Prosody is important in English. Itconveys many pragmatic functions relating to speechacts, attitude, turn-taking, topic structure, information structure and more. It alsohelps mark lexical identity, grammaticalstructure, semantic elements, and more.
The component features of English prosody – pitch, loudness,duration, voice qualities, and so on – are the sameas those of other languages. However the ways that these combineand the meanings of those combinations are often unique to English.
Each English word has an associated stress pattern: each syllable is stressed or unstressed.Unstressed syllables are generally lower in pitch, quieter, shorter,and phonetically reduced, with the vowels near to schwa. Manylanguages mark syllable stress and its absence with some of thesefeatures, but rely on them to different extents; others lack stress of this kindentirely.[1]
For any given word, the citation-form stress pattern is fixed. Whilethe stress patterns of English words do not reliably follow generalrules, but there are some tendencies. For example, mostEnglish names have stress on the first syllable, as in Jennifer, mostlong nouns tend to have stress on the antepenultimate(third-from-last) syllable, as in comMUnicate. The location ofstress in words formed by compounding is generally governed by thestress properties of the specific affixes involved, for examplethe -ization of nationaliZAtion and the -ic of proSOdic.
In English such stress patterns carry relatively little functional load, especially in contrast to tonelanguages, such as Mandarin. That is, are few word pairs which arephonetically identical but distinguished by prosody alone, withCONduct/conDUCT being one of the rare examples. Nevertheless, correctpositioning of stress is an important part of the language and greatlyhelps listeners to identify the words intended.
In ongoing speech, the lexical stress patterns can be affected by theneighboring words and by syntactic and semantic structures.For example green house and greenhouse differ in that thesecond word loses stress in the latter, and generally this type ofsemantic combination exhibits this prosodic pattern. There are manyways that prosody marks how words combine into phrases, often markedprimarily at the phrase boundaries.
While the aspects discussed above can be seen in monologue speech, theprosody of dialog is much richer. The ultimate purposes of dialog –suggesting, persuading, building rapport, enjoying each other's company, comparing perspectives, making plans, and so on – aretypically accomplished in part through the use of various prosodicpatterns. This is a characteristic of English: it uses prosody toconvey many pragmatic functions which other languages convey lexically.[2] [3]
Sometimes these are conveyed mostly through pitch, in the so-calledintonation contours. For example, the Contradiction Contour,[4] as in an instance of No, I never voted forRichard Nixon" said to correct a misconception, consists of a regionof narrow pitch that is bookended by two pitch excursions, here mostlikely on the first syllables of the words never and Nixon.
More often, the prosody of pragmatic functions involves combinationsof multiple features: not only pitch, but also loudness, duration,timing, phonetic reduction, and voice qualities such ascreaky and breathy voice. Forexample, the prosody of "awww", when used as an exclamation of praisefor a cute baby, involves creaky nasal voice, high pitch that isgenerally flat except with small initial and final peaks, relativelyloud volume, and extended duration.
The importance of non-pitch features can be seen in two uses of pitchdownsteps.[5] In one, the Minor-Third Pattern,the downstep in pitch, prototypically about three semitones, isaccompanied by lengthening, flatness of pitch, harmonicity, and otherfeatures. This combination serves purposes such ascuing and calling people, as when calling someone to dinner withdinner time!. Another construction also involves pitch downstep, but this one typically involves also nasality, low volume, and otherfeatures, and its function is to mark apologies as sincere.
In English, as in all languages, prosody is also used in conveyingemotions. Some emotion-prosody mappings arenearly universal in nature, such as the expressions of pain, andothers more language-specific, such the expressions of envy orremorse. Sociolinguistically, English prosodyvaries significantly across dialects, and prosody is important inconstructing social identities, including gender identies and socialroles. Prosody is also important in indicating personality andintersectional properties, such as charisma,[6] and in otherparalinguistic functions.
Overall the study of prosody has lagged other areas of linguistics.Within the study of English prosody, topics other than read speech andintonation have lagged. In any case, no comprehensive and completedescription of English prosody is as yet available,[7] which makes prosody a challenge forboth learners and teachers of English.