10 Stress, Rhythm and Intonation in Connected Speech

Dr. Neeru Tandon

Learning outcome

This module deals with Stress, Rhythm and Intonation in Connected Speech. It provides English teachers with a brief overview of current situations of English stress teaching: learning in the classroom and self-access online practice outside of classroom. It is hoped that English teachers at all levels can be encouraged to engage more in teaching English stress in their syllabi. With the findings of this study, English teachers can have clearer ideas about students’ stress error patterns and know more about the relationship between listening and pronunciation.

Multiple-choice exercises will help students in assessing their knowledge and understanding of the work. Bibliography, list of websites and You Tube videos will help them in their in-depth study and further reading. Critical quotes and quotes from the book will also help them in understanding various aspects of the module.

Introduction

English is called a horrible mix of languages and dialects. Twenty nine percent (29%) of modern English words have a Latin root; the same percentage applies for French influence and close is Germanic with 26%. The other 16% includes Spanish, Italian, Celtic, Indian, Arabic and Greek. I used the word “horrible” because you can imagine that with all these languages combined; there is no pronunciation rule that works 100% of the time.

The reason, it seems, is that speech is a continuous stream of sounds, without clear- cut borderlines between each word. In spoken discourse, we adapt our pronunciation to our audience and articulate with maximal economy of movement rather than maximal clarity. Thus, certain words are lost, and certain phonemes linked together as we attempt to get our message across.

Connected Speech

In this module we are dealing with Stress, Rhythm and Intonation in connected speech. First let us understand what do we mean by connected speech. There is often a substantial differentiation between the way words are pronounced in separation and the way they are pronounced in the context of connected speech. Connected speech, also known as Connected Discourse, is related with the spoken part of the language under continuous sequence in normal talks. According to Wikipedia:

‘’Connected speech, or connected discourse, in linguistics, is a continuous sequence of sounds forming utterances or conversations in spoken language. Analysis of connected speech shows sound changes affecting linguistic units traditionally described as phrases, words, lexemes, morphemes, syllables, phonemes or phones. The words that are modified by those rules will sound differently in connected speech than in citation form (canonical form or isolation form). ‘’

Connected-Speech Processes

“There are some important points to remember about connected speech processes [CSP]:

They occur at the edges of words, since this is where words ‘meet’ in sentences.

– Importantly, connected speech processes are optional. . . .

– We can think of them affecting sounds at the phonemic level rather than the allophonic level. When /t/ or /d/ or /h/ is elided, for example, we do not find that a different allophone occurs; we simply find that the phoneme is lost altogether.

– Because CSPs affect phonemes, they may lead to confusions about meaning “

(Rachael-Anne Knight, Phonetics: A Coursebook. Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Features of connected speech

Every language has a particular rhythm. There is a strong tendency in English to simplify and link words together in the stream of speech, in order to help the language flow rhythmically. In spoken discourse, especially in English, the boundaries between words are very often not clear-cut. Words and sounds are lost and linked together in different ways to enable us to pronounce with negligible movement.

This is one of the reasons learners find spoken discourse more difficult to understand than written discourse. Sometimes understanding of language is not hampered due to lack of vocabulary, but because of the lack of ability to deal with these features of, connected speech. Let us see how it works in the field of connected speech.

Assimilation

This is when the sound at the end of one word changes to make it easier to say the next word. For example:

‘ten boys’ sounds like ‘ tem boys’ (the /n/ sound changes to the bilabial /m/ to make it easier to transition to the also bilabial /b/)

Elision

Elision means that you evade a sound in the middle of a consonant cluster, sometimes from the middle of a word. E.g. ‘sandwich’ becomes ‘sanwich’.Or from the end of a word. For example:‘fish and chips’ ‘fishnchips’.

In other words ‘Elision is the loss of a phoneme, most commonly the last phoneme of a word, and most commonly the /t/ and /d/ sounds’. Have a look at these examples: left back

stand by looked back I must go

In each case the last phoneme of the first word is elided (lost). In the simplest terms, the reason is that the time and effort required to change the mouth position from the /t/ to the /b/ sound (as in the first example) or the /t/ to the /g/ sound (as in the last example) is too great.

