Supra-segmental Features

1. Supra-segmental Features • Supra-segmental features are these melodic or prosodic elements in the flow of spoken language. They include pitch, length, stress and intonation. • The most important impressions these features convey relate to the speaker's identity, attitudes, and emotional states and perhaps most significant of all the speaker's evaluation of what he or she is saying. • She is a good lawyer

2. Stress • Stress is the relative degree of force with which a sound or syllable is pronounced. Stress relates to syllable prominence; stressed syllables are those syllables within an utterance that are longer, louder and higher in pitch. about, father , potato , apartment , receive , perhaps • Production : more muscular energy • Reception : more prominent than unstressed syllables • Four factors in determining prominence in a syllable: Loudness, Length, Pitch, Quality

3. Functions of Stress • To give special emphasis to a word or to contrast one word with another. You broke the WINDOW. I think JOHN not Mary should go • To indicate syntactic relationships and grammatical function between words or parts of words or parts of words. noun-verb INsult/ inSULT, Export/exPORT Compound nouns WHITEhouse, a white house GREENhouse, a green house DIplomatdipLOmacydiploMAtic PHOtographphoTOgraphyphotoGRAphic MOnotonemoNOtonymonoTOnic

4. Level of Stress • Primary stressrefers to the heaviest emphasis given to a syllable in a word when spoken in isolation or placed on the most important syllable of an important word in context. CLEArance stress is on first syllable eVAporate stress is on second syllable inteRRUPT stress is on third syllable

5. Level of Stress 2. Secondary stressinvovles giving emphasis to a lesser degree to a syllable but still great enough to constitute stressing. cupCAKE secondary stress is in on second syllable aptitUDE secondary stress is in on final syllable PHOtographic secondary stress is on first syllable 3- Tertiary (weak syllable) Stress is the amount of emphasis needed to preserve the normal vowel quality without giving it the emphasis of primary or secondary stress. Democratic , Organization

6. Level of Stress • Unstressed Syllables containing / ə / , / I / and /ʊ/ will sound less prominent than an unstressed syllable containing other vowels, as in agree /əgri:/, regard /rIga:d/, and neighbourhood/neibəhʊd/ • Most / ə / , / I / phonemes in unstressed syllables result from a reduction, or weakening, of such full vowels owing to a shift in stress. • E.g.: the /æ/ in land /lænd/ remains an /æ/ in landing /lændIŋ/ because it occurs in a stressed syllable, but it is reduced to / ə / in England /Iŋglənd/ because here it occurs in an unstressed syllable. • the / e / in the noun present /preznt/ is reduced to /I/ in the verb present /prIzent/ because the shift in word class is accompanied by a shift in stress, from the first syllable to the second.

7. Stress Placement • Word stress in many languages is fairly predictable, i.e. it is governed by rules that apply to almost the entire vocabulary, or lexicon. These languages are said to have fixed stress, or to be fixed-stress languages. • In French, the stress usually falls on the last syllable, in Polish and Welsh on the last, and in Czech and Finish it falls on the first. In such languages, stress placement is predictable. • In other languages, such as English, word stress is more difficult to predict, i.e. it is rule-governed only to a very limited extent. These languages are said to have free stress, less commonly also called movable stress, or to be free-stress languages. • English word stress is therefore best considered a feature of the individual word, and foreign learners must learn it as such.

8. Where the stress falls in a word • All one syllable words, spoken in isolation, are stressed. • A two-syllable word has one stressed syllable. The stress may be on the first syllable STUdy, or on the second syllable beLIEVE. Grammatical difference between nouns and verbs. • In a two-syllable word, if the second syllable is a long vowel or a diphthong, or if it ends with more than one consonant, the second syllable is stressed: aPPLY, aRRIVE, asSIST • If the final syllable contains a short vowel or if it ends with one consonant, the first syllable is stressed: ENter, Equal , Open • Prepositions, like verbs, often have stress on the second syllable, aBOVE, aBOUT, wiTHIN, beHind • If a word has a diphthong or a long vowel, the stress often falls on it hoRIzon, aLOUD, diVINE, supREME, dicTAtion

