The Syllable and the Foot : Summary - Speech Resource Pages

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('abracadabra'), a binary foot followed by a non-branching foot ('lemonade'), two non-branching feet ('latex') and so on. For example (where "(a)" = binary, "(b)" = ternary, and "(c)" = non-branching):- (a) + (a) "economics" (b) + (a) "abracadabra" (a) + (c) "matador" (c) + (a) rare, but possible: "Nintendo" (c) + (b) very rare (c) + (c) + (c) impossible Because of these constraints and the preference for (a)+(a), strong and weak syllables tend to nearly alternate in English. This near-alternation of s and w is the basis for our perception of rhythm in English. Natural speech is highly rhythmic, it tends to have a regular beat. But different languages have different rhythms. In English all feet tend to be of roughly the same length so that feet with more syllables will have relatively shorter syllables than those with fewer syllables. eg abracadabra 2 feet, 1 with three syllables and 1 with 2 but approximately equal duration. antidisestablishmentarianism 5 feet, 12 syllables an-ti dis-est ab-lishment a-ri-an ism s w s w s w w s w w s w Having said this, its important to note that the stress pattern of natural spoken English is not based on words at all. Phrases like "my dog, the chair, love it", pattern like single words with just one prominent syllable. There is no difference in stress between pairs of words like "arise, a rise" or "ago, a go". Words that begin with unstressed syllables like "above" may have initial unstressed syllable allocated to a preceding foot. eg /IT was a /SIGN from a/BOVE Stress patterns associated with the foot determine the characteristic rhythm of spoken English. A foot can comprise just a single word or a group of words. In English there are some words that are generally unstressed. They are high frequency, usually monosyllabic function words like "the, a, is, to, and, that". These words can in exceptional circumstances be stressed for particular semantic intent but generally speaking they remain unstressed.
The foot is analogous to the bar in music and spoken utterances consist of a succession of feet in the same way that music consists of a succession of bars. The first syllable of each foot is always strong. Click here to see an example of the complex relationship between word boundaries, foot boundaries and prosodic phrase boundaries. Quantity-sensitive Feet In some languages, the choice of primary stress is related to the number and type of segments in the syllable rhyme and this is called quantity-sensitivity. Syllables are considered to be either heavy or light depending on the segmental constituents of the rhyme. Heavy and Light syllables A light syllable is defined as any (C)V syllable where (C) is zero or more consonants, and where the V is one of /ɪ e æ ɐ ʊ ɔ/ (as in 'hid', 'head', 'had', 'hud', 'hood', 'hod') or /ə/. (The simplest way to remember these vowels is to ask yourself whether there are any open monosyllables with such vowels in English - they are also phonetically quite short). A light syllable also includes (C)VC syllables in word-final position - so the last syllable of 'imagine' is light. All other types of syllables - that is (C)VC syllables which are not word-final, (C)VCC syllables, (C)V: syllables where V: is any other vowel or diphthong not listed above, or (C)V:C syllables all count as heavy. What kinds of syllables are metrically weak? In order to be able to work out the prosodic tree structure for any word, it's obviously important to be able to identify which syllables are strong and weak. This is fact quite easy because, apart from all weak syllables necessarily being Light (see above), the very large majority of weak syllables have a /ə/ vowel, or a vowel that can reduce to schwa (for example, the second syllable of 'minimum' which can be either /ɪ/ or /ə/). There are a few other kinds of weak syllables that don't have a /ə/ as their vowel. These are listed below:
Page 1 and 2: The Syllable and the Foot Topics Th
Page 3 and 4: • Sonority or prominence: this is
Page 5 and 6: get a good idea of what types of sy
Page 7 and 8: The Rhyme The rhyme is the vowel pl
Page 9 and 10: The Syllable and Phonotactic Constr
Page 11 and 12: If they conform to the sonority pro
Page 13 and 14: Finally, there are far fewer restri
Page 15 and 16: eg. /stremp/ in English is an accid
Page 17 and 18: The Foot and Word Stress Word Stres
Page 19: Building Feet into Words English Wo
Page 23 and 24: These (H) are non-final heavy rhyme
Page 25 and 26: (3) Associate any weak syllables wi
Page 27 and 28: The Foot and Word Stress Robert Man
Page 29: The Syllable and the Foot : Summary

The Syllable and the Foot : Summary - Speech Resource Pages

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