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CHAPTER II
2.1 WORDS AND THEIR GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES: SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES
AND INFLECTION
Forms of spelling: ortographic and phonetic , they represents the word's phonological form. The abbrevation (n=noun) represents the word's grammatical or syntactic category, indicated by a syntactic category label. The syntactic category label of a word is a kind of summary of its grammatical properties. These properties determine the locations which the word can occupy in phrases. The position that the word has in the sentence determines what its grammatical category is. We can call the representation of the meanings or senses of a lexeme its semantic representation , so a word, a lexeme, is a three-part symbol. It has a form or a number of forms, grammatical category and meaning. The link between the form and meaning is arbitrary, the link between the syntactic category and the meaning of a word is less arbitrary. The way lexemes change their form (es. try). Try, tries, tried, trying. Each of these form is called grammatical word form of the lexeme. The grammatical endings which create these different forms are termed inflection. The form of the lexeme to which they are attached is termed stem. The process whereby words come to have internal structure (stem, inflection) are morphological process. When inflections are associated with both morphological structure and syntactic function, we talk about morphosyntactic category. Morphosyntactic categories are: nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and prepositions. Nouns A noun is a naming word, which inflect for the category of number, with a regular plural - s or - es. Some nouns mark their plural in other irregular ways, often termed strong forms (ex. foot-feet, mouse-mice). The uninflected form is the singular form. If a word has a plural form, then it belongs to the category of noun. We can also identify nouns by looking at the words that appear with them: a(n), the or numbers. Count nouns (can be counted) vs non-count nouns (can't be counted). Proper nouns (people or place in capital letters) vs common nouns. A(n) doesn't occur with mass nouns (non-countable) and mass nouns do not have plural. Nouns are nouns because of their distribution, that is, where they come in grammatical sequences relative to where other words come. Adjectives They ascribe a property or quality to an object. They may take two different inflectional endings: - er, - est. The adjective without the ending, the standard form, represents the positive degree of comparison. The one with - er is the comparative, used for comparing two objects for the same property. The - est ending, the superlative, it's used for comparing more objects for the same property. Some use - more and - most. 3 forms of comparison: uninflected positive form, comparative form, superlative form. The adjective that have comparative and superlative forms are called gradable adjectives. Those that do not are called non-gradable adjectives. The adjective may appear either before a noun or after a form of the verb to be. Adverbs They tell us how, where or when the actions occur. Adverbs have no inflected forms, altough some have comparison (adjective). The class of adverb may be divided into 2 groups: degree and general adverbs. Degree adverbs are very, more, most.. they must appear with another adjective or general adverb. General adverb may appear without a degree adverb. The - ly ending is attached to adjectives, so it is not an inflection. Verbs They may be divided into auxiliary verbs and lexical verbs. Auxiliary verbs are: has, is, do, could, will, would... Lexical verbs are defined as denoting actions or states. Each verb has five associated grammatical words (call, calls, called, calling, called). All verbs can take tense: past and present. The next inflection form is the one ending in - s, which indicates a number of morphosyntactic properties. The - ing and - en form is the participles. The - ing form is the progressive participle, the
- en form is the perfect participle. The simple form of verbs, introduced by ''to'' is called infinitive. For regular verbs, the past tense form and the perfect participle form is identical, but they have different functions in phrases and sentences. Allomorphs are variant forms for the same word.
