1. Intonation and Stress - Key to
Understanding and Being Understood
By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide
See More About:
• improving pronunciation
• intonation
• word stress
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Correct intonation and stress are the key to speaking English fluently with good
pronunciation. Intonation and stress refers to the music of the English language. Words
that are stressed are key to understanding and using the correct intonation brings out the
meaning. After students have learned basic consonant and vowel sounds, they should
move on to learning to differentiate between individual sounds by using minimal pairs.
Once they are comfortable with individual words, they should move on to intonation and
stress exercises such as sentence markup. The following exercise can be used by students
2. and teachers to further help with pronunciation by focusing on the stressing content
words rather than function words in the exercise below.
Minimal Pair Pronunciation Lesson
By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide
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• improving pronunciation
• minimal pairs
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Minimal pairs are pairs of words that have one phonemic change between them. For
example: "let" and "lit". Using these pairs to help students recognize the minor
differences between English muted vowel sounds can greatly help not only pronunciation
skills, but also comprehension.
Aim: Improve pronunciation and recognition skills
Activity: The use of minimal pairs to help students distinguish minor differences
between English vowel sounds
Level: Pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate depending on students' capabilities
Outline:
3. • Introduce the idea of "minimal pairs" by writing a list on the board of a number of
minimal pairs. For example: but - boot, sit - set, caught - cut, sing - song, etc.
• Practice comprehension skills by using the provided lists of minimal pairs. Each
list contains one minimal pair with a number of examples.
• Once students are comfortable with the sounds, read sentence examples (for
example: The call took a long time to go through - for the first pair) using one
word of the pair provided. Ask students to identify which word of each pair was
used.
• Continue using the list of pairs by asking students to practice the lists.
• Ask students to identify two vowel sounds which they want to focus on, for
example: 'eh' and 'uh', and have them create their own list of minimal pairs.
• Have pairs exchange lists and practice reading the others' lists aloud.
• If appropriate, continue lesson by a more extended look into the IPA
(International Phonetic Alphabet, see IPA Lesson)
Back to lessons resource page
Minimal Pairs Listening and
Pronunciation Practice
This minimal pairs listening comprehension can help you improve recognition and
pronunciation of similar English sounds. First listen to the pairs of words pronounced one
after the other. Next, do the quiz that follows testing the differences between the minimal
pairs.
Target pair:
Click on the audio symbol and listen to the following pairs of words. When you have
listened, try repeating the words yourself.
• blessed blast
• commended commanded
• deft daft
• left laughed
• lest last
• leather lather
• pest passed
• vest vast
4. Click on the audio symbol and listen to the sentences. Choose which of the target words
has been used in sentence. Click on the arrow next to "Text" to see the text read.
blessed blast
Text:
commended commanded
Text:
deft daft
Text:
left laughed
Text:
lest last
Text:
leather lather
Text:
pest passed
Text:
vest vast
Text:
Continue Intermediate English Course Unit 3 Present Continuous, Plurals, Countable and Uncountable,
'Some' and 'Any' words, Minimal Pairs
More pronunciation practice with minimal pairs
Intonation and Stress - Exercise Introduction
Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes.
The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.
Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Now, try speaking this sentence aloud.
He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.
5. Time required? Probably about 5 seconds.
Wait a minute the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence!
The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance
He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening
You are only partially right!
This simple exercise makes a very important point about how we speak and use English.
Namely, English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are
considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to
certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other
languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is
stress, but each syllable has its own length).
Many speakers of syllabic languages don't understand why we quickly speak, or swallow,
a number of words in a sentence. In syllabic languages each syllable has equal
importance, and therefore equal time is needed. English however, spends more time on
specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.
Let's look at a simple example: the modal verb "can". When we use the positive form of
"can" we quickly glide over the can and it is hardly pronounced.
They can come on Friday . (stressed words underlined)
On the other hand, when we use the negative form "can't" we tend to stress the fact that it
is the negative form by also stressing "can't".
They can't come on Friday .
