DEFINITION

STRESS
RHYTHM
INTONATION
STRONG & WEAK FORMS
AINUL ASYIKIN BINTI ABDUL MANAB
MICHELLE ANAK JOANESS SPIDY
TESL SK 1
 Suprasegmental, also called as
Prosodic Features, in phonetics, a
speech feature such as
Stress, tone, or word juncture that
accompanies or is added over
What is consonants and vowels;
suprasegmental These features are not limited to
features??? single sounds but often extend
syllables, words or phrases.

ADD A FOOTER 2
o Stress
o The relative
prominence of a
syllable

o Rhythm
oPatterns of stress in
time

o Intonation
oThe pitch pattern of
an utterance
 Definition
• Stress, in phonetics, intensity
given to a syllable of speech
by special effort in utterance,
resulting in relative loudness.
This emphasis in
pronunciation may be merely
phonetic.
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In English, we do not say each syllable with the
same force or strength. In one word, we
accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable
very loudly (big, strong, important) and all the
other syllables very quietly.
• It is a unit of pronunciation that has one vowel sound.
• Every word made of 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
 1. NOUNS and ADJECTIVES 2. VERBS and PREPOSITIONS
with 2 syllables with 2 syllables
• The stress is usually on the • The stress is usually on the
first syllable. second syllable.

• Examples : • Examples :
table /TA-ble/ present /pre-SENT/
scissors /SCI-ssors/ export /ex-PORT/
pretty /PRE-tty/ aside /a-SIDE/
clever /CLE-ver/ between /be-TWEEN/
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• NOUN – its stress on the first syllable
• VERB – its stress on the second syllable

• Examples :

/PRE-sent/ N
present
/pre-SENT/ V

/SU-spect/ N
suspect
/su-SPECT/ V
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 4. Three syllables words 5. Words ending with “ic”,
ending with “er” and “ly” “sion” and “tion”
• The stress is on the first • The stress is on the second syllable
syllable from the end

• Examples : • Examples :
orderly /OR-der-ly/ creation /cre-A-tion/
quietly /QUI-et-ly/
commission /com-MI-ssion/
manager /MA-na-ger/
photographic /pho-to-GRA-phic/
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• The stress is on the third syllable from the end.

• Examples :
democracy /de-MO-cra-cy/
photography /pho-TO-gra-phy/
logical /LO-gi-cal/
commodity /com-MO-di-ty/
psychology /phy-CHO-lo-gy/
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 7. Compound nouns
• The stress is on the first noun
• Examples :
football /FOOT-ball/
keyboard /KEY-board/
whiteboard /WHITE-board/
8. Compund adjectives
and verbs
• The stress is on the second word
• Examples :
old-fashioned /old-FA-shioned/
upgrade /up-GRADE/
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 Levels of Stress
Primary Secondary Tertiary
Level Level Level
(Unnecessary
(The loudest (Syllable
Degree of
syllable in a which aren’t
completely Complexity/ Fully
word) unstressed
stressed) sounds)
• Loudest syllable in the word
• In one-syllable words, that one syllable has the primary stress
• Primary stress is marked in IPA by putting a raised vertical line
[‘] at the beginning of the syllable.
• Example :
photograph / ‘fot…../
mock /m’ak/

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• Secondary level
• Syllables are not completely unstressed, but are not as loud as the
primary stress
• Is marked with a lower vertical line [,] at the beginning of the syllable

• Tertiary level
• Syllables that have no stress at all.

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1-Loudness: Many people seem to feel that stressed syllables
are louder than unstressed. Loudness is a component of
prominence. take example of a non sense word,(ba:ba:ba:ba)
2-Length: the length of a syllable has an important part to play in
prominence. If one syllable is made longer, it will be heard as
stressed.
3-Pitch: Every voiced syllable is said on some high pitch it will
produce an effect of prominence.
4-quality: A syllable will become prominent if it contains a
vowel,different in quality. we can look on stressed syllables as
occurring against a background of weak syllables,I,u,ә. 15
In English there are three types of stress:
1. Syllable stress
- when one syllable in a word is pronounced louder and more clearly
than adjacent syllables.
2. Word stress
- when one word is pronounced louder and more clearly than adjacent
words in a sentence.
3. Phrase, clause or sentence stress
- when one phrase, clause or sentence is pronounced louder and more
clearly than adjacent phrases, clauses or sentences in a paragraph.
•In phonetics, rhythm is
the sense of movement
in speech, marked by the
stress, timing, and
quantity of syllables.
•In poetics, rhythm is the
recurring alternation of
strong and weak
elements in the flow of
sound and silence in
sentences or lines of 17