Catenation

Catenation is when the last consonant of the first word is joined to the first vowel of the next word. This is extremely common in English, and can be very confusing for students. For example:

‘an apple’ sounds like ‘a napple’ (Teacher, what is a napple?) pick it up – (learners will hear something like pi ki tup)

what is it – (learners will hear something like wo ti zit)

Delayed Plosion

The pause before the plosive gives us the name delayed Plosion. For example :

Our “red dye” and “red eye” is an example of this. To articulate “red dye”, we must take a very short pause before the /d/ sound. The /d/ is an example of a plosive, consonant sounds where the vocal tract stops all airflow. Another example: the right tie (delay) – the right eye (no delay)Other examples are /b/,/d/, /g/, /p/, /t/ and /k/.

Intrusion

This is when an extra sound ‘intrudes’. There are three sounds that often do this /r/ /j/ and /w/

E.g. ‘go on’ sounds like ‘gowon’

I agree sounds like ‘aiyagree’

Law and order sounds like ‘lawrunorder’

Connected speech activities

Pronunciation in the classroom may include certain other activities dealing with it discretely. Students should be taught the basics of connected speech right from the start to show them how words link together and what happens to sounds in the stream of speech.

If students struggle with longer phrases, they can try the technique of back-chaining, starting from the last sound and working up to the whole sound bit by bit. For example with ‘Where do you come from?’ you drill ‘frum’ ‘kumfrum’ ‘dz-kumfrum’ ‘where-dz-kumfrum’.

A good activity to start learners thinking about connected speech and weak forms is to dictate just part of some phrases. For example: ‘uvbin’(you have been).

After doing a listening activity, try doing a dictation where you handout the recording script, with chunks of 2-3 words missing. These should include some aspects of connected speech. Students have to complete the gaps, which will help to develop their decoding skills.

Mark Hancock has some great activities in Pronunciation Games and on the HancockMacDonald website. I particularly like The Word Blender, a game for A2/B1 students which starts to help students identify some of the features of connected speech.

Four Different Functions of English Stress

Avery and Erlich (1992) and Kenworthy (1987) agreed that all second language learners will need practice in English word stress. This is unlike many other languages that indicate the prominence of a syllable through pitch only. Stress in English is marked by length, greater loudness, a rise in pitch, and usually vowel clarity. Bai (1994) proposed four different functions of English stress: distinctive function; highlight function; rhythmic function; and communicative functions. Stress must be considered from the perspective of both the speaker and the listener (Taylor, 1996). If the speaker does not use stress in an appropriate way, the native speakers might find it difficult to understand words. It also would make the listener misunderstand what the speaker is trying to say. The listener will not get cues about what words are important and when the speaker’s thought is finished. The situation could result in either the speaker or the listener feeling frustrated or embarrassed when the misunderstanding is cleared up, or the speaker might just express the opposite meaning and unconsciously offend the listener. Therefore, stress is not an optional extra, but rather a core part of the language. However, it is easy for some English teachers to neglect or forget this aspect of teaching. Some teachers might lack proper training in stress teaching and confidence in providing correct models. Much of the research indicates that native speakers organize English by stress patterns in their brains; they process the sounds and listen for the stress patterns rather than individual sounds (Brown, 1991; Celce- Murcia, Briton, & Goodwin, 1996; Kenworthy, 1987). Yan (1987) also pointed out that the mastery of stress could help students to enhance their listening comprehension. If non-native speakers make a stress mistake within a word or sentence, native speakers might not be able to understand the word or sentence. Therefore, manipulating the stress patterns of English improves not only pronunciation, but also the comprehension of spoken English.

