The Syllable and the Foot : Summary - Speech Resource Pages

syllable cannot be associated with a preceding foot which is
on the other side of an intonational phrase boundary. (see the
topic on Intonation, for more information on prosodic
phrases).
• Some words, such as "was" and "when", which can be
unstressed are stressed in a Limerick because the structure of
the Limerick places an accent on them. The lines of the
Limerick are realised as intonational phrases, but the
placement of accents on the capitalised words in this Limerick
divides these intonational phrases into two or three
intermediate phrases (a lower level prosodic phrase
containing a single accented word). (see the topic on
Intonation, for more information on accented syllables). Note
that intermediate phrase boundaries can occur in the middle
of a foot (see line 1 "Nepal") and, unlike foot boundaries, they
always occur at word boundaries. This is because intonation is
associated with meaning and words are basic units of
meaning whilst feet are associated with rhythm which is not
so strongly linked to meaning
• The function words are unstressed.
• Some content words, such as "old" and "looked", which
would normally have a primary stressed syllable may be
pronounced unstressed in Limericks. It is also possible that
this Limerick could be pronounced with "old" and "looked"
stressed. If this were so then this would result in an extra
foot, but not an extra intermediate phrase, on lines 1 and 3
(as indicated by the foot boundaries placed immediately
before "old" and "looked").
• In this example some feet consist of more than one
word and some words are broken into more than one foot.
• If we ignore the optional line-initial unfooted unstressed
syllables, we can see that Limericks have the following
rhythmic structure: 5 lines consisting of 3, 3, 2, 2 and 3
accented words (with definitely the same number of
intermediate phrases, and in some cases the same number of
feet).