The modification of rhythm in speech (graduation paper )

INTRODUCTION

The subject matter of the present graduation paper is the modification of rhythm in speech. Rhythm is found everywhere in life. Rhythm is understood as periodicity in time and space. The work of all kinds of machinery is said to be rhythmical. In nature rhythm is observed in the successions of seasons, days and nights, the changes of the moon phases. The most evident illustration of rhythm in the physiology of living beings is the heart beating and breathing. Most of human activities appear to be rhythmical-swimming, running, skiing, knitting and other muscular movements. We fell very well and appreciate the artistic rhythm in music, dance and other fields of art. Rhythm as a linguistic notion is realized in lexical, syntactical and prosodic means and mostly in their combinations. For instance, such figures of speech as sound or repetition, syntactical parallelism, intensification and others are perceived as rhythmical on the lexical, syntactical and prosodic levels. Besides, language itself is also rhythmical. Rhythm plays an important role in language.

The regular recurrence of stressed syllables which results in: a) the pronunciation of each rhythmic group in the same period of time, irrespective of the number of unstressed syllables in it; b) also results in the influence of English speech rhythm upon the tempo of speech and the length of sounds, especially vowels.

The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, which results in the influence of rhythm upon word stress and sentence stress.

So, to carry out the study it was considered necessary to provide ourselves with the theoretical assumption for the study of this question and to investigate rhythm as a linguistic notion.

Thus, this graduation-paper consists of an:

Introduction which states topically the problem, gives the aims and goals of the present study, describes the composition of the topic.

Chapter One, which introduces the intonation and its components,

Chapter Two which deals with English rhythm and its peculiarities,

Conclusion, which sums up the most important points of the topic, and finally,

Bibliography.

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CHAPTER ONE

RHYTHM AS A COMPONENT OF INTONATION

Intonation is a complex unity formed by communicatively relevant variations in: voice pitch or speech melody; the prominence of words or their accent; the tempo (rate), rhythm and pausation of the utterance; and voice – timbre. This complex unity serves to express adequately, on the basic of  the proper grammatical structure and lexical composition of  the sentence, the speaker’s thoughts, volitions, emotions, feelings and attitudes towards reality.

Two concepts of intonation exist in phonetic theory: narrow and broad. In narrow sense intonation is identified with speech melody, stress, temporary characteristics (duration, tempo (rate), pause), timbre (quality of voice) and frequent rhythm. [Златоустова, 124]. In this graduation paper intonation is observed in its broad sense.

Speech melody is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place when voiced sounds, especially vowels and sonorant’s, are pronounced in connected speech. The pitch of  the speech sounds is produced by the vibration of the vocal cords.

Stress in speech (loudness) is the greater prominence which is given to one or more words of  the same sentence. In English this greater prominence is achieved by uttering the stressed words with greater force of  exhalation  and muscular tension than the unstressed words, as well as by a change in the pitch and an increase in the length of  stressed syllables of words in the sentence.

The voice quality (timbre) is a special colouring of the voice in pronouncing sentences and shows the speaker’s emotions, such as joy, sadness, irony, anger, etc.

The tempo of  speech is the speed with which sentences or their  parts are pronounced. It is determined by the rate at which speech sounds are uttered and by the number and length of pauses. Closely connected with the tempo of  speech is rhythm: the recurrence of  stressed  syllables  at more or  less equal intervals of  time. Therefore, the tempo and rhythm of speech may be said  to constitutive the temporal component of  intonation. Each syllable of  the speech chain has a special pitch colouring and bears a definite  amount  of  loudness. Pitch  movements  are  inseparably  connected  with  loudness.

Together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of  intonation. Jones D. writes: “Intonation  may be defined as the variations  which  take place in the  pitch of  the voice in connected speech, i.e. variations in the  pitch of  the musical note produced by the vibration of  the vocal cords”. [ Jones, 29 ] Armstrong  L. and  Ward  I. define intonation as follows: “ By intonation, we mean the rise and fall of  the pitch of  the voice when we speak ”. [ Armstrong, 19 ]

As far as the  intonation  aspect of  pronunciation is concerned a special attention must be drawn to

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the fact that every English expression should be pronounced with an appropriate  kind of  intonation in the sense that intonational contour should serve, first and  foremost a particular syntactic purpose. In other words it should express either finality or non-finality in full accordance with the context.

The most powerful phonological unit is the terminal tone. The opposition of terminal tones distinguishes different types of sentence. The same sequence of words may be interpreted as a different syntactical type, i.e. a statement or a question, a question or an exclamation being pronounced with different terminal tones, e.g.:

Tom saw it (statement) - Tom saw it? (general question)

Didn't you enjoy it? (general question) - Didn't you enjoy it? (exclamation)

Will you be quiet? (request) - Will you be quiet? (command).

The number of terminal tones indicates the number of intonation groups. Sometimes the number of intonation groups may be important for meaning. For example, the sentence My sister, who lives in the South, has just arrived may mean two different things. In oral speech it is marked by using two or three intonation groups. If the meaning is: 'my only sister who happens to live in the South', then the division would be into three intonation groups: My sister,   who lives in the South,   has just arrived. On the other hand, if the meaning is 'that one of my two sisters, who lives in the South', the division is into two intonation groups.

Together with the increase of loudness terminal tones serve to single out the semantic centre of the utterance. By semantic centre we mean the information centre which may simultaneously concentrate the expression of attitudes and feelings. The words in an utterance do not necessarily all contribute an equal amount of information, some are more important to the meaning than others. This largely depends on the context or situation in which the intonation group or a phrase is said. Some words are predisposed by their function in the language to be stressed. In English lexical (content) words are generally accented while grammatical (form) words are more likely to be unaccented although words belonging to both of these groups may be unaccented or accented if the meaning requires it.

Let us consider the sentence It was an unusually rainy day. As the beginning of, say, a story told on the radio the last three words would be particularly important, they form the semantic centre with the nucleus on the word day. The first three words play a minor part. The listener would get a pretty clear picture of the story's setting if the first three words were not heard and the last three were heard clearly. If the last three words which form the semantic centre were lost there would be virtually no information gained at all.

The same sentences may be said in response to the question What sort of day was it? In this case the word day in the reply would lose some of its force because the questioner already possesses the

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information that it might otherwise have given him. In this situation there are only two important

words - unusually rainy - and they would be sufficient as a complete answer to the question. The nucleus will be on the word rainy. Going further still, in reply to the question Did it rain yesterday? the single word unusually would bear the major part of the information, would be, in this sense, more important than all the others and consequently would be the nucleus of the intonation pattern.