9. Where the stress falls in a word 7- If there is no diphthong or long vowel, stress often falls on the third short vowel from the end, or the second from the end if it is followed by two consonants: CEnima , diVInity , Medical , apPEndix 8- Words containing prefixes tend to be strongly stressed on the first syllable of the base form: unHEALTHy , exPLAIN , asleep 9- Germanic prefixes (a- , be- , for- , fore- , under- , over- , out- , un- , with-) are always unstressed in word in which they occur, e.g. (overLOOK, underRATE), But when a word with this prefix functions as a noun and has the pattern of a noun compound, the prefix or its first syllable tends to be stressed: UNderdog , Upshot , OVERdose , FOREcast

11. Mark the stress on the following words: • Verbs: a- protect b- clamber c- detest d- entering e- menace f- disconnect • Nouns a- language b- captain c- career d- paper e- injury f- connection g- fruitcake h- confirmation j- birth mark

12. Mark the stress on the following words: • Verbs: a- protect b- clamber c- detest d- entering e- menace f- disconnect • Nouns a- language b- captain c- career d- paper e- injury f- connection g- fruitcake h- confirmation j- birth mark

13. Mark the stress on the following words 2: • apple • division • duly • fashionable • infiltration • photographic • university • goldfish • conclusion • hard-headed

14. Mark the stress on the following words 2: • apple • division • duly • fashionable • infiltration • photographic • university • goldfish • conclusion • hard-headed

15. Sentence Stress • Some stress tends to fall on all content words in an utterance. • There are four levels of sentence stress: • unstressed syllable • lightly stressed (content words) • strongly stressed (prominent element) • extra strong (contrastive / emphatic stress)

16. Sentence Stress • Which word is the most prominent in a thought group? 1- New or important information is usually the last content word in a neutral phrase: What are you doing? Here’s a package for you. There’s too much traffic. He doesn’t understand her.

17. Sentence Stress 2. Emphatic stress on a particular element MATTHEW’S hair is blue. Matthew’s HAIR is blue. Matthew’s hair IS blue. Matthew’s hair is BLUE.

18. Sentence Stress 3. Contrastive stress on two parallel elements Is this a HIGH- or LOW-intermediate English class? HIGH-intermediate Is this the low-intermediate ENGLISH class? No, it’s the HIGH-intermediate class.

19. Stress different words in the following sentences and explain what is meant by the main stress in each case. The manager will not allow you to go into the factory.

20. Stress different words in the following sentences and explain what is meant by the main stress in each case. 1 2 3 4 5 The manager will not allow you to go into the factory. 1 the manager = not anybody else 2 not = will forbid you 3 you = he may allow someone else, but not you 4 to go = he may allow you to look at it from the outside, for instance 5 factory = he may allow you to go into the office but not into the factory

21. Stress in Arabic • Stress placement in Arabic is, to a large extent, predictable and regular than in English. • Stress placement is determined by the number and length of syllables in a word. • Many linguists have worked out many rules on the regularities of stress patterns in Arabic. • They all seem to agree on the fact that long syllables and long vowels are always stressed in words having more than one syllable.

22. Rules of stress placement in Arabic • One-syllable words have a primary stress whether the vowel is short or long BArd (cold), TAR (it flew), Fi: (in ) 2. A word of two or three short syllables takes the primary stress on the first syllable, e.g. ‘Ana (I), ‘Abadan (never) , ‘KAtaba (he wrote) 3. A multi-syllable word takes the primary stress on the last syllable if it is long irrespective of whether the preceding syllables are long or short, e.g. yaktubu:n(they write),tawu:s(peacock), murasilu:n(reporters) 4. If the last syllable is not long, the primary stress falls on the last long syllable in the word: Katib (writer), ihtimamahu (his interest)