As you can see from the above example the sentence, "They can't come on Friday" is
longer than "They can come on Friday" because both the modal "can't" and the verb
"come" are stressed.
So, what does this mean for my speaking skills?
Well, first of all, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we
do not stress. Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as
• Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
• (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct
• Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
• Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
6. Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as
• Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few
• Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were
• Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite
• Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as
• Pronouns e.g. they, she, us
Let's return to the beginning example to demonstrate how this affects speech.
The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance . (14 syllables)
He can come on Sunday s as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening .
(22 syllables)
Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the
sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each
sentence. From this example, you can see that you needn't worry about pronouncing
every word clearly to be understood (we native speakers certainly don't). You should
however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly.
Now, do some listening comprehension or go speak to your native English speaking
friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving
importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand and
communicate more because you begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words.
All those words that you thought you didn't understand are really not crucial for
understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to
excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.
I hope this short introduction to the importance of stress in English will help you to
improve your understanding and speaking skills.
Practice Stress and Intonation
By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide
See More About:
• improving pronunciation
• pronunciation examples
• beginning dialogues
• speaking skills
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I am often surprised at how focusing on the "stress - timed" quality of English helps
students improve their pronunciation skills. Students often focus on pronouncing each
word correctly and therefore tend to pronounce in an unnatural manner. By focusing on
the stress - timed factor in English - the fact that only content words such as proper
nouns, principle verbs, adjectives and adverbs receive the "stress" - students soon begin
sounding much more "authentic" as the cadence of the language begins to ring true. The
following lesson focuses on raising awareness of this issue and includes practice
exercises.
Aim: Improving pronunciation by focusing on the stress - time nature of spoken English
Activity: Awareness raising followed by practical application exercises
Level: Pre - intermediate to upper intermediate depending on student needs and
awareness
Outline:
• Begin awareness raising activities by reading an example sentence aloud to the
students (for example: The boys didn't have time to finish their homework before
8. the lesson began). Read the sentence the first time pronouncing each word
carefully. Read the sentence a second time in natural speech.
• Ask students which reading seemed more natural and why it seemed more natural.
• Using the ideas students come up with, explain the idea of English being a "stress
- timed" language. If the students speak a syllabic language (such as Italian or
Spanish), point out the difference between their own native language and English
(theirs being syllabic, English stress - timed). Just this awareness raising can make
a dramatic difference in such students abilities.
• Talk about the differences between stressed words and non-stressed words (i.e.
principle verbs are stressed, auxiliary verbs are not).
• Write the following two sentences on the board:
o The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.
o He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework
in the evening.
• Underline the stressed words in both sentences. Ask students to try reading aloud.
Point out how each sentence seems to be approximately the same length in "stress
- time".
• Ask students to look through the example sentences and underline the words that
should be stressed in the worksheet.
• Circulate about the room asking students to read the sentences aloud once they
have decided which words should receive stresses.
• Review activity as a class - ask students to first read any given sentence with each
word pronounced followed by the "stress - timed" version. Expect a surprise at the
quick improvement students make in pronunciation (I am every time I do this
exercise)!!
Another approach can help students improve their stress and intonation skills is sound
scripting. Sound scripting has students highlight content words using a word processor.
These two quizzes can also be used to help students test their knowledge of which words
are function or content words.
Content or Function Words - Quiz 1
Content or Function Words - Quiz 2
Pronunciation Help - Sentence Stress
Take a look at the following list of stressed and non-stressed word types.
Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as
• Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
• (most) principle verbs e.g. visit, construct
• Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
• Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
9. Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as
• Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few
• Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were
• Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite
• Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as
• Pronouns e.g. they, she, us
Mark the stressed words in the following sentences. After you have found the
stressed words, practice reading the sentences aloud.
• John is coming over tonight. We are going to work on our homework together.
• Ecstasy is an extremely dangerous drug.
• We should have visited some more castles while we were traveling through the
back roads of France.
• Jack bought a new car last Friday.
• They are looking forward to your visiting them next January.
• Exciting discoveries lie in Tom's future.