These variations of the accentuation achieved by shifting the position of the terminal tone serve a striking example of how the opposition of the distribution of terminal tones is fulfilling the distinctive function.

If the phrase I don't want you to read anything has the low-falling terminal tone on the word anything, it means that for this or other reason the person should avoid reading. If the same word sequence is pronounced with the falling-rising tone on the same word, the phrase means that the person must have a careful choice in reading.

It should be pointed out here that the most important role of the opposition of terminal tones is that of differentiating the attitudes and emotions expressed by the speaker. The speaker must be particularly careful about the attitudes and emotions he expresses since the hearer is frequently more interested in the speaker's attitude or feeling than in his words - that is whether he speaks nicely or nastily. For instance, the special question Why? may be pronounced with the low falling tone sounding rather detached, sometimes even hostile. When pronounced with the low-rising tone it is sympathetic, friendly, interested.

All the other sections of the intonation pattern differentiate only attitudinal or emotional meaning, e.g.: being pronounced with the high рге-head, Hello sounds more friendly than when pronounced with the low pre-head, cf.:

à He llo!  - O He llo!

More commonly, however, different kinds of pre-heads, heads, the same as pitch ranges and levels fulfil their distinctive function not alone but in the combination with other prosodic constituents. Intonation organizes words into sentences, distinguishes between different types of sentences and adds emotional coloring to utterances. Intonation of an utterance contributes in a significant way to the meaning of the utterance.

Each sentence consists of one or more intonation groups. An intonation group is a word or a group of words characterized by a certain intonation pattern and is generally complete from the point of view of meaning.

E. g. You’ll come early | and stay as long as you can | won’t you ||

 Sentences are separated from each other by pauses. The end of a sentence is always recognized by a long pause; the end of a non-final intonation group is usually characterized by a shorter pause.  

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E. g. He’s passed his exam || He is a student now || Like most old people | he was fond of talking about old days ||

Intonation also serves to distinguish the communicative types of sentences, the actual meaning of a sentence, the speaker’s emotions or attitudes to the contents of the sentence, to the listener or to the topic of conversation.

E. g. He’s passed his exam ||

Low-Fall            - a statement of fact

High-Rise     - a question

Low-Rise      – a question with surprise

High-Fall      – an exclamation

One and the same sentence pronounced with different intonation can express different emotions.

Intonation is also a powerful means of differentiating the functional styles.

Now let us consider the components of intonation one of which is the rhythm. In the pitch component we may consider the distinct variations in the direction of pitch, pitch level and pitch range. According to R. Kingdon the most important nuclear tones in English are: Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, and Fall-Rise.

The meanings of the nuclear tones are difficult to specify in general terms. Roughly speaking the falling tone of any level and range expresses certainty, completeness, and independence. A rising tone on the contrary expresses uncertainty, incompleteness or dependence. A falling-rising tone may combine the falling tone's meaning of assertion, certainty with the rising tone's meaning of dependence, incompleteness. At the end of a phrase it often conveys a feeling of reservation; that is, it asserts something and at the same time suggests that there is something else to be said. At the beginning or in the middle of a phrase it is a more forceful alternative to the rising tone, expressing the assertion of one point, together with the implication that another point is to follow. The falling-rising tone, as its name suggests, consists of a fall in pitch followed by a rise. If the nucleus is the last syllable of the intonation group the fall and rise both take place on one syllable. In English there is often clear evidence of an intonation-group boundary, but no audible nuclear tone movement preceding. In such a circumstance two courses are open: either one may classify the phenomenon as a further kind of head or one may consider it to be the level nuclear tone. Low Level tone is very characteristic of reading poetry. Mid-Level tone is particularly common in spontaneous speech functionally replacing the rising tone. There are two more nuclear tones in English: Rise-Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise. But adding refinement to speech they are not absolutely essential tones for the foreign learner to acquire. Rise-Fall can always be replaced by High Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise by Fall-Rise without making nonsense of the utterance.

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Two more pitch parameters are pitch ranges and pitch levels. Three pitch ranges are generally distinguished: normal, wide, and narrow. Pitch levels may be high, medium, and low.

Loudness is used in a variety of ways. Gross differences of meaning (such as anger, menace, and excitement) can be conveyed by using an overall loudness level.

The tempo of speech is the third component of intonation. The term tempo implies the rate of the utterance and pausation. The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. The parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower. Unimportant parts are commonly pronounced at a greater speed than normal.

Any stretch of speech can be split into smaller portions, i.e. phonetic wholes, phrases, intonation groups by means of pauses. By 'pause' here we mean a complete stop of phonation.

Each syllable of the speech chain has a special pitch colouring. Some of the syllables have significant moves of tone up and down. Each syllable bears a definite amount of loudness. Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness. Together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of intonation. An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus. The boundaries of an intonation pattern may be marked by stops of phonation that is temporal pauses.

Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in oral speech. It may be well to remind you here that the syntagm is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete. In phonetics actualized syntagms are called intonation groups (sense-groups, tone-groups). Each intonation group may consist of one or more potential syntagms, e.g. the sentence / think he is coming soon has two potential syntagms: / think and he is coming soon. In oral speech it is normally actualized as one intonation group. The intonation group is a stretch of speech which may have the length of the whole phrase. But the phrase often contains more than one intonation group. The number of intonation groups depends on the length of the phrase and the degree of semantic importance or emphasis given to various parts of it:

This bed was not' slept,  in— ,This be  was not' slept   in

An additional terminal tone on this bed expresses an emphasis on this bed  in contrast to other beds.

Not all stressed syllables are of equal importance. One of the syllables has the greater prominence than the others and forms the nucleus, or focal point of an intonation pattern. Formally the nucleus may be described as a strongly stressed syllable which is generally the last strongly accented syllable of an intonation pattern and which marks a significant change of pitch direction that is where the pitch goes distinctly up or down. The nuclear tone is the most important part of the intonation pattern without which the latter cannot exist at all. On the other hand an intonation

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pattern may consist of one syllable which is its nucleus. The tone of a nucleus determines the pitch

of the rest of the intonation pattern following it which is called the tail. Thus after a falling tone, the rest of the intonation pattern is at a low pitch. After a rising tone the rest of the intonation pattern moves in an upward pitch direction:

No, Mary —  Well, Mary.