Stress Patterns in Connected Speech

Most spoken languages will stress a syllable in each word. That is, rather than using a monotone to deliver all syllables, one syllable in each word is emphasized. Unfortunately, unlike a language like Spanish, which uses a handful of predictable rules to determine the stressed syllable in each word, English is chaotic. Here is a link to a web page that discusses the stress “rules” for English: http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/word-stress-rules.htm

It must be understood that these are not really rules, but generalizations. For each “rule”, there are many, many exceptions. The stress pattern is not always fixed in English words. Stress position may vary either as a result of the stress on other words occurring next to the word in question, or because not all speakers agree on the placement of stress in some words. The former case is an aspect of connected speech. According to Peter Roach ( English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 4th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2009)The main effect is that the stress on a final- stressed compound tends to move to a preceding syllable and change to secondary stress if the following word begins with a strongly stressed syllable. For Example: bad-‘tempered but a bad-tempered ‘teacher.

In real-life interaction, phonetically ambiguous pairs like ” a new display” / ” a nudist play”, are rarely a problem as we are actively making predictions about which syntactic forms and lexical items are likely to occur in a given situation.

Weak Forms

There are a large number of words in English, which can have a “full” form and a “weak” form. This is because English is a stressed timed language, and in trying to make the intervals between stressed syllables equal, to give the phrase rhythm, we tend to swallow non-essential words. Thus, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries and articles are often lost, causing comprehension problems for students, particularly for those whose language is syllable timed. Some examples of words, which have weak forms, are; And fish and chips (fish´n chips) a chair and a table (a chair ´n a table) Can She can cook chapattis better than I can (The first “can” is the weak form, the second the full form.)

Learners must use the weak forms themselves when speaking English. Otherwise their language will sound unnatural and over formalized, with too many stressed forms making it difficult for the listener to identify the points of focus. All language, like speech, is connected, and students will benefit from learning the weak forms and stress patterns of new words from the start.

Word Stress

How about students who say hotel instead of hotel?

Placing stress on the wrong syllable is a pretty common pronunciation mistake. We can have a chart, which should have three columns in case of three-syllable words. At the top of each, write the numbers 1, 2, and 3 to represent each syllable, but in each column one of the numbers should be underlined to show the syllable that is stressed.

Give your class a list of three-syllable words (telephone, magazine, religion, etc…) and ask them to place each in the corresponding column.

Cuisenaire Rods for Word Stress and Sentence Stress

This is probably the ideal way to teach children about word stress. Cuisenaire Rods come in different lengths; each rod can be used to represent a syllable. Use the longer rods to represent the stressed syllable. Hand out several rods to each group of students and call out words they must represent, one rod for each syllable. To reinforce what they’ve learned, ask them to write down each word and underline the stressed syllable.

Cuisenaire Rods can be used to teach sentence stress. This time each rod represents a word. Say a sentence out loud and show them which word is stressed by representing it with the longer rod. Next, say another sentence and have students show which word is stressed: I didn’t buy a car. Say the same sentence but shift the stress to another word: I didn’t buy a car. Poetry is also a great way to practice sentence stress as poetry is actually based on regular stress, or meter, patterns. Teach students a simple poem, such as Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Examples for Stress: Content words (key words) are always stressed; function words are not stressed. Usually stressed words: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs; contracted negative forms of auxiliary and modal verbs; question words. Usually unstressed words: auxiliary and modal verbs; personal pronouns; prepositions, conjunctions and articles.

It is said ‘‘the stressed syllables are louder and longer. Stressed syllables tend to occur in content words such as nouns and verbs; structure words such as articles and prepositions are usually unstressed.’’

Nouns: Terry, car, dinner

Verbs: eat, study, drive

Adjectives: blue, large, oval

Adverbs: quietly, smoothly, equally

Pronouns: that, theirs, himself, what

Function words are those words that are weaker and shorter. They include auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and possessive adjectives. These words are less important in expressing the meaning of the sentence.