• Would you like to come over and play a game of chess?
• They have been having to work hard these last few months on their challenging
experiment.
• Shakespeare wrote passionate, moving poetry.
• As you might have expected, he has just thought of a new approach to the
problem.
stress
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide
See More About:
• phonetics
In these three pairs of words, the noun has the stress on the first syllable and the verb has
the stress on the second syllable.
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Definition:
In phonetics, the degree of emphasis given a sound or syllable in speech.
One of the main functions of stress is to provide a way of distinguishing degrees of
emphasis or contrast in sentences or
Etymology:
From the Latin, "draw tight"
Examples and Observations:
• "[O]ne of the functions of phonetic stress is to make words understandable. This
kind of stress, known as word-level stress, is actually part of a word's
pronunciation. It may also serve to differentiate words that are similar. For
example, We're going to record a record, the two similar words are stressed
differently so that the first record is stressed on the second syllable (vowel
reduction in the first syllable also assists in helping us to assign stress to the
second syllable), whereas the second record is stressed on the first syllable (with
vowel reduction in the second syllable). All words of more than one syllable have
a prominent or stressed syllable. If we pronounce a word with appropriate stress,
people will understand us; if we use the wrong stress placement, we run the risk
of being misunderstood.
"Phrase or sentence stress is tied to meaning, and this is the second function of
stress. As we focus a camera on some item of interest, phonetic stress helps us
focus our listener's attention on what is most important in our message."
(Harold T. Edwards, Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English, 3rd ed.
Thomson, 2003)
11. • "Stresses tend to recur at regular intervals. But the sound pattern of English does
not make it an overriding necessity to adjust the lengths of syllables so as to
enforce complete regularity. The interval between stresses is affected by the
number of syllables within the stress group, by the number and type of vowels
and consonants within each syllable, and by other factors such as the variations in
emphasis that are given to each word."
(Peter Ladefoged and Keith Johnson, A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed. Wadsworth,
2011)
• Stress With Content Words and Function Words
"[T]he words most likely to receive sentence stress are those termed content
words (also called 'lexical words'), namely nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and main
verbs. These are the words that normally carry a high information load. We can
contrast these with function words (also called 'grammar words' or 'form words'),
namely determiners (e.g. the, a), conjunctions (e.g. and, but), pronouns (e.g. she,
them), prepositions (e.g. at, from), auxiliary verbs (e.g. do, be, can). Function
words carry relatively little information; their role is holding the sentence
together. . . . Unlike content words, function words for the most part carry little or
no stress. Only two types of function words are regularly stressed: the
demonstratives (e.g. this, that, those) and wh- interrogatives (e.g. where, who,
which, how). Note, however, that when wh- words and that are used as relatives
they are unstressed, e.g. the girl who lent me the yellow hat that I wore to your
wedding."
(Beverley Collins and Inger M. Mees, Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A
Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2003)
• Lexical Diffusion
"Some linguistic change first manifests itself in a few words and then gradually
spreads through the vocabulary of the language. This type of change is called
lexical diffusion. A well-attested example in English involves an ongoing change
in the stress pattern of words such as convert, which can be used as either a noun
or a verb. Although the stress originally fell on the second syllable regardless of
lexical category, in the latter half of the sixteenth century three such words, rebel,
outlaw, and record, came to be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable
when used as nouns. . . .
"This change has still not diffused through the entire vocabulary of English. There
are about a thousand nouns of the relevant sort that still place the stress on the
second syllable (e.g., report, mistake, and support)."
(William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th ed.
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
12. content word
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide
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• grammatical and rhetorical terms
The italicized words in Hedberg's sentence are content words.
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Definition:
A word that conveys information in a text or speech act. Also known as a lexical word.
Content words--which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--belong to
open classes of words: that is, new members are readily added. Contrast with function
word.
