TEMARIO A: TEMA 9

Sistema fonolgico de la lengua inglesa II: Acento, ritmo y entonacin.

Comparacin con el sistema fonolgico de la lengua o lenguas oficiales de la
Comunidad Autnoma correspondiente.

CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
1. Phonetics and Phonology
2. Phonemes and Speech Sounds
3. Stress/Rhythm and Intonation
2. STRESS
1. Degrees of Stress
2. Position of Stress
3. Stress in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
3. RHYTHM
1. Weak and Strong Forms
2. Regularity of Rhythm
3. Rhythm in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
4. INTONATION
1. Falling Tone
2. Rising Tone
3. Fall-rise Tone
4. Rise-fall Tone
5. Level Tone
6. Fall+rise Tone
5. TEACHING IMPLICATIONS

1. INTRODUCTION
The most noticeable feature of a foreign language is often intonation and rhythm. Some
languages are described as sounding "like music", other languages as being "flat and
without melody". If the pronunciation of individual sounds can be compared with the
individual notes in a piece of music, the intonation can be compared with the melody or
tune.
When studying the pronunciation system of a language we differentiate two categories:
Segmental elements: Vowel and consonant sounds.
Prosodic elements: rhythm, stress and intonation.
1. Phonetics and Phonology

PHONETICS: is the science that studies the language sounds; how sounds
are produced in general.
PHONOLOGY: is the study of the sound system in a particular language.
It includes intonation, rhythm, sounds patterns, etc.
2. Phonemes and Speech Sounds
PHONEME: is the smallest unit of speech that can change the meaning of
a word.
SPEECH SOUND: is any unit of sound produced by the speech organs.
They are the muscles and parts of the mouth, which we use to speak.
The Phoneme is also defined as "only in terms of its differences from the
other phonemes in the same language".
Ex: Ship sheep
Minimal pairs: Such pairs, which differ only in one phoneme.
3. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation

When dealing with the concepts of Stress, Rhythm and Intonation, we should start
by referring to the concept of prominence
Prominence: is the characteristic in common with all stressed syllables. Four
different factors are important:

a. Loudness
b. Length
c. Pitch: is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords.
d. A syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality
from neighbouring vowels.

Stress concerns the relative prominence with which one part of a word or a
longer utterance is distinguished from other parts.

Rhythm concerns the relative prominence, or pattern of the stresses being

perceived as peaks of prominence, occurring at somewhat regular intervals of
time. English is a language with a tendency for a stress-timed rhythm.

Intonation is the association of the relative prominence with pitch, the aspect of
the sound which we perceive in terms of "high" or "low".

Other prosodic systems include factors such as tempo and the relative speed of
utterance. Perception of the rhythm base may involve observing variations of
loudness, pitch and speed.
1. STRESS
We can study stress from the point of view of production and of perception. The
production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more
muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables. Many different sound
characteristics are important in making a syllable recognisably stressed.

In English, stressed syllables are longer then unstressed ones, the vowels are
more voiced within them. Stress is not marked in the spelling system, but it can
be transcribed phonetically.
The importance of stress should be noted, given that incorrect stress on syllables
is an obstacle to communication, because it may lead the speaker to understand a
different word, that follows a different stress pattern.
1. Degrees of Stress
We can distinguish between the primary and secondary stress. The first
one is also called tonic strong stress, while the second one is also called
non-tonic strong stress.
Ex: presup,ose
There are other authors who consider that there exist three stresses.
Ex: many lovely girls
2. Position of Stress
Normally stresses are in a fixed position in a word.
First syllable: precept
Second syllable: tonight
Third syllable: engineer
Fourth syllable: misunderstood
Fifth syllable: palatalization
Exceptions:
a. Native words and early French loans
Ex: kingly kingliness unkingliness
b. All abstract nouns ending in ion
Ex: mission
c. Nouns ending in ity
Ex: vacuous vacuity
d. Nouns and adjectives ending in ian
Ex: liberty libertarian
e. Adjectives ending in ic
Ex: phoneme phonemic
f.

