• Accentual Patterns - Finch

• Differences in rythm between Spanish and English

• What is a tone unit, components
• Weak forms, what are they, transcription
• Tone language vs intonation languages
• Elements that produce prominance, name and explain them
• Sentence stress
• Falling and raising intonation, examples

What is accentuation?
What are accentual patterns?
Types of accentual patterns (pelotitas)

Elements of prominance
Sentence stress

What are weak forms?

List of weak forms
Transcription of weak forms

What is rhythm?
What are the differences in rhythm between Spanish and English?

What is intonation?
Types of intonation
Functions of intonation
Examples of use

What is a tone unit?

Components of a tone unit?

What is accentuation?
Accentuation is a suprasegmental phonetic feature. It affects long stretches of utterance, such as the
syllable, the word and sentence.
When we speak we give more emphasis to some parts of an utterance than to others. That emphasis is
called prominance. There are different elements that produce prominence at syllable level: pitch,
quality, quantity and stress.

Elements of prominence
Pitch: articulatory, depends mainly on the tension and rate of vibration of the vocal folds. Auditorily, it
can be placed on a scale running from high to low, or acute to grave.
Quality: articularory, depends on the shape of the resonators.
Quantity: it can be examined auditorily, as we use our ears and define sounds in a scale going from
long to short. From the perceptual point of view it is refered as length.
Stress: From the articulatory point of view it is caused by greater muscular energy and breath force.
Auditorily, it is perceived as loudness, and can be placed on a scale going from loud to soft.

Pitch: associated with syllables that can act as pitch movement initiators
Quality: strong vowel
Quantity: loud sound

Lack of prominence: weak vowels, syllabic consonants, short sounds

Types of accent:

Primary
Secondary
Prominant
Unaccented

Primary accent stars the pitch movement. If a word has two or more accents, pitch movement
will naturally start on the last one. Previous accent or accents are less likely to initiate pitch movement,
so we call them secondary accents . Syllables with inherent prominance are marked like this: , and
unaccented syllables like this .

English vs Spanish Accentuation

If languages were to be grouped according to the mobility of the primary accent in the word, we could
say that both English and Spanish have free accent, meaning that the place of accent is variable and
accentuation rules. However, Spanish shows a marked tendency towards fixed position of word accent,
and English shows a tendency towards greater viariability.
Weak forms

Some words in English can be pronounced in two different ways: weak forms and strong forms.
Weak form words are characterized by obscuration towards a centralized vowel quality. And/or elision
of a vowel or consonant.
One of the most important characteristics of English are the weak forms.
The process where vowels were gradually weakened or elided is known as gradation, and has been
going on for centuries.
Rules for when the strong form is used:
• End of a sentence
• Contrasted
• Emphasis
• Quoted

What kind of words are weak forms?

Almost all of them are function words

●Articles ●Prepositions
●Auxiliaries ●Pronouns
●Demonstratives ●Conjunctions
●Quantifiers

Why is learning weak forms important?

Because native speakers find an “all-strong-form” pronunciation unnatural and foreign sounding. Also,
speakers who aren't familiar with this might have a hard time understanding those who use them.

Gradation
/ə/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /ɪə/, /ʊə/ and syllabic consonants.
English vs Spanish vowel weakening

Both English and Spanish vowels are weakened in unaccented syllables. The degree of obscuration,
however, is very different in the two languages. Although it is more noticiable in some varieties of
Spanish (e. g. Mexico) than in others, in general vowel weakening does not go beyond the allophonic
level in this language. In English, on the other hand, vowel weakening is much more marked, and as for
weak-forms, it can even modify the phonemic patterns of words.

Rhythm
Is the way the “peaks” of prominence are distributed in the utterance, creating a rhythmic pattern of
English. If we analize different utterances, we might find a tendency where the distance between
accented and unaccented syllables within it, are equals, that means that the rhythmic beats are
isochronous. This is a characteristic of English rhythm. In real life speech, isochrony is much less
obvious due to stammerings, false starts, interruptions, etc.
Rhythm has been conceived as the way in which accented and unaccented syllables follow each other
in the utterance.

Spanish rhythm

Has some characteristics in common with English. The same type of words tend to be accented (lexical
as opposed to function). One of the differences between English and Spanish rhythm lies in the fact that
Spanish vowel weakening in terms of quality and quantity is very slight compared to English.

Stress-timed vs syllable-timed rhythm

English has a stress-timed rhythm because the accented syllables tend to occur at similar intervals. The
separation between two accented syllables
Although Spanish rhythm is also determined by rhythmic beats, their occurance is not as regular as in
English. Therefore, Spanish is a syllable-timed rhythm because it is the syllables, which tend to occur
at more or less regular intervals.

Intonation

Intonation is an element of suprasegmental phonology. It has been defined in terms of rises and falls of
the voice in speech, and pitch plays the important part. Intonation is carried by the tone unit, which is a
unit of pitch.
Phonology is interested in the aspects of speaker's speech that carry linguistic information, that means,
that the pitch changes have to be under the speaker's control, the difference must be percetible and it
should show contrast.
Intonation makes it easier for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey. The ways in
which intonation does this are very complex, and many suggestions have been made for ways of
isolating different functions.

Functions of intonation include:

Attitudinal function
Accentual function
Grammatical function
Discourse function

Attitudinal function of intonation

Enables us to express emotions and attitudes as we speak, and this

adds a special kind of “meaning” to spoken language.

Accentual function of intonation

Helps to produce the effect of prominence on stressed syllables, and in particular, the placing of tonic
stress on a particular syllable marks out that word as the most important in the tone-unit.

Grammatical function of intonation

Helps to recognise the grammar and syntactic structure of the what is being said by using the
information contained in the intonation. Indicates the difference between grammatical categories such
as questions and statements.

Discourse function of intonation

Intonation can
• signal what is to be taken as “new” information and what is already given
• suggest when the speaker is indicating some sort of contrast or link with material in another tone-unit
• in conversation, can convey to the listener what kind of response is expected.

There are different types of tones:

Falling
Rising Moving intonation
Fall-rise
Rise-fall
Level Neutral intonation

A falling tone intonation could be used as a way to demonstrate finality. It could also be used when we
are stating a fact. Example:

• How are you?

• Fine.

• I'm your teacher.

A rising tone intonation could be used as a questioning manner, to express politeness or to signal that
something else is to follow.
Example:

• Is it yours?

Level tone intonation is perceived as neutral or uninterested and is used, for example, when teachers
are calling the register in a rutine-like manner.

Tone Languages vs Intonation Languages

Tone languages are those in which substituting one distinctive tone for another on a particular word,
can change the lexical meaning of that word. The unit of analysis in this type of language, is based on
the syllable. English, is not a tone language, but an intonation language. Variations in intonation in this
type of languages are used for different and more complex purposes. On Intonation languages the unit
of analysis is the tone unit.
Intonation unit

Utterances can be divided into rhythmic units, from the point of view of intonation it can also be
organized into tone units, which can be as short as one syllable. Intonation is carried by said tone units,
and tone units can be classified into simple and compound.

Tone units consist of different parts:

The pre-head
All the unstressed syllables in a tone unit preceding the first stressed syllable. It could occur with or
without a head.

The head
All that part of the tone unit which extends from the first stressed syllable up to the tonic syllable. If
there is not stressed syllable before the tonic syllable, there is not head.

Tonic syllable
The syllable which carries the tone is called tonic syllable. It does not only carry a tone, but also a type
of stress called tonic stress.

Tail
Syllables between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone-unit. It follows the movement from the
tonic syllable.