Examples and Observations:
• "All morphemes can be divided into the categories lexical [content] and
grammatical [function]. A lexical morpheme has a meaning that can be
understood fully in and of itself--{boy}, for example, as well as {run}, {green},
{quick}, {paper}, {large}, {throw}, and {now}. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs are typical kinds of lexical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes, on the
other hand--such as {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in}, and
{ly}--can be understood completely only when they occur with other words in a
sentence."
(Thomas E. Murray, The Structure of English. Allyn and Bacon, 1995)
13. • "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it."
(George Carlin)
• "Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the
distracted center."
(Jon Stewart)
• "Trying is the first step towards failure."
(Homer Simpson)
• "Grammatical words [function words] tend to be short: they are normally of one
syllable and many are represented in spelling by less than three graphemes ('I,'
'he,' 'do,' 'on,' 'or'). Content words are longer and, with the exception of 'ox' and
American English's 'ax,' are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This
criterion of length can also be extended to the production of the two sets of words
in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often unstressed or generally
de-emphasised in pronunciation."
(Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature. Routledge, 1997)
• Content Words in Speech
"Typically, the prominent syllable in a tone unit will be a content word (e.g. a
noun or verb) rather than a function word (e.g. a preposition or article), since
content words carry more meaning than function words. Function words will only
be stressed if prominence on them is contextually warranted."
(Charles F. Meyer, Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge Univ. Press,
2010)
Also Known As: lexical word, lexical morpheme, substantive category, contentive
function word
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide
See More About:
• glossary of grammatical and rhetorical terms
14. What Is Morphology? 2nd ed., by Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Anne Fudeman (Wiley-
Blackwell, 2010)
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Definition:
A word that expresses a grammatical relationship. Also known as a grammatical word.
Function words include determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions. Contrast with
content word.
See also:
• Closed Class
• Lexicology
• Lexis
• Morphology
• Wh- Words
• Word Class
Examples and Observations:
• "Function words are like thumbtacks. We don't notice thumbtacks; we look at the
calendar or the poster they are holding up. If we were to take the tacks away, the
15. calendar and the poster would fall down. Likewise, if we took the function words
out of speech, it would be hard to figure out what was going on:
took function words speech hard figure going on
That is what the previous sentence would look like if we took out all of the
function words. . . .
"[F]unction words are a closed class. A person cannot easily invent a new
preposition or conjunction."
(Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Anne Fudeman, What Is Morphology? Wiley-
Blackwell, 2005)
• "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it."
(George Carlin)
• "Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the
distracted center."
(Jon Stewart)
• "Trying is the first step towards failure."
(Homer Simpson)
• "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read."
(Mitch Hedberg)
• Function Words in Speech
"Most monosyllabic function words, unlike content words, are unstressed . . ..
Prepositions, conjunctions, and articles are regularly unstressed, and auxiliary
verbs and adverbs are usually unstressed--though note that auxiliaries are often
used for emphasis, in which case they are stressed: "I did pay the bills."
(Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995)
Also Known As: grammatical word, grammatical functor, grammatical morpheme,
function morpheme
16. prosody
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide
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• grammatical and rhetorical terms
• phonetics
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Definition:
(1) In phonetics, the use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm in speech to convey
information about the structure and meaning of an utterance. Adjective: prosodic.
(2) In literary studies, the theory and principles of versification, especially as they refer to
rhythm, accent, and stanza.
See also:
• Intonation
• Intonation Phrase (IP)
• Phonology
• Stress
Etymology:
From the Greek, "song sung to instrumental music"
17. Examples and Observations (Definition #1):
• "There are no capital letters or full stops in speech: the job of breaking down the
continuous flow into meaningful and manageable chunks is mainly done by using
the resources of prosody (pitch, stress, loudness, tempo). To many inexperienced
writers it is far from self-evident how to translate the primarily prosodic structure
of speech into the syntactic structure of writing. . . .
"Speech is organized into prosodic units, marked off by pauses and intonation
contours: they may or may not have the syntactic structure of complete sentences.
Writing, however, relies on the sentence as its basic unit."
(Deborah Cameron, The Teacher's Guide to Grammar. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)
• "The term prosody refers to the stress patterns of a language. In English, stress is
distinctive at the level of the individual word and at the level of phrases, clauses,
and entire sentences."