Words with more than one function

A wide selection of words that can operate equally well as nouns/adjectives or
verbs, are differentiated by their stress in the two functions:

Ex: present (Noun or adjective) present (verb)

g. Compound nouns
They are generally stressed on the first element with a secondary stress on the
second element in contrast to the normal noun phrase stress pattern:
Ex: black ,bird (compound nouns) a ,black bird (noun phrase)

h. Stress in phrases
When we come to stress in phrases and other syntactic units, we provide different
underlying relations between juxtaposed items.
Ex: An English ,teacher (someone who teaches English)
An ,English teacher (a teacher who is English)
1. Stress in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
a. Lexical and secondary stress
The Canarian speakers should keep in mind the different importance given to the
secondary accent in Spanish as compared with English. The pronunciation of
isolated words rarely occurs in Spanish, it only happens in Adverbs ending in "mente", and in a few compound adverbs.
Ex: smplemnte ptico-acstico
b. Contrastive secondary stress
The secondary stress occurs in the Canarian dialect as well, but it is not
prominent:
Ex: las cuestiones tanto interiores como exteriores
Although English compounds generally turn into a secondary stress the one which
was the primary in the root, and this secondary stress still keeps a considerable
strength; Spanish moves the stress to the suffixes:
Ex: central / ,centralize centrl / centralizr
A secondary stress does not appear except in the cases where the general rules of
Spanish regulate it.
c. Stress position and Effect
In two-syllable words both languages have a preference for stressing the syllable before
the last; English tends to stress the antepenultimate syllable in three or more syllables
words whereas Spanish keeps the penult position for stress.
English vowels are deeply affected by their stress, whether primary or secondary.
Stressed vowels have a precise and clear pronunciation, whereas unstressed vowels have
a tendency to become indistinct.
Finally , in Spanish the stress is represented in the spelling, what makes it easier to be
remembered and pronounced , whereas in English its not represented.
1. RHYTHM

Rhythm may be defined as the regular succession of strong and weak stresses in
utterances. The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at
regular intervals of time. The theory that English has stress- timed rhythm
implies that stressed syllables will tend to occur at relatively regular intervals
whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not.
Some writers have developed theories of English rhythm in which a unit of
rhythm, the foot is used. Some theories of rhythm go further, and point to the fact
that some feet are stronger than others, producing strong-weak patterns.

1. Weak and Strong forms

The weak form, in which the vowel is pronounced with the schwa vowel,
is more common than the other.
The strong form in which the vowel is pronounced as it is written.
Obviously the use of one or another form may affect the meaning of the
utterance.
Ex: Jane and her mother are stupid = it is not true that they are not
stupid
Jane and her mother are stupid = not just one, but both are stupid
Weak forms are a manifestation of stress and rhythm in English, and must
not be avoided in teaching, or the learner will sound unnatural in
connected speech.
2. Regularity of Rhythm
The natural rhythm of English provides roughly equal intervals of time between the
stressed items.
The prevailing tendency in unstressed syllables and words is to reduce the vowels to the
obscure / /, thus we have / / in a great many syllables:
Ex: a kilo of potato / ki:l v p te t z/
Regularity of rhythm is used for specific pourposes:
a. Counting:
Ex: one, two, three,..., seventy four, seventy five
b. Inventory or lists
c. Emphasis:
Ex: you should always look before you cross the road
1. Rhythm in the Canarian Dialect/ Spanish language
It is essential in English to have a sentence rhythm, which does not exist in Spanish.
In an English sentence certain words which are too close to the initial rhythmic beat lose
their lexical stress in spite of having lexical stress. This does not happen in Spanish.
Ex: Marys younger brother wanted fifty chocolate peanuts