The nucleus and the tail form what is called terminal tone. The two other sections of the intonation pattern are the head and the pre-head which form the pre-nuclear part of the intonation pattern and, like the tail, they may be looked upon as optional elements:

àLake District  is one of the loveliest 'parts of, Britain.

The pre-nuclear part can take a variety of pitch patterns. Variation within the prе-nucleus does not usually affect the grammatical meaning of the utterance, though it often conveys meanings associated with attitude or phonetic styles. There are three common types of prе-nucleus: a descending type in which the pitch gradually descends (often in "steps") to the nucleus; an ascending type in which the syllables form an ascending sequence and a level type when all the syllables stay more or less on the same level.

The meaning of the intonation group is the combination of the «meaning» of the terminal tone and the pre-nuclear part combined with the «meaning» of pitch range and pitch level. The parts of the intonation pattern can be combined in various ways manifesting changes in meaning, cf.: the High Head combined with Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, Fall-Rise in the phrase Not at all.

—>Not at all (reserved, calm).

—>Not at all) (surprised, concerned).

—>Not at all (encouraging, friendly).

—> Not at all (questioning).

—> Not at all (intensely encouraging, protesting).

The more the height of the pitch contrasts within the intonation pattern the more emphatic the intonation group sounds, cf.:

He's won.   Fan tastic.

Fan tastic.

The changes of pitch, loudness and tempo are not haphazard variations. The rules of change are highly organized. No matter how variable the individual variations of these prosodic components are they tend to become formalized or standardized, so that all speakers of the language use them in similar ways under similar circumstances. These abstracted characteristics of intonation structures may be called intonation patterns which form the prosodic system of English.

Some intonation patterns may be completely colourless in meaning: they give to the listener no

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implication of the speaker's attitude or feeling. They serve a mechanical function — they provide a

mold into which all sentences may be poured so that they achieve utterance. Such intonation patterns represent the intonational minimum of speech. The number of possible combinations is more than a hundred but not all of them ate equally important. Some of them do not differ much in meaning, others are very rarely used. That is why in teaching it is necessary to deal only with a very limited number of intonation patterns, which are the result of a careful choice.

In spoken sentences there are words which are the most important. These are the so called content words, the words that are stressed. Some sentences may have three, four, five or more content words that are stressed. However, not all the content words have the same stress. There is always one word that has the most stress and emphasis in the sentence. This word is sometimes called the information focus word.

The information focus word will have different pitch (highness or lowness of a sound) and intonation (the rise and fall of pitch when speaking) than the other words in the sentence. English speakers use intonation and pitch to focus the listener's attention on what is important in the message. Other languages use word order to show this emphasis.

On the information focus word, the intonation will usually rise on that word (or stressed syllable-if more than one syllable) and then go back down. The pitch may also remain up, depending on the sentence type. Short sentences, clauses, and phrases usually only have one information focus word because having more than one is confusing to the listener. The information focus word is usually the last word or near the end of the sentence, but not always.  For example: (The content words are inbold, the information focus word (or stressed syllable) is in italics.)

Would you like to go to the movies with me?                 Sure, when?

Why is the chicken burnt?                                         Because I had the oven set to high.
As it was already mentioned the sentence possesses definite phonetic features: variations of pitch or speech melody, pauses, sentence stress, rhythm, tempo and timbre. Each feature performs a definite task and all of them work simultaneously. It is generally acknowledged that the pitch of the voice or speech melody, sentence stress and rhythm are the three main components of intonation, whilst pauses, tempo and timbre play a subordinate role in speech.

Rhythm is a regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables at definite intervals.

1.1. The influence of Rhythm on the Distribution of Syllables

Every language has its own characteristic rhythm and one of the most difficult areas masters of the spoken form of a foreign language is that of rhythm. The rhythm is an art of the general look of how the speakers of their language speak it. It is intimately bound in with the whole muscular setting

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which characterizes the speakers of different languages- the way the head is held and moved during

 speech the way the lower jaw and tongue are held in relation to the upper jaw the great variety of bodily movement of different kinds which help us to identify speakers of different languages even without hearing them speak. It takes a great deal of confidence to be able to put aside the identifying muscular characteristics of one’s own language and adopt those of another, and very few teaching programs will find time to try to teach students to master anything so difficult. The rhythm in English is not just something extra, added to the basic sequence of consonants and vowels; it is the guide to the structure of information in the spoken message.

The rhythm of English is based on the contrast of stressed and unstressed syllables. If we watch an English speaker talking we will be able to see, without hearing what he is saying where the stressed syllables are. And the big muscular movements that he makes are in time with the stressed syllables. When he waves his arms, nods his head, raises his eyebrows, frowns, opens his haw mere widely, all this is done in time with the rhythm of speech. This is of course hardly surprising. All human physical activity which is extended in time tends to be rhythmical activity- breathing, walking, sewing, knitting, and swimming. There is a tendency for a rhythm to be established in speech. The rhythmic beat in English is the stressed syllable. These beats will coincide with other muscular beats of body. This unity of bodily rhythm and speech rhythm is particularly clearly seen in the case of the stutter who, when he gets stuck on an articulation, may enlarge some other muscular rhythm-nod his head or tap with his foot-in trying to reestablish the speech rhythm.

The stressed syllables and their accompanying muscular movements elsewhere in the body will tend to occur at roughly equal intervals of time but just as in other human activities: swimming for instance, some beats will be slightly early, some slightly late and some may be missing altogether. The more organized the speech the more rhythmical it will be. Thus, in general, prose read aloud by a fluent reader has a much more obvious rhythm than conversational speech which may be full of pauses and starts. Very fluent speakers, who can organize their thoughts well in advance of actually uttering them, also establish a far more obvious rhythm than those who have to search for the right word and keep trying to refine a thought while in the middle of expressing it. So we can say that there is a tendency to establish a rhythm. The rhythmic beat will consist of stressed syllables. Any unstressed syllables occurring between the stressed syllables will be compressed as far as possible in order to allow the next stressed syllables to come on the regular beat. In the following example each stressed syllables is underlined:

The electricity board stated that they would be obliged to consider the reintroduction of power cuts.