Prepositions They are words such in, out, on. Often they indicate relationships involving locations in time, space or direction. This is a closed class, such as conjunctions. It is not possible to add new members to the closed classes. 2.2 WORD FORMATION Compounding Two lexeme may be put together to make a compound lexeme (ex. bookshelf). A lexeme can also have as costituents a single lexeme plus an ending. These endings are generally termed affixes. They are constituents of complex lexemes, derivational affixes since they derive one lexeme from another [ex. gentleness: gentle+ness (affix)]. Compound lexemes also have 3 sets of properties (phonological, syntactic and semantic). A compound lexeme has the sounds of its component lexeme in that order (ex. when we add the affix
- ity to electric, we have electricity. The ''k'' sound has changed to an ''s'' sound). Compounding doesn't make changes to the sounds of the component lexemes. Compound words have, usually, the main enphasis on the first word. Compounds have a rather simple, regular set of properties. They are always binary in structure, they always consist of two and only two constituent lexemes. Compound words also usually have a head constituent. For head constituent we mean one which determines the syntactic properties of the whole lexeme (ex. longboat adj+noun, the compound lexeme longboat is a noun, because boat is the head constituent of longboat). When we have two nouns as constituents, if one of them has an irregular plural, only if it's the head does the whole compound have that form of the plural. Normally, the right-hand one is the head (ex. snowman- man is the head). Compound can belong to all the major syntactic categories. Furthermore, the lexeme which is the head of the compound is also central to its meaning. An inportant distinctions have to be done between lexemes which are abstract and lexical items which are actual words. Derivational affixation A morpheme is usually realized as a speech sound or sequence of speech sound just as a lexeme is. Morphemes also contribute to the meaning of a lexeme. A linguistic unit, whose meaning is the sum of the meanings of its structural parts is describes as compositional , while the abstract property is called compositionality (ex. girehood). Another property of morphemes is the arbitrary between the form and the meaning. It's called the arbitrariness of the sign. The creation of new lexemes by the process of derivation involves word formation rules. It operates on a base , a lexeme with all the properties that lexemes have. The stem is the form of the base, its phonological shape (ex. happiness-the base is an adjective: 1st rule). A second rule involves the meaning: ''the state of being A''= ness. 3r rule: it specifies the form, attacching the suffix - ness to the right end of the stem. Affixes can be inflection or derivational when they change the grammatical category of their base. Word formation rules specify that their base must belong to a sub-class of lexemes (ex. the suffix - ion or - ity and the lexemes to which they are attached). They have latin as their language of origin. Word formation rules which add derivational affixes may be divided into 3 groups: those which add stress-bearing affixes to their stems(-ee, - ese, - esque. Roman-romanesque, Parole-parolee); those which cause the stress to shift (-eons, - y, - ial, - ion, - ity. 'Outrage-out'rageos, 'Renovate-reno'vation); those, like inflexional affixes, which have no influence on stress placement (-able, - age, - en, - ful, - ing, - like, - ment, - wise). The addition of the noun-forming suffix - ion has more phonological effects. The final sound of the base has undergone a chang. This is a phonemic change caused by a morphological process, this process is called allomorphy. A morpheme may have different phonemic realizations in different contexts. Allomorphs may be stem allomorphs or affixal allomorphs, depending on what has the variant forms. In the case of - ion affix attaches we have stem allomorphs, whereas the plural forms are affixal allomorphs. Conversion There is a third word-formation process where nothing happens to the lexeme's form in the process. It is termed conversion and is different from derivational affixation. It happens when we have both
The tree diagram for this type of words will look like this: The labelled bracketed form will look like this: It may happen that a word consist of two parts or more (ex. nationalization consists of nationalize+ation, nationalize consists of national+ize. So it looks like this in labelled bracketed notation: And it looks like this in tree notation CHAPTER III 3.1 THE MEANING OF WORDS When expressions share the same meaning they are synonymous. The relationship where if one sentence is true then the other is true, is termed entailment. A lexeme is said to be polysemous when it has the property of having multiple meanings of this kind ( polysemy, ex colomn: pillar, long thin section of news). Sometimes two different words accidentally have the same form ( homonym :soul and sole.). When two words are spelled identically we have homography, when they are spoken identically we have homophony. Puns are a form of word play which relies on a word being polysemous or homonymous. Oppositeness of sense Antonym, unmarked, complementary, coverse. Gradable antonyms are typically opposites near the ends of a scale (ex