23. Rules of sentence stress placement in Arabic 5. Inversion of subject and predicate مبتدأ وخبر seems to change the words on which the stress falls but not the stress pattern, which is on the final word, e.g. ar-rajul fi-l-bayt fi-l-baytirajul 6. The definite article (‘al ال) is never stressed and is quite assimilated with the following consonant ar-rajul , ash-shams 7. With the possessive case الاضافة the main stress falls on the second element, e.g. baytuar-rajul , kitabu-l-bint

24. Rules of sentence stress placement in Arabic Like English, Arabic sentence stress shifts when emphasizing a certain word in a sentence: • ’sami wajada muna /(sami found muna) • sami ‘wajada muna /(sami found muna) • sami wajada ‘muna /(sami found muna)

25. Some difficulties Arab learners face • Misplacement of stress, especially in two or more syllable words, e.g. SAtified becomes satisFIED , phoTOgrapher becomes PHOtographer 2. Confusion of some pairs of words, e.g. export (n) , export (v); conduct (n), conduct (v) 3. Failure to adopt the stress-timed rhythm of English, which means that English has regularly spaced stressed syllables, in that they tend to stress all words irrespective of their importance, context and nature, /hi: went tɔðəmærket / becomes /hi: went tu: ðæmærket /

26. Some difficulties Arab learners face 4- Failure to adopt the weak vowels in connected speech, especially vowel reduction for unstressed syllables which become /ə/. Arabic vowels tend to retain their full value and Arab learners retain this habit in English pronunciation: /ənætəmi/ becomes / ænætɒmi / Today I want to show you the anatomy of a horse

27. Suggestions for Teaching Stress • Slight Exaggeration of the stressed syllable might prove useful and necessary to highlight where stress falls, especially when a polysyllabic word is first learnt and drilled. • T. trains students’ ears to ‘hear’ the right stress of words when they are spoken by the teacher or by native speakers or in tape-recorded materials. • T. should encourage students to use reliable pronouncing dictionary both in class and at home. T. should encourage Ss to build their own dictionary with stresses are correctly placed in words.

28. Suggestions for Teaching Stress 4. Ss should learn appropriate reduction of syllables and especially unstressed vowels through practicing repetition of certain dialogues or sentences in connected speech. 5. Students can learn stress pattern and syllable reduction through songs and rhymes. Have students read aloud poems, songs or chants that have a strong beat as they clap or tap. 6. T. can design stress exercises based on his own knowledge of the mistakes students tend to make. For instance: • stress shift in words (noun-verb) `accent-ac`cent, `digest-di`gest, `present-pre`sent. • Stress pattern of words of the same ‘root’: `politics – po`litical – poli`tician `democrat – de`mocracy – demo`cratic `photograph – pho`tographer – photo`graphic

29. Lesson: Find a partner: Stress patterns (All levels) Materials: Sentence and word cards • The teacher gives half of the students a card each with a word on, and the other half a card with a sentence on. • Each word card has a sentence card match; the word and sentence both having the same stress pattern. • Students mingle, saying their words or sentences out loud, and through listening, they try to find their partner. • When they think they have found a partner, they check with the teacher, and if they are indeed a pair, they can sit down. • Once all of the students are paired up, the pairs read out their word and sentence to the other students, who write down the stress pattern, using a small circle to represent unstressed syllables, and a large one to represent a stressed syllable.

30. Lesson: Three little words: Contrastive stress (All levels) This short activity provides a simple way of demonstrating the effect that a shifting tonic syllable can have on the meaning of an utterance. The teacher writes I love you on the board, and asks the students which syllable is stressed, eliciting that it is the word love. He draws a stress box over the word to show this or rewrites it in capitals. He then writes the same sentence up twice more. The students then work in pairs to see if they can work out any other possible meanings, through stressing the other words in the sentence. Suggested answers are as follows: SentenceMeaning I loveyou ...and I want you to know this. I love you. I don't love her. Ilove you. He doesn't!