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Text of the page (random words):
français galego עברית magyar հայերեն íslenska italiano 日本語 қазақша 한국어 кыргызча limburgs lietuvių bahasa melayu nederlands norsk nynorsk norsk bokmål português rumantsch română русский русиньскый slovenčina shqip српски srpski svenska kiswahili türkçe українська 粵語 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikimedia commons wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia redirected from suprasegmental timing rhythm and intonation of speech prosodic redirects here for other uses see prosody disambiguation part of a series on phonetics subdisciplines acoustic articulatory auditory articulation places of articulation labial dental alveolar postalveolar palatal velar uvular laryngeal manners of articulation consonant plosive affricate fricative nasal approximant liquid lateral vowel airstream mechanisms pulmonic glottalic lingual percussive acoustics phonation voicing fundamental frequency glottis pitch pitch accent source filter model tone voicelessness phonation types modal creaky breathy perception acoustic cues aphasia categorical perception hearing neural encoding of sound prosody theories of speech perception acoustic landmarks exemplar theory motor theory linguistics v t e in linguistics prosody ˈ p r ɒ s ə d i ˈ p r ɒ z 1 2 is the study of elements of speech including intonation stress rhythm and loudness that occur simultaneously with individual sound segments vowels and consonants often prosody specifically refers to such elements known as suprasegmentals when they extend across more than one segment 3 4 prosody reflects the nuanced emotional features of the speaker or of their utterances their obvious or underlying emotional state the form of utterance statement question or command the presence of irony or sarcasm certain emphasis on words or morphemes contrast focus and so on prosody displays elements of language that are not encoded by grammar punctuation or choice of vocabulary attributes of prosody edit in the study of prosodic aspects of speech it is usual to distinguish between auditory measures subjective impressions produced in the mind of the listener and objective measures physical properties of the sound wave and physiological characteristics of articulation that may be measured objectively auditory subjective and objective acoustic and articulatory measures of prosody do not correspond in a linear way 5 most studies of prosody have been based on auditory analysis using auditory scales auditorily the major prosodic variables are pitch of the voice varying between low and high length of sounds varying between short and long loudness or prominence varying between soft and loud timbre or phonatory quality quality of sound acoustically these prosodic variables correspond closely to visualization of the prosody of a male voice saying speech prosody pitch in ribbon height and periodic energy in ribbon width and darkness audio for the visualization above fundamental frequency measured in hertz or cycles per second duration measured in time units such as milliseconds or seconds intensity or sound pressure level measured in decibels spectral characteristics distribution of energy at different parts of the audible frequency range different combinations of these variables are exploited in the linguistic functions of intonation and stress as well as other prosodic features such as rhythm and tempo 5 additional prosodic variables have been studied including voice quality and pausing the behavior of the prosodic variables can be studied either as contours across the prosodic unit or by the behavior of boundaries 6 phonology edit prosodic features are suprasegmental since they are properties of units of speech that are defined over groups of sounds rather than single segments 7 when talking about prosodic features it is important to distinguish between the personal characteristics that belong to an individual s voice for example their habitual pitch range intonation patterns etc and the independently variable prosodic features that are used contrastively to communicate meaning for example the use of changes in pitch to indicate the difference between statements and questions personal characteristics that belong to an individual are not linguistically significant while prosodic features are prosody has been found across all languages and is described to be a natural component of language the defining features of prosody that display the nuanced emotions of an individual differ across languages and cultures intonation edit main article intonation linguistics some writers e g o connor and arnold 8 have described intonation entirely in terms of pitch while others e g crystal 9 propose that intonation is a combination of several prosodic variables english intonation is often said to be based on three aspects the division of speech into units the highlighting of particular words and syllables the choice of pitch movement e g fall or rise the choice of pitch movement and the highlighting of particular words to create different intonation patterns can be seen in the following english conversation that s a cat yup that s a cat a cat i thought it was a mountain lion the exchange above is an example of using intonation to highlight particular words and to employ rising and falling of pitch to change meaning if read out loud the pitch of the voice moves in different directions on the word cat in the first line pitch goes up indicating a question in the second line pitch falls indicating a statement a confirmation of the first line in this case finally in the third line a complicated fall rise pattern indicates incredulity each pitch intonation pattern communicates a different meaning 7 an additional pitch related variation is pitch range speakers are capable of speaking with a wide range of pitch this is usually associated with excitement while at other times with a narrow range english makes use of changes in key shifting one s intonation into the higher or lower part of one s pitch range is believed to be meaningful in certain contexts 10 11 stress edit stress functions as the means of making a syllable prominent stress may be studied in relation to individual words named word stress or lexical stress or in relation to larger units of speech traditionally referred to as sentence stress but more appropriately named prosodic stress stressed syllables are made prominent by several variables stress is typically associated with the following pitch prominence a pitch level that is different from that of neighboring syllables or a pitch movement increased length duration increased loudness dynamics differences in timbre in english and some other languages stress is associated with aspects of vowel quality whose acoustic correlate is the formant frequencies or spectrum of the vowel unstressed vowels tend to be centralized relative to stressed vowels which are normally more peripheral in quality 12 some of these cues are more powerful or prominent than others alan cruttenden for example writes perceptual experiments have clearly shown that in english at any rate the three features pitch length and loudness form a scale of importance in bringing syllables into prominence pitch being the most efficacious and loudness the least so 13 when pitch prominence is the major