hot-cold). Being gradable means they can be modified by words like very, and can take comparative and superlative forms. A further property is that one of the pairs has two senses: one being a position on the scale and the other representing the whole scale( ex. when we ask how old someone is, we don't intend that to signify that the person is old). The neutral sense is often termed unmarked. Not all antonyms are gradable. Complementaries may have only two words in the set (like boy and girl), or they may be multiple(like solid, liquid and gas). Words with converse senses have opposite senses but strictly speaking they are not opposites, since they denote the same action or relationship but from a different perspective (like wife and husband). All of these have repercussions for entailments. Antonyms can be involved in entailments if it has a property
which is denoted by one of a pair of gradable antonymous senses, then it does not have the property at the other end of the scale (ex old-young). With complementaries the comparison is between equivalents (if someone is not married then they are single and if they are not single, then they are married). This is a direct consequence of the fact that complementary senses are mutually exclusive. Converse also have interesting entailment consequences (if A buys X from B, then it follows that B has sold X to A. But not all senses that look like converse work this way. If someone sends something to someone else then the latter doesn't necesarily receive it. That depends on the dependability of the postal service, as well as the senses of the words send and receive. So there are no entailments). Sense components Finding the component parts of the meaning of words is usually termed componential analysis. Antonyms belong to groups of words denoting related things (boy and girl both denote children, hot and cold both denote temperatures). A word is called superordinate (or hypernyms ) when we talk about their relation to the words under them. These words, which are included under a superordinate, are termed hyponyms. We talk about co-hyponyms when all the hyponyms are of the same superordinate sense. Groups of words that cover one territory are often described as covering a semantic domain or semantic field. When we speak literally, the meanings of words restrict the other words with which they will semantically fit. Such restrictions are termed selectional restrictions. These seems to be rather more language-internal. Some breaches of selectional restrictions are minor, other are egregious. To summarize: synonymous cover the same bit of semantic territory, antonyms differ in meaning from each other by having one of their semantic components opposite to the other. Tropes This brings us to metaphor and other figures of speech. A metaphor is a way to break down the literal selectional restrictions, that the semantic components of words have in a sentence. The metaphor lies in the suppression of some of each word's semantic features. The figure of speech called personification is a special case: words that have the semantic component ''not human'' have this suppressed so that these words are allowed to function in sentences as though they were human. Sometimes the underlying basis for a metaphor is carried on for more than one. In this case we talk about extended metaphors (commonly used in political speeches). Similes avoid the falsehood by saying that something is like something else. It used word ''as, like''. The figure that name by association is called metonymy. The figure who indicates the whole figure of speech is called a synecdoche. Word meanings in context The meaning of a word given by its semantic components is more like a set of potential meanings. In their interaction with one another in grammatical sequences, the meanings of words undergo a number of changes. For instance, while a word may be polysemous on its own, when placed in grammatical sequences some of its senses can be excluded. For example, the adjective single has a sense meaning ''only one''. It also has a sense of ''unmarried''. If we put single with the noun book then the possibility that single means unmarried is excluded by the semantic features of the senses of book. There is a process, therefore, which allows us to combine the meanings of words into the meanings of phrases. This process is rule-governed. We need to make a distinction between the sense of a word and its denotation. What we have looked at so far as meaning-that is, basically, semantic components- gives words a denotation. The sense of the word X allows it to denote the set of all possible Xs, actual or imaginary. It does not specify the exact bounderies of the set. Words in human languages usually do not denote well-defined sets of things, actions, and properties but sets whose bounderies are fuzzy. Just as we saw earlier that some of the senses of words may be excluded when those senses are put alongside others in grammatical sequences, so other senses combine with those of neighbouring words to enable complex messages to be constructed from their component parts. This is another way to achieve compositionality. It is sometimes said taht other words, like abstract nouns and nouns that denote interal states such as pain, are meaningless, that
