in a row, we can usually observe that they are structured: individual words are grouped together to form an intonation phrase. . . . Intonation phrases can coincide with breath groups . . ., but they do not have to. Often a breath group contains more than one intonation phrase. As with all other phonological units, it is assumed that speakers have a mental
  • 20. representation of intonation phrases, i.e. they know how to produce speech structured into intonation phrases and they rely on this knowledge when listening to the speech of others. "Within an intonation phrase, there is typically one word that is most prominent. . . . Some utterances might contain just one intonation phrase, others might contain several of them. Moreover, speakers can put utterances together to form larger stretches of speech or discourse. . . . "Intonational phrasing in English can have a meaning-distinguishing function. Consider utterances 11a and 11b: (11a) He washed and fed the dog. (11b) He washed | and fed the dog. If the intonation phrase 'He washed and fed the dog' is produced as one intonation phrase, its meaning is that a person both washed and fed a dog. Conversely, if the same utterance is produced as a sequence of two intonation phrases with an intonation boundary after washed (indicated by the symbol |), the meaning of the utterance changes into 'someone who washed himself and fed a dog.'" (Ulrike Gut, Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology. Peter Lang, 2009) • Intonation Contours "Intonation often does serve to convey information of a broadly meaningful nature . . .. For example, the falling pitch we hear at the end of a statement in English such as Fred parked the car signals that the utterance is complete. For this reason, falling intonation at the end of an utterance is called a terminal (intonation) contour. Conversely, a rising or level intonation, called a nonterminal (intonation) contour, often signals incompleteness. Nonterminal contours are often heard in the nonfinal forms found in lists and telephone numbers." (William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001) • Tonality (Chunking) "The speaker does not necessarily have to follow the rule of an IP for each clause. There are many cases where different kinds of chunking are possible. For example, if a speaker wants to say We don't know who she is, it is possible to say the whole utterance as a single IP (= one intonation pattern): We don't know who she is.
  • 21. But it is also possible to divide the material up, in at least the following possible ways: We don't know | who she is. We | don't know who she is. We don't | know who she is. We | don't know | who she is. Thus the speaker may present the material as two, or three, pieces of information rather than a single piece. This is tonality (or chunking)." (J. C. Wells, English Intonation: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2006) • Position of Intonation Phrase Boundaries "The position of intonation phrase boundaries shows a good amount of variability. These have been studied in English on the basis of positions of possible pauses within clauses (Selkirk 1984b, Taglicht 1998 and references there) and positions of obligatory pauses (Downing 1970). . . . The core result is that root clauses, and only these, are bounded by obligatory intonation phrase breaks. (Root clauses are clauses [CPs] not imbedded inside of a higher clause that has a subject and a predicate.)" (Hubert Truckenbrodt, "The Syntax-Phonology Interface." The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, ed. by Paul de Lacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007) Also Known As: intonation group, phonological phrase, tone unit, tone group, word group phrasing   Use Phrasing in a sentence Ads Phrasing www.everything.org.uk/Phrasing Discuss Phrasing Open the discussion Dictionary.com Free Toolbar Dictionary.com Define Phrasing Instantly. Faster Page Loads With Fewer Ads. phras·ing [frey-zing] Show IPA noun 1.
  • 22. the act of forming phrases. 2. a manner or method of forming phrases; phraseology. 3. Music. the grouping of the notes of a musical line into distinct phrases. Relevant Questions What Is A Phrase? What Is An Infinitive Ph... What Is A Verbal Phrase? What Is An Example Of A ... Origin: 1605–15; phrase + -ing1 Dictionary.com Unabridged phrase [freyz] Show IPA noun, verb, phrased, phras·ing. noun 1. Grammar . a. a sequence of two or more words arranged in a grammatical construction and acting as a unit in a sentence. b. (in English) a sequence of two or more words that does not contain a finite verb and its subject or that does not consist of clause elements such as subject, verb, object, or complement, as a preposition and a noun or pronoun, an adjective and noun, or an adverb and verb. 2. Rhetoric . a word or group of spoken words that the mind focuses on momentarily as a meaningful unit and is preceded and followed by pauses. 3. a characteristic, current, or proverbial expression: a hackneyed phrase. 4. Music. a division of a composition, commonly a passage of four or eight measures, forming part of a period. 5. a way of speaking, mode of expression, or phraseology: a book written in the phrase of the West. verb (used with object) 8. to express or word in a particular way: to phrase an apology well. 9. to express in words: to phrase one's thoughts. 10. Music.
  • 23. a. to mark off or bring out the phrases of (a piece), especially in execution. b. to group (notes) into a phrase. verb (used without object) 11. Music. to perform a passage or piece with proper phrasing. Origin: 1520–30; (noun) back formation from phrases, plural of earlier phrasis < Latin phrasis diction, style (plural phrasēs ) < Greek phrásis diction, style, speech, equivalent to phrá ( zein ) to speak + -sis -sis; (v.) derivative of the noun Related forms mis·phrase, verb (used with object), mis·phrased, mis·phras·ing. un·phrased, adjective Can be confused: frays, phrase (see synonym study at the current entry). Synonyms 1. Phrase, expression, idiom, locution all refer to grammatically related groups of words. A phrase is a sequence of two or more words that make up a grammatical construction, usually lacking a finite verb and hence not a complete clause or sentence: shady lane (a noun phrase); at the bottom (a prepositional phrase); very slowly (an adverbial phrase). In general use, phrase refers to any frequently repeated or memorable group of words, usually of less than sentence length or complexity: a case of feast or famine—to use the well-known phrase. Expression is the most general of these words and may refer to a word, a phrase, or even a sentence: prose filled with old-fashioned expressions. An idiom is a phrase or larger unit of expression that is peculiar to a single language or a variety of a language and whose meaning, often figurative, cannot easily be understood by combining the usual meanings of its individual parts, as to go for broke. Locution is a somewhat formal term for a word, a phrase, or an expression considered as peculiar to or characteristic of a regional or social dialect or considered as a sample of language rather than as a meaning-bearing item: a unique set of locutions heard only in the mountainous regions of the South. Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013. Cite This Source | Link To phrasing 00:05 Phrasing is always a great word to know. So is quincunx. Does it mean: a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison. an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
  • 24. LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO... Collins World English Dictionary phrase (freɪz) —n 1. clause noun phrase Compare verb phrase a group of words forming an immediate syntactic constituent of a clause 2. a particular expression, esp an original one 3. music a small group of notes forming a coherent unit of melody 4. (in choreography) a short sequence of dance movements — vb 5. music to divide (a melodic line, part, etc) into musical phrases, esp in performance 6. to express orally or in a phrase [C16: from Latin phrasis, from Greek: speech, from phrazein to declare, tell] phrasing (ˈfreɪzɪŋ) —n 1. the way in which something is expressed, esp in writing; wording 2. music the division of a melodic line, part, etc, into musical phrases Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition 2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 Cite This Source Etymonline Word Origin & History phrase 1530, "manner or style of expression," also "group of words with some unity," from L.L. phrasis "diction," from Gk. phrasis "speech, way of speaking, phraseology," from phrazein "to express, tell," from phrazesthai "to consider," of unknown origin. The musical sense of "short passage" is from 1789. The Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper Cite This Source American Heritage
  • 25. Cultural Dictionary phrase definition A group of grammatically connected words within a sentence: “ One council member left in a huff ”; “She got much satisfaction from planting daffodil bulbs .” Unlike clauses, phrases do not have both a subject and a predicate. The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Cite This Source