This example was read in the manner shown here by a radio news reader. Now it is quite clear that the stressed syllables are not divided by an equal number of unstressed syllables. We can show this

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by representing the stressed syllables by capital A-s and the unstressed syllables by small a-s.

aaaAaaAAaaaaaaAaaAaaAaaAaaAaAaA

In verse, and in press read aloud we have to take into account not only the spoken stressed syllables which mark the rhythmic beat but also the pauses at commas and full stops which are an integral part of the total rhythmic effect just as a rest is in music.

The face of the speaker will always give a visual clue to the stressed syllables. Even an impressive speaker who has very few obvious extraneous movements while he is speaking will make larger gestures with his jaw, and lips in producing the initial consonants and the vowels of stressed syllables than in producing unstressed syllables.

Stressed syllables are sometimes said to be pronounced with more “force” than unstressed syllables. “Force” must be interpreted in a very general way. Some syllables which are perceived as stressed are louder than the surrounding unstressed syllables but sometimes there is no measurable difference of loudness. Some stressed syllables are spoken on a higher pitch than surrounding unstressed syllables, but a sudden dramatic drop in pitch may have the effect of marking a stressed syllable. Any syllable on which the pitch of the voice moves perceptibly-whether the pitch rises or falls-will be perceived stressed. Any syllable which is markedly longer than the surrounding syllables will also be perceived as stressed. From the point of view of teaching production of stress, length is the variable that most students find easiest to control, and is a reliable marker of stress. Speakers of languages where each syllable is roughly equal in length would do well to practice producing English stressed syllables with a count of two on each stress as against one on unstressed syllables.

Concerning the terms of tendencies, the following tendencies will be observed:

(a)    Stops which are initial in stressed syllables will be pronounced with a moment of firm closure which completely obstructs the air stream. “Voiceless” stops will be followed by aspiration. Stops initial in an unstressed syllable will be weakly articulated- it may be that the closure will not be completely closed, resulting either in a very weak stop or a slightly fricative-sounding stop. Thus for the second stop in each of the words: Paper, baby, the lips may not form a completed.

(b)   Fricatives initial in a stressed syllable will have more friction and last longer than those initial in an unstressed syllable. For example the initial /s/ in ceasing will be more fricative and longer than the second.

(c)    Vowels in stressed syllables will have the qualities associated with them. For instance “round” vowels will have lip rounding and diphthongs will be diphthongized. The “same” vowels in unstressed syllables will be more obscure in quality, “round” vowels in unstressed syllables will not have lip rounding and diphthongs will not be diphthongized. For instance, when /і / in here is in

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(d)   stressed position, as in come here, the quality of the diphthong is clearly heard, but in unstressed position as in he comes her constantly, the /I / is pronounced as a sort of very obscure /e/.

It should be clear from this description that it is not sufficient simply to describe unstressed syllables in terms of the vowel / / and the “reduced” vowel [ i ] as is sometimes done. Not all unstressed vowels are reduced to these vowels, as we have just seen in our example, and the reduction in explicitness of pronunciation of the consonants is just as marked as the reduction of the vowel quality.

In general, stressed syllables will be marked by standing out in pitch against the surrounding unstressed syllables- either by the pith moving, or being higher or lower than the surrounding unstressed syllables, by being pronounced more distinctly.

Every word pronounced in isolation must bear a stress. Thus for example pronouns like he and who must be stressed when they are pronounced in isolation but when they are pronounced in sentences they are rarely stressed. In the sentences he called on the prime minister and the man who was found in the Shankill Road area was already dead, he and who will be unstressed except in the rare case when they are contradicting some previous remark as in He-not she-called on the prime minister. In all cases where “contrastive stress is not involved, nearly all grammatical words will lose their stress when they are combined together to form an utterance, whereas nearly all lexical word will keep their stress. Grammatical words are the words that show the relations between the parts of an utterance - conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns and so on. Lexical words are the words that carry the meaning of the utterance – nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

The Function of stress then is to mark the meaning words, the information – bearing words in the utterance. Let’s consider the following sentences:

1.      The discharged prisoners’ aid society will be organizing a number of demonstrations.

2.      The meeting of the two prime ministers has had to be postponed.

3.      Areas in the west of Scotland escaped their expected electricity cut this morning.

There is no one way of reading these sentences – by stressing different words the “same” sentences are interpreted rather differently. There is however a number of words in each sentence which will have to be stressed no matter how the sentence is interpreted. In 1 discharged prisoners, aid, society, organizing, and demonstrations; in 2 meeting, prime ministers, postponed, 3 areas, west, Scotland will have to be stressed in any reading. In each case what is being talked about the subject of the sentences, and what is being said about the subject, must be stressed.

It is widely agreed that unstress is very difficult thing to teach. The difficulties arise for various reasons. In some languages each syllables and the notion on of linguistic stress is completely alien-it just does not apply in such languages. The difficulty is that a quite new linguistic concept has to

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be taught from scratch. For teachers who are accustomed always to ask a students for more of X and

Y it is hard to have to start asking a student to produce loss, especially when it is harder to hear whether the obscure form is correct than it was to hear the explicit form was incorrect. It must be the heat-breaking experience of many teachers that in trying to persuade a student to produce an acceptable form for mother. They work hard on the dental / / and the vowel / /. The student produces a careful and slow /    /. It may be that a more satisfactory approach to the teaching of the production of correct stress patterns. Already many teachers use taped or record courses of stress exercises spoken by native speakers.

 The characteristic features of English speech rhythm may be summed up as follows:

   1. The regularity of the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables results in the pronunciation of each rhythmic group in a sense-group in the same period of time irrespective to the number of unstressed syllables in it. Which in its turn influences the length of sounds, especially vowels.

   2. The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables results in the influence of rhythm upon word-stress and sentence-stress.

There are as many rhythmical groups in a sense-group as there are stressed syllables. Rhythmic groups can be of two types:

·         enclitics–a rhythmic group in which an unstressed syllable clings to the preceding stressed syllable.

·         proclitics–a rhythmic group in which an unstressed syllable clings to the following stressed syllable.

Thus, in order to acquire a good English speech rhythm one should arrange sentences:

1) into intonation groups;

2) into rhythmic groups;

3) link the words beginning with a vowel to preceding words;

4) weaken unstressed words and syllables;

5) make the stressed syllables occur regularly within an intonation group.

Intonation with all its components, functions as a whole. It combines words in a sense-group, sentences and verbal contexts, thus giving them final shape, or form, without which they cannot exist.