changing meaning is the persistent use of a word in a non-literal sense using figures of speech like metaphor. While meanings may drift, all aspects of a word's representation can change over time, for ex. its phonological form can change. One notable change is clipping. If a word's form seems rather long and cumbersome it is sometimes shortened (ex. omnibuses has been clipped to bus). The clipped form is usually more informal. Another way in which the syntactic representation of a word may change is if a proper noun becomes a common noun. It is named proper noun conversion. Word histories The historical development of a word is its etymology. Some words have an etymology which is entirely native. Other words were coined through the processes of word formation we have looked at. Still other words are non-native having been borrowed at some point during the history of the language. Coming to the wrong conclusion about the origins and particularly the meaning of words is termed folk etymology. Dialect vocabularies So far we have been looking at total vocabularies, those both of individuals and of languages. But there are also partial vocabularies of various kinds. Like the sounds of a language, the words of a language can often belong to particular dialects. So this is a regional dialect word. A regional dialect is spoken in geographically distinct areas. As a result of doing such, maps can be drawn which contain isoglosses , lines which mark the approximate boundaries for the use of a particular linguistic feature of a dialect such as the use of a particular dialcet word. The social status of speakers will often include social dialect words , which are determined on the basis of the social class or status of the speaker. It has been found that linguistic clues such as social dialect vocabulary are often powerful indicators of a speaker's social status and therefore of how they will be regarded by others. Ethnic dialect vocabulary consists of words used by people who belong to particular ethnic groups and is characteristic of these groups. These are usually words which have been borrowed from the language or languages that members of the ethnic group spoke when they emigrated or before they became a colonized people. Specialist vocabularies A speaker has a regional, social and ethnic dialect vocabulary because of where he or she comes from, either regionally or socially or ethnically. But every speaker is also in command of a number of specialist vocabularies that relate to particular interests and occupations. Formality and vocabulary In such a situation people often hypercorrect , that is they use what they consider more prestigious linguistic forms than are the norm for the situation. Dictionaries The description of a word in a dictionary begins with the spelling of the word and this is followed by its pronunciation in brackets. Next are the word's two syntactic categories, in italics and abbreviated. Then come the senses of the word, each numbered and related to the syntactic category of the word. Only the main senses are given, each introduced by a number. The last piece of the entry, given in square brackets, is its etymology. CHAPTER IV 4.1 SOUNDS AND SPELLING The English spelling system, which is based on Roman orthography, does not enter into a one-to- one relationship with the sounds of our language. To allow the sounds of English to be written down, a universal phonetic alphabet was developed: the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In this alphabet the relationship between symbol and sound is one-to-one. The horizontal dimension has to do with where in the mouth the sound is produced and the vertical one with how it is produced. Within each cell, the first symbol is for the voiceless one of the pair, the other is voiced. This symbolo [p] represents the consonant sounds of English. We may define each symbol in two ways. First, each is assigned a three-term label, which provides a phonetic definition of how the sound represented by a symbol is articulated. These labels are given in the centre column of tabel 4.1. Secondly, each phonetic symbol may be associated with a spelling symbol/s. Each phonetic symbol represents the sound associated with the underline spelling symbols in the right-hand
column. Figure 4.2 is for vowels. They are arranged on a quadrilateral. In table 4.2 the symbol [i:] represents the vowel sounds associated with the underlined spelling symbols in the words at the centre column. ([p] is voiceless labial stop. Scheme is voiceless/voiced-place of articulation- manner). In non-rhotic dialect varieties ''r'' is pronounced only when it is followed by a vowel sound. Speakers of rhotic varieties (Irish, General American or Scottish English) always pronounce ''r'' no matter what follows. So we have seen that the phonetic alphabet establishes a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound. Each sound is represented by one and only one symbol, while each symbol represents one and only one sound. 4.2 ARTICULATORY PHONETICS This paragraph will deal with the study of how we produce speech sounds. To understand how we produce speech sounds, it is necessary to identify the organs involved in the articulation of these sounds: 1) Upper and lower lips. These are used in the production of labial sounds, and certain vowels. 2) Upper and lower teeth. 3) The roof of the mouth- alveolar ridge, hard palate and the soft palate or velum and uvula. 4) The tongue, this is a complex muscle. 5) The upper and lower jaws.