(C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed.
Wadsworth, 2011)
• "Early studies of prosody (e.g. Pike 1945) focused on trying to assign meaning to
prosodic features in much the way phonemes and morphemes are assigned
meaning. . . . Studies of prosody and meaning moved on to points in which
contextual factors were recognized as important. Crystal (1969) claimed that
situational elements, such as kinesic activity and/or grammar and other situational
factors, are intimately connected with pitch and tone, and called for a move away
from describing and analyzing prosodic features as discrete units. . . .
"Recent work in prosody has continued to expand on the ideas set up by Crystal
(1969) and Coultahrd and Brazil (1982) by taking into consideration such aspects
of interaction as how prosody can signal speakers' intentions in the discourse."
(Rebecca L. Damron, "Prosodic Schemas," in Discourse Across Languages and
Cultures, ed. by Carol Lynn Moder and Aida Martinovic-Zic. John Benjamins,
2004)
• Prosodic Signals of Two Grammatical Differences
"If someone is reciting a list of items, we know whether the list is complete or not
by the pitch of the voice. If the pitch is rising . . ., there are more items to come. If
it is falling . . ., there is nothing further to come. The difference is suggested in
writing by the use of a series of dots instead of a full stop"
I bought beer, whiskey, gin . . . I bought beer, whiskey, gin.
18. "The two types of relative clause can be distinguished by intonation:
My brother / who's abroad / has written to me.
(I have only one brother, and he's abroad)
My brother / who's abroad / has written to me.
(my brother who's in London / has not)"
(David Crystal, Rediscover Grammar, 3rd ed. Pearson Longman 2003)
• Functions of Prosody
"The functions of prosody are manifold. . . . Prosody is for instance involved in
matters such as sentence and word segmentation, syntactic phrasing, stress,
accentuation, phonological distinctions in tone languages. Prosody also features
pragmatic and expressive functions. A given sentence in a given context generally
expresses much more than its linguistic content (the same sentence, with the same
linguistic content may have plenty of different expressive contents or pragmatic
meanings). Examples of expressive content are: the identity of the speaker, her/his
attitude, mood, ages, sex, sociolinguistic group, and other extralinguistic features.
Examples of pragmatic meaning encompass the speaker/listener attitudes
(aggressive, submissive, neutral, etc.), the relationships of the speaker and her/his
discourse (belief, confidence, assertiveness, etc.), and various other aspects of the
specific speech act performed."
(Christophe d'Alessandro (Orsay), "Voice Source Parameters and Prosodic
Analysis." Methods in Empirical Prosody Research, ed. by Stefan Sudhoff.
Walter de Gruyter, 2006)
Pronunciation: PROS-eh-dee
intonation phrase (IP)
By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide
See More About:
• phonetics
• language
19. As explained by Ulrike Gut (see below), "Intonational phrasing in English can have a
meaning-distinguishing function." Sentence (a) has just one intonation phrase; sentence
(b) has two IPs.
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Definition:
In phonetics, a stretch (or chunk) of spoken material that has its own intonation pattern
(or tune).
The intonation phrase (IP) is the basic unit of intonation. In phonetic analysis, the vertical
bar symbol (|) is used to represent the boundary between two intonation phrases.
See also:
• Connected Speech
• Pause
• Prosody
• Punctuation Effect
• Speech (Linguistics)
• Stress
• Utterance
Examples and Observations:
• "When speakers produce words in a row, we can usually observe that they are
structured: individual words are grouped together to form an intonation
phrase. . . . Intonation phrases can coincide with breath groups . . ., but they do
not have to. Often a breath group contains more than one intonation phrase. As
with all other phonological units, it is assumed that speakers have a mental
20. representation of intonation phrases, i.e. they know how to produce speech
structured into intonation phrases and they rely on this knowledge when listening
to the speech of others.