The role of intonation in speech: auditory level - realization of information in speech. Each syllable of speech has a special pitch coloring. The general function of intonation  is a communicative function. It differentiates informational content, text structure, meaning of lexical units, stylistic functions, attitude, statements\questions\commands etc.

The sense group is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complex.

In phonetics actualized sense groups are called intonation groups.

Intonation patterns containing a number of syllables consist of the following parts:

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-          the pre-head

-          the head (the 1^st accented syllable)

-         

the scale (begins with the 1^st accented syllable)

-          the nucleus (the last accented syllable) – is the most important part of the intonation pattern.

-          the tail – conveys no particular information

Prosody (Intonation) is a complex unity of sentence stress, rhythm, tempo, speech melody and voice timbre. Each syllable in a sense group is pronounced on a certain pitch level and bears a definite amount of loudness. Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness; together with the tempo of speech they form intonation patterns. Intonation patterns serve to actualize sense groups.

Intonation serves two basic types of function in English. It can serve to let your listener know whether or not you have finished your sentence, or whether, on the contrary, you intend to add to what you have just said, and, for example, whether you are making a statement or asking a question. It can also serve to convey information about your attitude. Are you trying to be friendly, or helpful, or are you being cold and hostile?

The first of these two uses is conveniently illustrated by the example of lists. When you are giving a list, you need to signal whether the list is finished or not. For example if somebody asks you which countries in Europe you have been to, you might say, "I've been to Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England and Sweden. Each item before "Sweden" will be pronounced with rising intonation, and "Sweden", the last item in your list, with falling intonation. To take another example, if you want to offer your guests a drink, and you only have sherry and whisky, you might ask, "Would you like sherry or whisky." The falling intonation on the last element of the list should signal to your guests that it's no good asking for port, gin, or anything else. If, however, your drinks cabinet is remarkably well stocked, so much so that you have difficulty in remembering everything you could offer your guests, you might use the same sentence as above, but with a different intonation pattern to suggest that the list of drinks you mention is by no means exhaustive: "Would you like sherry, or whisky ...".

It can also be used in some rather more complicated "grammatical" contexts, to signal for example a parenthesis. Consider this example :

 "The capitalism that President Smith advocates, for it is capitalism, however strenuously he and his advisers deny it, is of a kind that his electorate will find increasingly difficult to accept."

The boundaries of the parenthetic remark " ... for it is capitalism, however strenuously he and his advisers deny it, ..." are signalled by intonation markers. This would involve rising intonation at the end of the part of the sentence which comes before the parenthesis, to show that the sentence is not finished, and then rising intonation again at the end of the parenthesis, followed by an intonation pattern that seems to carry on from where it was interrupted.

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CHAPTER TWO

MODIFICATION OF RHYTHM IN CONNECTED SPEECH

Rhythm is both a feature of and product of the phonological structure of English. The phonology of any language is a system, so that a change in one part of the system will affect some or all of the other parts. English is a very rhythmical language, so that a learner who can maintain the rhythm of the language is more likely to sound both natural and fluent.

Speech, as with all bodily movements such as breathing, walking, heart-beat, etc., is highly rhythmical; it tends to have a regular beat. But what marks the beat differs in various languages. We distinguish two kinds of rhythm in languages: syllable-timed rhythm, where syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time, and consequently all syllables tend to have the same length (e.g. Spanish and French) and stressed-timed rhythm, where stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals. That means that the syllables might vary in length since there might be a varying number of syllables between stresses. English is a stress-timed language.  In the English sentence, syllables vary in length but stressed syllables occur regularly:

I 'want you to 'come with me to the 'doctor's to'morrow.

In English, rhythm is organized into feet (Abercrombie, D. “Pseudo-procedures in linguistics” in Studies in Phonetics and Linguistics. London, 1965). The foot begins with the stressed syllable and includes all the unstressed syllables up to the next stress where a new foot begins. The above English sentence has four stresses and consequently four feet. Using slashes to indicate foot boundary we could represent feet as follows: I /'want you to /  ' come with me to the / 'doc tor 's to/ 'morrow. The beat at the beginning of the foot might be silent.

 No language is purely stressed-timed or syllable-timed but tends to behave more like one or the other pattern. German, for instance, takes a position midway between English and Spanish with respect to rhythm. Catalan seems to be a similar case. Rhythm is also tempo dependent. The faster the speech, the more stressed-timed the rhythm. Thus, Spanish or Portuguese, said to be syllable-timed languages, become more stressed-timed when spoken at a fast rate, although vowels keep their distinctive quality. The basic differences between syllable-timed languages (such as Spanish) and stressed-timed languages (such as English) are: 

syllable-timed                             stressed-limed

1. weak vowel reduction                       1. strong vowel reduction

2. simple syllable structure                   2. complex syllable structure

3. proportional effect of tempo              3. non-proportional effect of tempo

4. absence of secondary stress              4. presence of secondary stress

5. metrical system of a syllabic type      5. metrical system of an accentual type

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In languages such as Spanish unstressed vowels suffer a weak vowel reduction since every syllable is allotted virtually the same amount of time to be produced. In English unstressed syllables have little time to be produced in order to keep the rhythmic beat on the stressed syllables. Thus, there is a strong reduction in vowel quality due to the undershoot phenomenon: in the short time allotted for the pronunciation of unstressed vowels the articulators do not achieve the vowel target, resulting in the centralized vowels [a, i, u].

The reduction and subsequent elision of unstressed vowels have resulted in a large amount of consonant clusters and a complex syllable structure in English.

In English, speaking rate (fast vs. slow speech) does not affect the duration of stressed and unstressed syllables proportionally.

Let’s imagine ourselves at public auditions in which four conductors are competing for the top job in an orchestra. Each competitor has to conduct the same piece of music, and each to the same metronome. As he waves his baton, the first conductor begins with the words, “One, two, three, four.” The second says “One and two and three and four.” The next says “One and a two and a three and a four.” And the last aspirant says “One and then a two and then a three and then a four.” Which of these conductors will miscue the orchestra? The answer is “None.” Each of these four sentences takes exactly the same amount of time to say. This illustrates a key and yet peculiar feature of the language. It is called the stress-timed rhythm. We can illustrate with almost any word of two or more syllables – for example, “syllable.” We stress this word using the pattern Ooo, placing primary emphasis on the first segment of the word. In English every long word has its own stress pattern. Think of the words “import” and “record,” for example. Both words can be pronounced using either the pattern Oo or the pattern oO. Which pattern you use fundamentally changes the meaning of the word.