- The larynx and the vocal cords. The vocal tract is used to be divided into two cavities: the pharynx and the oral cavity (mouth). The third of these cavities is the nasal cavity. Speech production The production of speech involves three distinct processes. Although each process is independent of the other two, they may interact with each other. They are: a) initiation , b) phonation and c) articulation. A ) The production of any speech sound requires the creation of an airstream in the vocal tract. We create an airstream during breathing when we expand the chest cavity using muscles of the diaphragm. The greater volume of the chest cavity causes air to rush into the lungs providing a fresh oxygen supply for the body. When the intercostal muscles and the diaphragm relax, the volme of the chest cavity decreases causing air to be pushed out of the lungs. When the chest contracts air is pushed out of the lungs, creating an out-flowing airstream, called pulmonic egressive. B ) The pulmonic egressive airstream, as it passes through the larynx, may be modified by the vocal cords, through the introduction of voice. When the vocal cords are brought together, air passing out from the lungs causes them to vibrate, and voice is produced. Sounds produced with the vocal cords vibrating are called voiced. If the vocal cords are pulled back, they cannot vibrate. Sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are called voiceless. C ) As the airstream passes through the vocal tract, it may be modified by the movement of the articulators , that is, by the lips and the tongue obstructing its passage through the vocal tract to varying degrees. This process is called articulation. The obstruction of the airstream may occur at any point in the vocal tract, and is the result of an active articulator moving towards a passive articulator. The active articulators are the lips and the tongue, and the passive articulators are locations on the roof of the mouth (alveolar ridge, hard palate). We usually subdivide the articulatory process into two sections: place (where in the vocal tract obstruction of the air flow occurs) and manner (the degree to which the flow of air is obstructed). Place of articulation for english are:
- labial : sounds formed by the articulation of the upper and lower lips;
- l abio-dental : sounds produced by the lower lip and the upper incisors;
- dental : the tip of tongue makes contact with your incisors;
- alveolar : the balde of the tongue touches or comes close to the alveolar ridge;
- post - alveolar : these sounds are produced by the blade of the tongue articulating with the junction of the alveolar ridge and the hard palate;
- palatal : are produced by the front of the tongue articulating with the hard palate;
- velar : produced by the back of the tongue articulating with the soft palate or velum. Manner of articulation, it is possible to vary the degree of obstruction:
- nasal vs oral : the flow of air from the lungs into the nasal cavity is controlled by the velum, which may be either raised or lowered. If it's lowered then air is free to flow out through the nasal cavity, having nasals. The addition of voice will result in nasal resonance. Any segment produced with the
case the final element on the diphthong is a central vowel. The position of the tongue in the articulation of vowels can be represented graphically using a vowel quadrilateral. The quadrilateral represents the shape of the inside of the mouth in cross section. The vertical axis represents the vertical position of the tongue on the high-low scale, while the horizontal is used to identify which section of the tongue is involved in the vertical movement. While monophthong can be indicated by a single point on the chart, diphthongs require a starting point, direction of movement, and a finishing point.
- Long and short vowels: they may be either long or short. CHAPTER V 5.1 IDENTIFICATION OF PHONEMES We can identify two different sets of phonetic properties in English. First those that distinguish one sound from another and therefore one word from another. These properties are information bearing. Secondly, there is the set of properties that provide a more detailed description of the pronunciation of a sound, but do not distinguish one sound or word from another. They are not information- bearing. The first set of properties can be described as distinctive and the second as non-distinctive. This division of phonetic properties may be extended to the segments themselves. We have a set of distinctive segments that are defined solely by distinctive phonetic properties. We shall call the members of this set phonemes. They are indicated by placing them inside slanting brackets (/t/ or /d/). Sounds whose description includes one or more non-distinctive properties, and does not distinguish one word from another, we shall call allophonemes , and place them inside square brackets ([t]). We can check if the difference between two sounds is phonologically important by substituting one sound for another in a word. If this substitution produces a different word then we have identified a phoneme. This method of testing for the phonological importance of a sound is called the minimal pair test. The two words, which differ in one and only one sound, are called minimal pair. Pairs of words that differ in more than a single sound are not minimal pairs. To establish the phonemic status of a sound, it's only necessary to identify one minimal pair. This method of identification of phonemes is based on the notion of minimal contrast. Two or more sounds in a language contrast if they can appear in the same position in the same frame. These sounds are said to be in contrastive distribution. The minimal pair test relies on the notion of contrastive distribution. It involves two or more sounds that occur in identical environments (frame, position) and for which at least one minimal pair can be found. A minimal pair is a pair of words that differ in one, and