factor the resulting prominence is often called accent rather than stress 14 there is considerable variation from language to language concerning the role of stress in identifying words or in interpreting grammar and syntax 15 tempo edit main article speech tempo rhythm edit although rhythm is not a prosodic variable in the way that pitch or loudness are it is usual to treat a language s characteristic rhythm as a part of its prosodic phonology it has often been asserted that languages exhibit regularity in the timing of successive units of speech a regularity referred to as isochrony and that every language may be assigned one of three rhythmical types stress timed where the durations of the intervals between stressed syllables is relatively constant syllable timed where the durations of successive syllables are relatively constant and mora timed where the durations of successive morae are relatively constant as explained in the isochrony article this claim has not been supported by scientific evidence pause edit see also pausa voiced or unvoiced the pause is a form of interruption to articulatory continuity such as an open or terminal juncture conversation analysis commonly notes pause length distinguishing auditory hesitation from silent pauses is one challenge contrasting junctures within and without word chunks can aid in identifying pauses there are a variety of filled pause types formulaic language pause fillers include like er and um and paralinguistic expressive respiratory pauses include the sigh and gasp although related to breathing pauses may contain contrastive linguistic content as in the periods between individual words in english advertising voice over copy sometimes placed to denote high information content e g quality service value chunking edit pausing or its lack contributes to the perception of word groups or chunks examples include the phrase phraseme constituent or interjection chunks commonly highlight lexical items or fixed expression idioms chunking prosody 16 is present on any complete utterance and may correspond to a syntactic category but not necessarily the well known english chunk know what i mean in common usage sounds like a single word no wada meen due to blurring or rushing the articulation of adjacent word syllables thereby changing the potential open junctures between words into closed junctures functions edit prosody has had a number of perceptually significant functions in english and other languages contributing to the recognition and comprehension of speech 17 grammar edit it is believed that prosody assists listeners in parsing continuous speech and in the recognition of words providing cues to syntactic structure grammatical boundaries and sentence type boundaries between intonation units are often associated with grammatical or syntactic boundaries these are marked by such prosodic features as pauses and slowing of tempo as well as pitch reset where the speaker s pitch level returns to the level typical of the onset of a new intonation unit in this way potential ambiguities may be resolved for example the sentence they invited bob and bill and al got rejected is ambiguous when written although addition of a written comma after either bob or bill will remove the sentence s ambiguity but when the sentence is read aloud prosodic cues like pauses dividing the sentence into chunks and changes in intonation will reduce or remove the ambiguity 18 moving the intonational boundary in cases such as the above example will tend to change the interpretation of the sentence this result has been found in studies performed in both english and bulgarian 19 research in english word recognition has demonstrated an important role for prosody 20 21 focus edit intonation and stress work together to highlight important words or syllables for contrast and focus 22 this is sometimes referred to as the accentual function of prosody a well known example is the ambiguous sentence i never said she stole my money where there are seven meaning changes depending on which of the seven words is vocally highlighted 23 discourse and pragmatic functions edit prosody helps convey many other pragmatic functions including expressing attitudes approval uncertainty dissatisfaction and so on flagging turn taking intentions to hold the floor to yield the turn to invite a backchannel like uh huh and so on and marking topic structure starting a new topic closing a topic interpolating a parenthetical remark and so on among others 24 25 26 for example david brazil and his associates studied how intonation can indicate whether information is new or already established whether a speaker is dominant or not in a conversation and when a speaker is inviting the listener to make a contribution to the conversation 27 emotion edit main article emotional prosody prosody is also important in signalling emotions and attitudes when this is involuntary as when the voice is affected by anxiety or fear the prosodic information is not linguistically significant however when the speaker varies their speech intentionally for example to indicate sarcasm this usually involves the use of prosodic features the most useful prosodic feature in detecting sarcasm is a reduction in the mean fundamental frequency relative to other speech for humor neutrality or sincerity while prosodic cues are important in indicating sarcasm context clues and shared knowledge are also important 28 emotional prosody was considered by charles darwin in the descent of man to predate the evolution of human language even monkeys express strong feelings in different tones anger and impatience by low fear and pain by high notes 29 native speakers listening to actors reading emotionally neutral text while projecting emotions correctly recognized happiness 62 of the time anger 95 surprise 91 sadness 81 and neutral tone 76 when a database of this speech was processed by computer segmental features allowed better than 90 recognition of happiness and anger while suprasegmental prosodic features allowed only 44 49 recognition the reverse was true for surprise which was recognized only 69 of the time by segmental features and 96 of the time by suprasegmental prosody 30 in typical conversation no actor voice involved the recognition of emotion may be quite low of the order of 50 hampering the complex interrelationship function of speech advocated by some authors 31 however even if emotional expression through prosody cannot always be consciously recognized tone of voice may continue to have subconscious effects in conversation this sort of expression stems not from linguistic or semantic effects and can thus be isolated from traditional clarification needed linguistic content dubious discuss aptitude of the average person to decode conversational implicature of emotional prosody has been found to be slightly less accurate than traditional facial expression discrimination ability however specific ability to decode varies by emotion these emotional clarification needed have been determined to be ubiquitous across cultures as they are utilized and understood across cultures various emotions and their general experimental identification rates are as follows 32 anger and sadness high rate of accurate identification fear and happiness medium rate of accurate identification disgust poor rate of accurate identification...