Something else happens after you choose which syllable to stress. The pronunciation of the main vowel in the unstressed syllable changes, often to the sound ‘uh’ which is the single most common sound in the English language. This sound has its own special name, schwa, and about 30 per cent of the sounds we make when we speak English are the sound schwa. In English, schwa can be represented by any vowel.

For example, consider the following two-syllable words. The first word uses the stress pattern Oo; the second, the stress pattern oO. You will notice that in each case we pronounce the unstressed vowel as schwa, regardless of its spelling.

A: Atlas; Canoe

E: College; Reveal

I: Cousin; Disease

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O: Anchor; Contain

U: Lettuce; Support

This practice of replacing unstressed vowels with schwa also occurs in connected speech – English as we use it in our daily lives. If I ask “Where are you from?” I will stress the word “from,” pronouncing the short ‘o’ sound quite clearly. If you answer “I’m from Sydney,” you will most likely reduce the ‘o’ to schwa. The reason is that you are likely to stress the word “Sydney” instead. This reduction of vowel is the key to the stress-timing of most forms of English. 

It's worth noting that some English dialects from India, for example, are characterized by a syllable-timed rhythm. These comments refer to the English of Britain, North America and Australia.

Native English speakers from those countries frequently use schwa in unstressed syllables. This is why it takes the same amount of time to say “One, two, three, four” as it does to say “One and then a two and then a three and then a four.” Reducing vowels enables us to speed through unstressed syllables. This is how we achieve the particular rhythm of English, in which stressed syllables are roughly equidistant in time, no matter how many syllables come in between.

Most of the world's other major languages have quite a different pattern. They are known as ‘syllable-timed’ languages. Each syllable receives approximately the same amount of stress as the others in a word or a sentence. These languages thus have quite a different rhythm from that of English.

Stress-timed languages tend to have secondary stress in words (or to introduce rhythmical stresses in longer sequences) to avoid long sequences of unstressed syllables and to keep the rhythmic beat. In English no stressed syllable in a word can be preceded by more than two unstressed syllables in succession, a secondary stress is introduced (e.g., clarifi'catión, reconside''radon, varia'bility). After the stressed syllable there may be up to three unstressed syllables, but only in words with certain suffixes (e.g. ad'ministrative, 'candidacy).

In syllable-timed languages the syllable occurs at roughly regular intervals of time and the syllable is the rhythmical unit in verse (thus, Spanish verse is referred to as 'octosyllable,' 'decasyllable,' etc.). In stressed-timed languages it is the stress which occurs regularly and the metric system is based on the foot (thus, English verse is referred to as iambic, trochee, anapest, etc., which refer to different stress patterns of the foot).

In English, stresses occur at roughly regular intervals of time, and therefore all feet tend to be of equal duration or isochronous. Since feet take roughly the same amount of time to be produced and the number of syllables in a foot might vary, it follows that the length of syllables must also vary. If a foot with, say, four syllables takes the same amount of time to be pronounced as a foot with one syllable, then each one of the four syllables must be shorter than the one. Thus, if there are no

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intervening syllables between two stresses (1 below), the syllable which stands alone in a foot will tend to be stretched in time. If there are a number of intervening unstressed syllables (2 below), the stressed syllable will be made shorter, and the unstressed syllables will be squeezed together between stresses and they will suffer important phonetic reductions such as vowel weakening, elision, assimilation, haplology, etc. The time adjustments in syllable length due to stress can be graphically represented as follows:

(1) / 'P a t / 'g o e s /

(2) /'Pat should have / 'g o n e /

All feet in (1) and (2) will tend to have the same duration independent of the number of syllables. In order for that to be the case in (1), which stands alone in its foot, will be longer than in (2), which will be pronounced with a shorter vowel to allow more time for the unstressed syllables in the foot. Notice also the phonetic reductions of the unstressed syllables in (2), to keep the beat on the following stress. Even though isochrony, or the regular occurrence of stresses, might not be perfect, there is evidence that English speakers unconsciously aim at isochronicity in the production of speech since they make adjustments in the length of sounds, as has been demonstrated.

Not all types of English speech are equally isochronous. The more organized the speech, the more isochronous it will be. Thus, verse and nursery rhymes are more isochronous than prose. And prose read aloud or formal speech is more rhythmical than conversational speech, which may be full of pauses, «uhms and errs», false starts and other interferences due to memory failure, lack of planning, etc.

Another consequence of the stress-timed and isochronous nature of English rhythm is the existence of weak forms. Since content words are usually given prominence in the utterance, grammatical words will tend to be unstressed. As unstressed syllables they cluster around a stressed word or syllable within a foot or rhythmic group. Thus, grammatical words are squeezed in order to fit into the constant time interval between two stressed. This is so common in English that many grammatical words are said to have a full form used when the word is stressed for rhythmical, emphatic or contrastive reasons, and a weak form used when the word is unstressed and must be fitted between stresses. Consider the following grammatical words in stressed and unstressed position:

stressed                                     unstressed

'Yes, we 'are [a:]                         'What are you 'doing? [a]

7/ e 's the 'person [hi:]                  I 'don't 'know who he 'is [i]

'Yes, you 'have [ha:v]                   I 'must have 'missed him [3v]

English rhythm, apart from being conditioned by the principles of isochrony and stress-timing, is

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characterized by the principle of rhythmic alternation; that is, in English weak and strong syllables alternate with one another. How is it that regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables results, if speakers do not choose their words according to their lexical stress pattern, but to the meaning they want to express and the form in which they want to couch this meaning? It seems that once the lexemes of an utterance have been selected, a set of rules (syntactical, morphological, phonetic and rhythmic) are applied to the utterance to determine its phonetic realization. Thus, a structure which does not observe the stress alternation principle (because too many stresses appear next to each other, or there are long sequences of unstressed syllables) will be modified by the rhythm rules to conform more closely the ideal rhythmic alternation.

If a series of content words appear next to each other, some stresses are dropped. There is a stress on each of the following content words: 'John's I 'friend l'wants l'get l'home Ibe'fore l'midnight; but some of these stresses, usually stresses on alternate words, are dropped when these words occur in a sentence such as: 'John's friend 'wants to get 'home before 'midnight. Tap with your finger at each stressed syllable while saying this sentence and you will find it quite natural to tap at the syllables marked as stressed. Similarly, if an utterance contains a succession of three stresses, as in 'B l'B l'C; 'big /'blue/'eyes; 'five l'eight l'two, the intermidiate stress tends to be dropped in order to achieve a more regular alternation: 'BB'C, 'big blue 'eyes, 'five eight 'two.