only one sound. We can say that sounds that only ever occur in different environments are in complementary distribution. Sounds that are in complementary distribution may be allophones of a single phoneme. But for allophones to be assigned to a particular phoneme, not only must they be in complementary disrtibution , they must also have a phonetic similarity. The term defective distribution is used to describe any phoneme that appears in some environments but not in others. If the distribution of two sounds overlaps then they are in parallel distribution. Sounds that are in parallel distribution have the potential to contrast with each other and are phonemes. They cannot be allophones. To establish parallel distribution , we have to find ony a single environment in which both sounds appear. All sounds in contrastive distribution are also in parallel distribution. However, the reverse is not necessarily true. Sounds in parallel distribution do not always occur in contrastive distribution. If we consider the word ''either'', the ''ei'' sound can be pronounced in two differen ways: [ai] or [i:], but this does not result in a new word. Here, the phonemic contrast between these vowels would appear to have been suspended. We call this situation, where the contrastive nature of the phoneme is suspended in isolated words, free variation. Free variant may be sociologically significant. The choice between variants is often conditioned by the social situation. Speakers using form might be associated with a particular social group or geographical area, or may be of higher prestige. Speakers with higher social prestige may use one free variant more frequently than speakers with lower prestige. Free variation accounts for only a fraction of the variation in language. Most of the variation we encounter results from exposure to different geographic dialects. Dialects that differ
systematically have different phonemic systems (ex. Scottish English has a voiceless velar fricative /x/). With distributional differences , the phonemic systems may be the same, but the distribution of certain phonemes may differ between the dialects in question (ex. rhoticity and non-rhoticity). As with distributional differences, two dialects may possess the same number of phonemic oppositions but differ in the phonemic realization of all instances of particular phonemes. With selectional differences , two dialects have the same set of phonemic contrasts but particular words select different phonemes (ex. /i:/ and /i/ in the word cloudy between speakers of New Zeland and British English). 5.3 PHONEMIC ANALYSIS There are three parts to a phonemic analysis of a language: the phonemic system, a statement of the phonotacticts and a set of allophonic rules. The phonemic system The phonemic system of a language is a list of all the consonant and vowel phonemes of the language and the distinctive features which make each phoneme different from the others. The consonant phonemes are 24, and they may be divided into: 17 obstruents (oral stops, fricatives and and affricates) and 7 sonorants (3 nasals, 2 semi-vowels and 2 liquids). Phonotactics The phonotactics of a language are a list of restrictions on the distribution of segments, possible sequencing of segments into clusters, and admissible syllabe types. The largest initial consonant cluster in English contains three consonants. Each of these clusters begins with /s/, the second element is always a stop and the third is one of the non-nasal sonorants. The second consonant in all clusters is always a voiceless stop. In general, initial CCC clusters in English are of the form /s/ + voiceless stop + approximant (there are four exceptions to this rule). Illicit clusters never occur and never could occur in the language, they are not permitted by general phonotactic rules of the language. Potential clusters could but have not yet occured. Allophonic rules This rule may be divided into two halves, which are separated from each other by a /. The first half, on the left side, is termed the process side. Here we find the input segment to the rule and its output. The part of the rule on the right, specifies the context in which the rule operates and gives the conditioning factor. 5.4 ALLOPHONIC PROCESSES Aspiration In English, one allophone of the voiceless stops is aspirated. It is possible to write a rule which predicts where these allophones will occur. Assimilation It's the name given to the process where one segment becomes more like another segment, or two segments become more like each other. All assimilation processes involve al least one segment which is changed, and one which is the source of the change. We shall refer to the segment which is changed as the target, and the segment which influences the target as the source. What may vary is the position of the source in relation to the target. Where the source comes before the target the direction of influence is from left to right. This is called progressive assimilation (ex. happen /n/- /m/). Regressive assimilation is where the source comes after or to the right of the target, and the direction of influence is from right to left (ex. input /n/-/m/). It's also useful to establish a list of assimilation types. The most common types of assimilation are: place, voice, nasalization and lip attitude. Assimilation of place are the dentalized, palatalized and retroflex allophones of /t/. A second assimilation type involves phonation or voice. Here, a sound becomes more like its neighbours by agreeing in voice. Voiceless sounds become voiced, and voiced ones may become voiceless. We call the first type voicing, and the second type devoicing. Nasalization occurs when the velum is lowered during the production of a segment which is not normally nasal. The most common occurence of nasalization in English is regressive nasalization of vowels in vowel-nasal sequences. Lip attitude refers to the position of the lips during the articulation of a sound. The lip rounding may spread to adjacent consonants, manifested by labialization represented by the