Auxiliary verbs: may, do, have (if not the main verb)

Prepositions: under, around, near

Conjunctions: but, not,

Determiners: the, some, each

Possessive adjectives: my, your, our

There are some rules about which syllable to stress. But…the rules are rather complicated! Probably the best way to learn is from experience. When you learn a new word, you should also learn its stress pattern. If you keep a vocabulary book, make a note to show which syllable is stressed. If you do not know, you can look in a dictionary. All dictionaries give the phonetic spelling of a word. This is where they show which syllable is stressed, usually with an apostrophe (‘) just before or just after the stressed syllable. (The notes at the front of the dictionary will explain the system used.) Look at this example for the word plastic. There are 2 syllables. Syllable #1 is stressed.

There are two very simple rules about word stress:

One word has only one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear two stresses, you hear two words. Two stresses cannot be one word. It is true that there can be a “secondary” stress in some words. But a secondary stress is much smaller than the main [primary] stress, and is only used in long words.) We can only stress vowels, not consonants.

1 Stress on first syllable

rule example Most 2-syllable nouns PRESent, EXport, CHIna, TAble Most 2-syllable adjectives PRESent, SLENder, CLEVer, HAPpy

2 Stress on last syllable

rule example Most 2-syllable verbs to preSENT, to exPORT, to deCIDE, to beGIN

3 Stress on penultimate syllable (penultimate = second from end)

rule example Words ending in -ic GRAPHic, geoGRAPHic, geoLOGic Words ending in -sion and -tion teleVIsion, reveLAtion

4 Stress on ante-penultimate syllable (ante-penultimate = third from end)

rule example Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy deMOcracy, dependaBIlity, phoTOgraphy, geOLogy Words ending in -al CRItical, geoLOGical

5 Compound words (words with two parts)

For compound nouns, the stress is on the first part BLACKbird, GREENhouse For compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part bad-TEMpered, old-FASHioned For compound verbs, the stress is on the second part to underSTAND, to overFLOW

Schwa

The schwa sound is one of those little mysteries that ESL students often hear about but never truly grasp. The schwa, whose phonemic symbol looks like an upside down “e” ([ə]), is an unstressed, weak sound that occurs in many English words. In the phrase “a story about a girl” the three “a”s are schwa sounds. The same happens with the “e” in the or the “o” in to. ESL students who master the schwa are well on their way to improved pronunciation.

Explain that most unstressed syllables in English are reduced and pronounced as a “schwa.” Teach the schwa sound (the “uh” sound as is the second syllable of “station”). Modeling the expressions “Uh-huh” (for “yes”) and “huh-uh” (for “no”) is a humorous way to teach this sound. The American English greeting “How are you doing?” for example is really pronounced /how’r yuh doin’/ –the structure words “are” and “you” get reduced to schwa.

Rhythm

The literal meaning of rhythm is ‘ a strong regular repeated pattern of sounds or movements ‘ ( New Oxford Advance Learners’ Dictionary 7th edition , 2005) .

Spoken English words with two or more syllables have different stress and length patterns. Some syllables are stressed more than others and some syllables are pronounced longer than others. The same is true of phrases and sentences. Different words in a sentence have stronger stress and are pronounced longer and other words are weaker and shorter. This pattern of strong and weak stress and short and long pronunciation gives English its rhythm.

It is important for non-native speakers to understand and master the rhythm of English. If the wrong words are stressed in a sentence or if all words are pronounced with the same length or loudness, the speech will be difficult to understand.

In languages with this type of rhythm, there is a regular occurrence of stressed syllables.

Consequently the unstressed syllables are uttered quickly or eaten up. This regular occurrence of stressed syllables gives English its characteristic lucid rhythm.

The problem of rhythm in language learning

English speakers have a problem when learning other languages, as they naturally want to apply their own English rhythm to the new language. However, each language has its own rhythm that must be learned along with the grammar and vocabulary.

Understanding the rhythm of a language is a vital part of being understood by natives and necessary to achieving fluency.

Intonation

If students speak like robot i e speak in a monotone, with no color, no feeling. It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel the language. They probably just don’t know how to use stress and intonation to convey intention and meaning.

Most of the time, students who have trouble using the right stress and intonation speak native languages with very different rules. English is a stressed language, and this means that more attention should be paid to where you put the stress in a word or sentence, rather than the number of syllables.