If an utterance consists of a succession of unstressed function words, e.g. he should have been here 'earlier, stresses are added to produce a more regular rhythm: 'he should have 'been here 'earlier. Similarly, the rhythmical stressing of if and as in initial position when followed by unstressed syllables, as in: 'If you are 'right, we should be 'getting there 'soon 'As a 'child he 'studied 'English. but not in medial position when next to another stress: 'We should be 'getting there 'soon if you are 'right He 'studied 'English as a 'child shows the tendency to distribute stresses rhythmically. Note that if and as are not likely to be stressed when immediately followed by a stressed syllable: As 'Head of De'partment, I 'can't a'llow you to 'do If 'worse comes to 'worse, we'll 'just 'drop it.

There are constraints on stress addition and deletion. Stresses cannot be deleted just anywhere. Thus, in the above utterance John's friend wants to get home before midnight, the stresses on John/home I midnight cannot be deleted though others can. Similarly, stresses cannot be added just anywhere. If an extra stress is to be added in 'leave it in the 'car, due to a very deliberate and slow speaking rate, it cannot be added on the determiner, but must be added on the preposition: 'leave it 'in the 'car. Based on evidence of this kind hierarchy of stressable words.

If two stresses are next to each other in a phrase, e.g. a ,Japa'nese 'student. ,after'noon 'tea, the first stress is moved to the preceding strong syllable: Japanese 'student, 'afternoon 'tea, to space out the stresses.

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The alternation of rhythmical stresses in English is best described by rhythmic hierarchies and metrical grids. In the following grid all syllables at the lowest rhythmic level (1) are marked with x, all strong syllables at level (2) with another x, and the lexical stress in each word by another x at level (3). Phrasal stress is marked by another x at level (4). The stresses in this utterance are represented as follows:

(4)  x x (4) x x

(3)  x x (3) x x x

(2) x x x  - * (2) x x x

( 1 ) X X X  X X  ( 1 ) X X X  X X

Japanese student  Japanese student

If two stressed syllables are immediately next to each other on an upper level, with no intervening beats at the level below, there is a ‘stress clash’ and stress shifts towards a leftmost strong syllable. Thus, Japa'nese 'students becomes 'Japanese 'students, but be'tween 'cars does not become 'between 'cars, because the first syllable in between is not a strong syllable.

Rhythmically organized speech is easily perceived. From the psycholinguistic point of view the accuracy of the temporal similarity in rhythm has a definite effect on the human being. The regularity in rhythm seems to be in harmony with his biological rhythms. And which is by far more important the emotional effect of rhythm especially of poetic rhythm on a human being is very strong, its aesthetic significance is great. In the theory of aesthetics speech rhythm is counted as one of the objective signs of beauty. Rhythm is capable of expressing different degrees of emotional effect on the listener, e.g. Will you stop that dreadful noise?

A prosodic element together with the lexical and syntactical means play the role of the constituent of rhythm. Rhythm in itself is functioning as a framework of speech arganization and is a very effective means of speech expressiveness.

The basic rule of English rhythm is that the stressed syllables follow each other at regular intervals of time, that is to say there is the same amount of time between each pair of stressed syllables in a given sentence. A simple illustration of this rule is found in counting. From 1 to 6 every syllable is stressed, and they follow each other like a regular drum beat: one, two, three, four, five, six. The number seven has two syllables, the first of them stressed and the second unstressed and this means that the two syllables have to be said in the same space of time as the other single syllables. The sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 has eleven syllables but only ten rhythmical beats, corresponding to the ten stressed syllables. Counting is the simplest form of rhythmical exercise.

I    like to go 'out in the garden,│

I     like to get 'up in the hill │

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I      like to do 'anything really, │

But     hate to do 'nothing at all. ║

In this example there are two unstressed syllables between each pair of stressed syllables. It should be also mentioned the case when two unstressed syllables between each pair of stresses. Here is an example:

There     was a Young 'Lady of Niger │

Who      smiled as she 'rode on a tiger │

They re turned from the ride │

With the    lady in side  │

And a    smile on the 'face of the tiger. ║

It is fairly easy to keep the regular drum beat of stresses going, when there are the same numbers of unstressed syllables between them. It is little more difficult to do this when there are different numbers of unstressed syllables between pairs. In the next example there are four stresses in each line, but the first line has no unstressed syllables between the stresses, while the second and forth have one unstressed syllable between each pair, yet each line takes the same length of time to say as the others.

One, 'two, 'three, four, │

Mary 'at the 'cottage door.║

Five, 'six, 'seven, eight │

Eating 'cherries 'off a plate. ║

In the serious verse that follows the number of unstressed syllables in between the pairs of stressed ones is sometimes one and sometimes two so that the absolute regularity is missing. Nevertheless the stresses still form a drum beat as before and this beat must be kept going all through the lines.

Give a 'man a 'pipe he can smoke │

Give a 'man a 'book he can read │

And his  home is bright │

With a  calm de light │

Though the   room is 'poor in deed. ║

In ordinary speaking the number of unstressed syllables betwwen each consecutive pair of stresses varies considerably. This is one of the main differences between prose and verse so it is important to be able to keep the drum beat of the stresses going regularly no matter what the number of intervening designed to help do this.

Can   anyone 'tell me the  time? ║

Does    anyone  'know the  time? ║

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Does    anyone  'know  Tom? ║

I'm   going to 'town for the  day. ║

I'm      going to 'town today. ║

I'm     going to 'town  now. ║

I'm     perfectly 'certain you're  right. ║

I'm    almost 'certain you're  right. ║

I'm     quite  'certain you're  right. ║

A long passage of a descriptive text may be now recommended for practicing rhythm. For example:

The    weather in  England   can    change  'very  quickly. ║ One 'day  'last  week     went for  walk in the  country. ║ When I started   early in the  morning│ the weather was  beautiful. ║ The   sun  was  shining,  the   sky was  blue │ and there were   no  'clouds at  all. ║

Changes in the tempo of English speech caused by the regularity of its rhythm are closely connected with changes in the length of English sounds, especially vowels. The length of vowels in syllables is either increased or decreased.

