Building
Minggu, 23 November 2014
"It
a'int what you say but the way you say it."
This familiar
comment, immortalized in song, is the time-honored way of briefly
indicating what suprasegmental analysis is all about.
The segments of spoken
language are the vowels and the consonants, which combine to produce
syllables, words, and sentences.
But at the same time as we
articulate these segments, our pronunciation varies in other respects.
We make use of a wide range of tones of voice, which change the meaning
of what we way in a variety of different ways. Suprasegmental
features operate over longer stretches of speech, such as rhythm and
voice quality as opposed to segmental features, which are the individual
sounds.
Students of language and those who
plan careers in language teaching, coaching, therapy, acting, and
speaking will benefit greatly from understanding how they can influence
meaning by things like length, intonation, stress, and tone and other
suprasegmental features.
Length - the amount of time it takes to produce a sound
Some sounds are longer than others.
If you were to pronounce both
words with longer vowels, the pronunciation might seem strange but the
meaning is not lost. In other words, the meaning of beat and beat
are the same.
But in other languages, vowel
length actually changes the meaning of words. Therefore, pronunciation
of the lengthened sound is very important because the word means
something completely different. Study these examples in Hawaiian.
Length in Hawaiian is indicated with the diacritical mark that looks
like a dash over the vowel, called a kahakō.
| Hawaiian: | kau "to place" |
| kāu "to belong to you" | |
| lolo "brain" | |
| lōlō "slang - hardheaded | |
| kala "to forgive" | |
| kāla "money" | |
| ka lā "the sun" | |
| pau "finished" | |
| pa'u "soot" | |
| pa'ū "skirt" |
In English, you can express your
emotions by lengthening certain sounds in sentences. By varying the
tempo of words (such as lengthening specific sounds) you can communicate
your feelings.
| English: | Should I leave now? |
| Yes. (snipped, implies irritation) | |
| Ye-e-e-e-s-s-s-s (implies thoughtfulness) |
Intonation - the rising and falling of the voice (pitch) over a stretch of sentence
If pitch varies over an entire
phrase or sentence, we call the different pitch curves by the term intonation.
Intonation conveys the speaker's attitude or feelings. In other
words, intonation can convey anger, sarcasm, or various emotions.
How do these sentences - with the
exact same words -- mean very different things with different
intonation?
| John told me to leave. | (normal intonation) |
| John told me to leave. | (emphasis on John: John, not Mike) |
| John told me to leave. | (emphasis on told: told, not asked nicely) |
| John told me to leave. | (emphasis on me: me, not you or Mary) |
| John told me to leave. | (emphasis on leave: leave, not stay) |
Other languages don't use
intonation in this way. "John told me to leave" is "Jose
me mando a salir" in Spanish.
But it's not possible to say Jose me mando a salir
or Jose me mando a salir, as we can in English.
Instead of raising your voice to emphasize a word, Spanish uses word
order and places the word to be emphasized at the end
of the sentence (note: the written accent marks are left out below):
| John told me to leave. | Jose me mando a salir. | (normal intonation) |
| John told me to leave. | Me mando a salir a José. | (emphasis on José) |
| John told me to leave. | Jose me mando a salir a mi. | (emphasis on me) |
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