"Within an intonation phrase, there is typically one word that is most
prominent. . . . Some utterances might contain just one intonation phrase, others
might contain several of them. Moreover, speakers can put utterances together to
form larger stretches of speech or discourse. . . .
"Intonational phrasing in English can have a meaning-distinguishing function.
Consider utterances 11a and 11b:
(11a) He washed and fed the dog.
(11b) He washed | and fed the dog.
If the intonation phrase 'He washed and fed the dog' is produced as one intonation
phrase, its meaning is that a person both washed and fed a dog. Conversely, if the
same utterance is produced as a sequence of two intonation phrases with an
intonation boundary after washed (indicated by the symbol |), the meaning of the
utterance changes into 'someone who washed himself and fed a dog.'"
(Ulrike Gut, Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology. Peter Lang, 2009)
• Intonation Contours
"Intonation often does serve to convey information of a broadly meaningful
nature . . .. For example, the falling pitch we hear at the end of a statement in
English such as Fred parked the car signals that the utterance is complete. For
this reason, falling intonation at the end of an utterance is called a terminal
(intonation) contour. Conversely, a rising or level intonation, called a
nonterminal (intonation) contour, often signals incompleteness. Nonterminal
contours are often heard in the nonfinal forms found in lists and telephone
numbers."
(William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th ed.
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
• Tonality (Chunking)
"The speaker does not necessarily have to follow the rule of an IP for each clause.
There are many cases where different kinds of chunking are possible. For
example, if a speaker wants to say We don't know who she is, it is possible to say
the whole utterance as a single IP (= one intonation pattern):
We don't know who she is.
21. But it is also possible to divide the material up, in at least the following possible
ways:
We don't know | who she is.
We | don't know who she is.
We don't | know who she is.
We | don't know | who she is.
Thus the speaker may present the material as two, or three, pieces of information
rather than a single piece. This is tonality (or chunking)."
(J. C. Wells, English Intonation: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press,
2006)
• Position of Intonation Phrase Boundaries
"The position of intonation phrase boundaries shows a good amount of
variability. These have been studied in English on the basis of positions of
possible pauses within clauses (Selkirk 1984b, Taglicht 1998 and references
there) and positions of obligatory pauses (Downing 1970). . . . The core result is
that root clauses, and only these, are bounded by obligatory intonation phrase
breaks. (Root clauses are clauses [CPs] not imbedded inside of a higher clause
that has a subject and a predicate.)"
(Hubert Truckenbrodt, "The Syntax-Phonology Interface." The Cambridge
Handbook of Phonology, ed. by Paul de Lacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Also Known As: intonation group, phonological phrase, tone unit, tone group, word
group
phrasing
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phras·ing
[frey-zing] Show IPA
noun
1.
22. the act of forming phrases.
2.
a manner or method of forming phrases; phraseology.
3.
Music. the grouping of the notes of a musical line into distinct phrases.
Relevant Questions
What Is A Phrase?
What Is An Infinitive Ph...
What Is A Verbal Phrase?
What Is An Example Of A ...
Origin:
1605–15; phrase + -ing1
Dictionary.com Unabridged
phrase
[freyz] Show IPA noun, verb, phrased, phras·ing.
noun
1.
Grammar .
a.
a sequence of two or more words arranged in a grammatical construction and acting as a
unit in a sentence.
b.
(in English) a sequence of two or more words that does not contain a finite verb and its
subject or that does not consist of clause elements such as subject, verb, object, or
complement, as a preposition and a noun or pronoun, an adjective and noun, or an adverb
and verb.
2.
Rhetoric . a word or group of spoken words that the mind focuses on momentarily as a
meaningful unit and is preceded and followed by pauses.
3.
a characteristic, current, or proverbial expression: a hackneyed phrase.
4.
Music. a division of a composition, commonly a passage of four or eight measures,
forming part of a period.
5.
a way of speaking, mode of expression, or phraseology: a book written in the phrase of
the West.
verb (used with object)
8.
to express or word in a particular way: to phrase an apology well.
9.
to express in words: to phrase one's thoughts.
10.
Music.