Most Common Mistakes: Intonation No Rising Pitch

This is the most common intonation mistake. Lots of students using yes/no questions end their sentences flat so they don’t sound like questions at all: Do you like chocolate. They sound like statements. Students often have more trouble imitating the rising than the falling intonation.

Use of wrong pitch

Students often don’t use the right pitch to convey feelings. A single word like really can express completely different feelings: “Really” said with falling intonation expresses disbelief, while “Really?” with a rising pitch expresses surprise.

Stressed vs. Syllabic

This means that in a sentence some words are stressed more than others. In syllabic languages, like Spanish for example, it makes more sense to focus on pronouncing each word, syllable by syllable. But if we were to do this in English we’d sound like robots. Try saying, “Your book is on the table” by pronouncing each word – doesn’t sound like fluent, human speech, does it?

Linking Sounds

Quite often two sounds are linked to sound like one word (sometimes even more than two words are linked). This is often the case with the verb is when it’s followed by an article or preposition that starts with a vowel (an, a, on, at). “He’s an architect” sounds like “He – za – narchitect”. This happens when a word ending with a consonant is followed by a word starting with a vowel. Something similar happens when we ask, “What did you do?” (sounds like wha diju do?) In this case, the two sounds are combined to form a new mixed sound. It is important to note that role of stress, intonation and rhythm is very important.

Silent Letters: Just like there are words in a sentence that are not clearly pronounced or stressed, a single word may have consonants that are not pronounced, either. ESL students are often unaware of this. Words they often mispronounce are those that end in a “b”, like bomb, dumb, or comb. Others have trouble with the silent “g” in foreign, sign or champagne.

Sounds that Disappear

There are words that have consonant sounds that are not exactly silent, but simply disappear. This is the case with the “d” in and (often pronounced an) and the “t” in it or but. Three different ways to pronounce the CH

ch sounds like tch – I learned that the correct CH pronunciation includes a stop sound like TCH. This works about 85% of the time with words such as cheese (tcheese) and much (mutch).
ch sounds like sh – In a few occasions the CH sounds like SH such as machine (mashine) or Chicago (Shicago).
ch sounds like k – There are some times that it sounds like k such as architect / (arkitect), schedule (skedule) or stomach (stomak).

I went there last night” we wouldn’t pronounce the final “t” in went, last or night.

Spelling vs. Pronunciation

Students must understand that quite often the spelling of a word is no indication of how it should be pronounced (and by the same token the pronunciation of a word is no indication of how it is spelled). The “th” for example sounds like a “d” in then or than, but completely different in thing, three or thousand. Students must learn to distinguish between letters and sounds, i.e., same letters may have different sounds depending on the letters that follow it or precede it.

Intonation and Feelings

‘‘In linguistics, intonation is variation of spoken pitch that is not used to distinguish words; instead it is used for a range of functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker, signaling the difference between statements and questions, and between different types of questions, focusing attention on important elements of the spoken message and also helping to regulate conversational interaction. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation in some languages distinguishes words, either lexically or grammatically. (The term tone is used by some British writers in their descriptions of intonation but to refer to the pitch movement found on the nucleus or tonic syllable in an intonation unit.)’’

David Crystal for example says that “intonation is not a single system of contours and levels, but the product of the interaction of features from different prosodic systems – tone, pitch-range, loudness, rhythmically and tempo in particular.”

Here, as is common with wh- questions, there is a rising intonation on the question word, and a falling intonation at the end of the question.

Intonation describes how the voice rises and falls in speech. The three main patterns of intonation in English are: falling intonation, rising intonation and fall-rise intonation.

Falling intonation

Falling intonation describes how the voice falls on the final stressed syllable of a phrase or a group of words. A falling intonation is very common in wh-questions.

Where’s the nearest p↘ost-office?

What time does the film f↘inish?

We also use falling intonation when we say something definite, or when we want to be very clear about something:

I think we are completely l↘ost.

OK, here’s the magaz↘ine you wanted.