a final syllable which contains either a long vowel or a diphtong. If the final syllable contains a short vowel and two or more consonants, then, unlike the verbs, it rejects stress. The notion of a heavy syllable is more restricted with nouns. This difference accounts for the difference stress placement on noun-verb pairs (ex. abstract, frequent). The verb is stressed on the final syllable, while the noun i stressed on the penultimate syllable. Distribution of sound types through the syllable: the nucleus is always either a vowel or a syllabic consonant, which in English is always a sonorant. As we move out from the nucleus, we find that the sounds in consonant clusters become gradually less sonorant. Rhyme schemes When two lines rhyme, one below the other, this is called a couplet. Traditional ballads have a rhyme syllable matching at the ends of their second and fourth lines. Limericks consists of five lines, two couplets one after the other and the last line rhyming again with the fist. The sonnet has 14 lines and two major rhyme schemes. Poetry written without a rhyme scheme is called blank verse. 6.2 SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH There are a number of phonological features which extend or spread over more than a single segment. We call these features prosodies or suprasegmentals. Stress , pitch and intonation are all suprasegmental features. Pitch The faster the vocal cords vibrate, the higher the pitch of a sound, and the slower the rate of vibration, the lower the pitch will be. We can increase or decrease the rate at which our vocal cords vibrate in two ways. First, we can vary the pressure of the air coming out of the lungs. The greater the pressure, the higher the pitch, and vice versa. Secondly, any change in the tension of the vocal cords will result in a change of pitch. An increase in the tension of the vocal cords will raise the pitch of the voice. Intonation The pitch of your voice should drop in sentences as statement, but should rise when you uttered it as if it were a question. We call these recurrent changes in pitch movement intonation. Each pitch pattern may be used to convey the speaker's attitude to the topic of conversation, or to the hearer, or the speaker's personality, or to signal grammatical features such as weather the utterance is a question. We shall call these pitch patterns tones. We can identify three basis tones: A) a fall from high to low, B) a rise from low to high and C) a monotone. There are two further tones, fall-rise and rise-fall. The fall-rise normally signals limited agreement or agreement with reservation. Rise-fall is associated with strong feelings of either approval or surprice. These tones do not change the meaning of a word, but change the meaning of the utterance as a whole. The distribution of tones in continuos speech has led to the establishment of a unit which is generally larger than a single syllable, called tone group. Tone groups must contain a syllable on which a major change of pitch occurs, called tonic syllable and is the only obligatory member of a tone group. The simpelst tone group will consist only of a tonic syllable. The functions of intonation We can identify three functions for intonation: I) attitudinal , II) accentual and III) grammatical. I) Attitudinal function: we may use intonation to indicate our attitude or emotions towards the topic being discussed. This involves not just intonation but also pitch placement, tempo, voice quality and facial expressions. II) Accentual function The tonic syllable is usually the stressed syllable of the final lexicon word in the tone group. It is possible to place the tonic syllable on any word, called contrastive stress. This contrastive use of intonation is accentual in that it draws attention to a word which would not otherwise have attention drawn to it. III) Intonation may be used to disambiguate structures which, when written, are ambiguous. In poetry, when a line ends at the point at which there is a clear tone group boundary, the line is referred to as end stopped. When there is no tone group boundary the line is referred to as run on.
6.3 STRESS
Stressed syllables tend to be more prominent. Prominence of sounds is relative, there is no absolute measure of prominence. A sound is only prominent in relation to another sound. Lengh, loudness, pitch and quality all contribute to a speaker's perception of a syllable as prominet. Lenght : The legnht of a vowel contributes to prominence. Syllables containeing long vowels and diphthongs tend to be more prominent than those which contain short vowels. Loudness : Hearers often perceive stressed syllables as louder than unstressed ones. This is a direct result of speech production factors such as greater muscular effort in forcing air between the vocal cords. Pitch: If the pitch changes on a syllable then that syllable will be perceived as prominent, this is called pitch prominence. Quality: The quality of a sound also contributes to its prominence. In general, vowels are more prominent than consonants. The more open a vowel is, the more prominent it is. Levels of stress Some longer words have more than one stressed syllable. The following words have two stressed syllable: 'mini'mize, 'circu'late, 'explan'ation. We call the more prominent of the two stresses the primary stress and the lesser the secondary. Stressed syllables in English occur at regular timing intervals. This lead us to say that English is stress timed , that is the period of time between each stressed syllable, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables, is roughly equal. Each stressed syllable and the unstressed ones which follow it are grouped together to form a matrical unit we call the foot. Meter in poetry has two aspects: the number of feet to a line and the positioning of weak and strong beats in a foot. Feet come in four traditional forms.