In this example we can see the difference with the Spanish stress, in Spanish all the
words will be stressed; however, in English only the syllables in bold type are really
stressed, thus favouring rhythm.
The behaviour of prepositions and conjunctions differs in both languages: they are
usually stressed in English; in Spanish only the preposition "segn" is stressed.
Stress also varies in English depending on whether it is used on strong or weak forms of
the same words. There is nothing in Spanish, which resembles the English strong and
weak forms so this will prove difficult for Spanish students.
1. INTONATION
Intonation is the tune within the sentence that may alter the meaning. Here the
pitch of the voice plays the most important part. We describe pitch in terms of
high and low. There is another necessary condition and that is that a pitch
difference must be perceptible.
Intonation is generally found in sequences of stressed and unstressed syllables,
though it can be a single word. We call it the tone unit, within which there is the
nucleus (capital letters). The first stressed syllable in a tone unit is a onset (),
the end will be ()
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: question, statement, surprise, disbelief, sarcasm, teasing. An important
feature of English intonation is the use of an intonational accent (and extra stress)
to mark the focus of a sentence. Normally this focus accent goes on the last major
word of the sentence, but it can come earlier in order to
emphasize one of the earlier words or to contrast it with something else.
Ex: She told SOMeone
She bought it for a PARty
""
onset nucleus
Tone unit
1. Falling Tone
This is the commonest tone in English affirmative sentences, wh-word
question, one word answers to questions, and on words, names, numbers
and letters said in isolation.
Ex: Whats the TME
LNDON
TW
R
2. Rising Tone
It is used to suggest that what is said is not final.

Ex: Counting: NE TW...

Or because a response is needed (though not in wh-word question):
Ex: Are you HPpy
Or when two clauses are joined together:
Ex: When I GT there Ill HT him
A question will use a rising tone while the question tag uses the falling
tone.
The fall and rise are by far and away the most common of the nuclear
tones.
3. Fall-rise Intonation
It often occurs in the nucleus of a doubtful condition, but it is particularly
common with the initial adverb:
Ex: Ill see him if he CMES
4. Rise-fall Intonation
It expresses as it does both genuine and assumed warmth, as well as
feelings of shock or surprise.
Ex: Thats GRAT
5. Level Tone
It sometimes used to the exact predictability of what is to follow:
Ex: he DRNK he WManised he DED
6. Fall-rise Intonation
It is common in everyday usage:
Ex: She looks FNE to M
It is often used with marked focus, the fall coming on the focus item and the rise
on the last lexical item in the tone unit:
Ex: Its his MNners that I cant STND = What I dont LKE are his ?
Mnners
2. TEACHING IMPLICATIONS
All languages have their own intonation patterns. Why is intonation important? Intonation
conveys both meaning and attitude, so when a non-native speaker gets the intonation
wrong, s/he can be misunderstood or sometimes misinterpreted as sounding rude or
demanding when this is not intended. If a non-native speaker is almost fluent in the
English language, intonation is often the only way in which one can tell that s/he is
foreign. Moreover, if a foreign speaker is advanced in terms of grammar, vocabulary, etc.,
native speakers will make fewer allowances for intonation problems than they would with
speakers who are obviously at a more elementary level. For example, if an advanced
level speaker unintentionally sounds rude or demanding, the listeners will assume that
s/he means it.

What can be done to improve intonation? First of all students should be aware of the
differences between their intonation and the English one:
Spanish intonation is much more measured, so we have to teach the students how
to intonate the different English elements.

Intonation in Spoken Spanish does not rise and fall as much as English. Students
should try and keep the voice as levelled as possible.

Some useful techniques may be :

Listen to as much spoken English as possible (on cassette if you are unable to
listen to native speakers) and be aware of where the voice rises and falls. When
you listen, try to consider the attitude and feelings being conveyed. One word, for
example, can be said in several different ways, depending on the meaning you
wish to convey.

Stories motivate children to listen and learn, and help them to become aware of
the sound and feel of English. A selection of ready-to-tell stories is included
although the activities can be used with any story.

Creating Drama with poetry is an exciting language learning experience. The use
of poetry as drama in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom enables
the students to explore the linguistic and conceptual aspects of the written text
without concentrating on the mechanics of language. Through this technique,
apart from several other aspects the teacher can model students pronunciation,
intonation, stress, rhythm, and oral expression;

We as teachers have to take into account all the differences existing between L1 and L2
patterns of stress, rhythm and intonation, and try our students to differentiate them. So
English people can understand their speaking.