Stressed vowels are shorter if followed by unstressed syllables than if followed by another stressed syllable. For example, in the following two sentences the length of [æ] in the word Ann.

'Ann 'went to the cinema.

'Ann has  'gone to the cinema.

In the first sentence the stressed vowel [æ] is noticeably longer than in the second.

Delivering a presentation is a nerve-wracking experience for some at the best of times. You may have seen the Oscar-winning movie, ‘The King’s Speech’; a tour de force of a person’s terror of speaking in public, which is based on the true story of how King George VI managed to overcome his speech impediment.

One of the techniques that King George was coached to use was the application of pauses. Pauses were used to allow him to re-gain his composure and to ultimately deliver one of the most important speeches of his life. His use of this technique helped him enormously.

So many people the world over, also suffer from this ‘high anxiety’ and are looking for ways to master their fears. There were some very interesting techniques that Lionel Logue, the speech therapist, encouraged to use. Lionel did use three techniques. Rehearsing aloud and not just using the inner voice, imagining that he is presenting to his best friend, and the use of pauses.

Rehearsing in the head is dangerous, as the words that come out of the mouth at the moment of delivery can quite often be different and not sound as harmonious to the meaning of the message. And for the final dress rehearsal, speaker will feel much more relaxed and natural if he can present to the friendliest audience he can find.

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Thirdly, and lastly, they use pauses. Pauses are so powerful as they allow the audience time to think about the message. This enables them to process the information and associate it to their world, and to remember it. Pause for the audience to think, to create the new synthesis in their working memory and thereby develop new synapses in their long term memory. They can also help the speaker when he may need to gather his thoughts for a few seconds.

“In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history…” the speech begins. The copy in Logue’s archive contains handwritten pencil notes, indicating what words to stress and where to pause.

King starts his speech in a calm manner with a medium and law pitch keys, long and short pauses. The pauses in its recital are intentional. The first stressed words are the opening words (grave, hour, perhaps). It is obvious that only the content or lexical words which are essential for the meaning are stressed and the pauses are longer. In his speech the king is very careful, which word in the sentence is being stressed or where to pause longer. It is interesting that he pauses in unusual places, e.g. between “of my” and “people”. He stresses the words which meanings where important and essential for that times, e.g. lives, war, fateful, now, etc.

(rising tone     , falling tone       , short pause  │, long pause ║)

In this grave│ hour,│ perhaps║ the-most-fateful║ in-our-history,║ I send│ to-every-household│ of my║ peoples,║ both at home║ and overseas,║ this message,║ spoken-with-the-same depth║ of feeling│ for-each-one-of-you│ as if I were able to cross your threshold│ and speak to you║ myself.

For the second time│ in the lives│ of most of us│ we are│ at war. Over and over│ again║ we have tried│ to find│ a peaceful│ way out│ of the differences│ between ourselves│ and those│ who are now│ our║ enemies. But it has been║ in vain. We have been forced│ into│ a conflict. For we are called,│ with our committed│ challenge│ of a principle│ which,║ if it were│ to prevail,║ would be fatal to│ any civilised order║ in the world. Such a principle,║ stripped│ of all║ disguise,│ is surely║ the mere║ primitive│ doctrine│ that might║ is right;║ and for the sake of all║ that we ourselves│ hold dear,│ and it is unthinkable║ that we should refuse║ to meet║ the challenge.

It is║ to this║ high purpose║ that I now║ call║ my people║ at home║ and my peoples║ across║ the seas,║ who will make║ our cause║ their own. I ask them║ to stand calm,║ firm,║ and united║ in this time│ of trial. The task│ will be hard. There may be│ dark days│ ahead,║ and war│ can no longer be│ confined║ to the battlefield. But we can only do│ the right║ as we see the right,║ and reverently║ commit│ our cause║ to God. If one and all║ we keep│ resolutely│ faithful│ to it,│ then,║ with God's help,║ we shall║ prevail.

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To sum up, English rhythm should be drawn to the rhythmic organization of large rhythmic units, such as intonation groups, phrases, supra phrasal blocks. The beginning of a rhythmic unit should be said on a higher level, louder and slower than the end of it; a pause and the terminal tone at the end of the rhythmic group contribute a lot to their rhythmicality.   

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CONCLUSION

In summary, in this paper we have discussed the modification of rhythm in connected speech. Rhythm is both a feature of and product of the phonological structure of English. The phonology of any language is a system, so that a change in one part of the system will affect some or all of the other parts. English is a very rhythmical language, so that a learner who can maintain the rhythm of the language is more likely to sound both natural and fluent. Attention to phonology begins at lower levels and builds up as learners progress towards fluency.

We expect to have shown the importance of stress and rhythm in determining the realization of segments, indicating the morphemic and syntactic function of elements, and structuring information in the sentence. It follows from this that stress and rhythm are basic for intelligibility, adequacy and fluency in speech. We have concentrated on the production side of English stress and rhythm, which will contribute to more intelligible speech.

Rhythm itself is considered being a component of intonation. It seems to be a kind of framework of speech organization. Rhythm, then, is a product of sentence stress and what happens to the words and sounds between the stresses.

The rhythm produced by the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables is a major characteristic of spoken English and makes English a stress-timed language. In stress-timed languages, there is a roughly equal amount of time between each stress in a sentence, compared with a syllable-timed language (such as French, Turkish and West Indian English) in which syllables are produced at a steady rate which is unaffected by stress differences. Sentence stress is an important factor in fluency, as English spoken with only strong forms has the wrong rhythm, sounds unnatural and does not help the listener to distinguish emphasis or meaning. 

  

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.    Browne, S. C., & Huckin, T. N. Current perspectives on pronunciation Washington, 1987

2.     Dauer, R. M. Accurate English, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.1993

3.    Brown, G. Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman, 1977.

4.    Bolinger, D. L. «Intonation and Grammar.» Language Learning 8 (1958): 31-117.

5.    Crystal, D. Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English. Cambridge, 1969

6.    Couper-Kuhlen, E. An Introduction to English Prosody. London: Arnold, 1986.

7.    Fudge, E. English Word Stress. London: Arnold, 1984.

8.    Kingdon, R. The Groundwork of English Stress. London: Longman, 1958.

9.    O'Connor, J. D. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation. Madrid: Alhambra, 1959.

10. Grant, L. (1993). Well said: Advanced English pronunciation. MA: Heinle & Heinle.