verse.
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 "The following sentence will illustrate:
Oriental luxury goods--jade, silk, gold,
spices, vermillion, jewels--had formerly
come overland by way of the Caspian Sea;
and a few daring sea captains, now that
this route had been cut by the Huns,
catching the trade winds, were sailing from
Red Sea ports and loading up at Ceylon.
(Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Modern Rhetoric, 3rd ed. Harcourt, 1972)
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 Oriental luxury goods--jade, silk, gold,
spices, vermillion, jewels--had formerly
come overland by way of the Caspian
Sea, and now that this route had been
cut by the Huns, a few daring Greek sea
captains were sailing from Red Sea
ports, catching the trade winds and
loading up at Ceylon.
(Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Modern Rhetoric, 3rd ed. Harcourt, 1972)
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  Rhythm: The sense of movement in speech
which is marked by stress, timing and quantity

 Parallelism: A balance within one or more

sentences of similar phrases or clauses that
have the same grammatical structure

.  "Parallelism builds rhythm, and non-

parallelism kills it” (Constance Hale, Sin and
Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose.
Broadway, 1999)

 The elements in a list should echo each other

in length, number of syllables, and rhythm
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 Parallelism Vs. Non-parallelism
Parallelism Non-Parallelism
•'A government of •'A government of
the people, by the the people, that the
people, for the people created, for
people’ the people' doesn't’
(Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose. Broadway, 1999)
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• Pitch, loudness, and tempo combine to make up a
language's expression of rhythm
• English uses stressed syllables produced at
roughly regular intervals of time (in fluent speech)
and separated by unstressed syllables
• A stress-timed rhythm which we can tap out in a
'tum-te-tum' way, as in a traditional line of poetry
• In French, the syllables are produced in a steady
flow, resulting in a 'machine-gun' effect--a syllable-
timed rhythm which is more like a 'rat-a-tat-a-tat.' 23
• In Latin, it was the length of a syllable
(whether long or short) which provided the
basis of rhythm.
• In many oriental languages, it is usually pitch
height (high vs. low)

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• The variation of pitch when speaking.
• Intonation is the “music” of a
language, and is perhaps the most
important elements of a good accent.
• Intonation – the rise and fall of pitch in
our voices.
• It plays a crucial role in how we
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express meaning.
 Not all rises and falls in pitch that occur in the course of
an English phrase can be attributed to stress. The same set of
segments and word stresses can occur with a number of pitch
patterns. Consider the difference between:

• You're going. (statement)

• You're going? (question)

The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called its intonation

contour.
 English has a number of intonation patterns which add
conventionalized meanings to the utterance:

1. Question

2. Statement

3. Surprise

4. Disbelief

5. Sarcasm

6. Teasing
• Intonation for closed question
• Question that requires a simple ‘yes/no’ answer
• It always end with rising intonation
• Examples:
“Are you OK?” “Did it rain last night?”

• Intonation for open question

• Does not have a simple ‘yes/no’ answer
• Has different intonation, which does not rise at the end of the sentence
• Examples:
“Which car did you buy?” “Who was the lead singer in the band?”
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• Surprise
• “Who was at the party?!”
• “How did you know?!”
• Sarcasm
• Might be combined with a cheeky facial expression, an eye roll and a raised
eyebrow
• “I work 50 hours a week to be this poor.”
• Statement
• “I like riding horse.”
• “My English is not that good yet.”
• Commands
• “Get off the horse now.” 29
• The weak form is the
usual pronunciation.
• It is used when the word
is unstressed

• The strong form is used

only when the word is
stressed.
• E.g. When it’s the last
word
Which words have weak
forms?
Which words have strong
forms?