Done by Zubiya, Zainab and Noor
There are two aspects of prosody that are usually studied and considered, but not together:
Auditory- pitch, volume, length of words and timbre
Acoustic- frequency, sound pressure level and sound spectral level.
There are many more variables of prosody that are studied. These qualities in combination create the features of prosody like intonation and stress.
Intonation is in fact an amalgam of several prosodic variables. English intonation is often based on three aspects:
- The division of speech into units
- The highlighting of particular words and syllables
- The choice of pitch movement (e.g. fall or rise)
These three aspects are sometimes known as Tonality, Tonicity and Tone (and collectively as "the three T's")
An additional pitch-related variation is pitch range: speakers are capable of speaking sometimes with a wide range of pitch (this is usually associated with excitement), at other times with a narrow range. English has been said to make use of changes in key: shifting one's intonation into the higher or lower part of one's pitch range is believed to be meaningful in certain contexts.
Tempo is a measure of the number of speech units of a given type produced within a given amount of time. A common measure is that of syllables per second. Speech tempo varies from one person to the other according to contextual and emotional factors, between speakers and also between different languages and dialects.
In English, a pause occurs before words that carry more importance. There are two types of pauses: a "filled" pause (where fillers are used) and a silent pause. A pause or the lack of a pause can have an affect on the meanings of the words, as it determines whether the group of words are a phrase, consituent or mulit-word group.
"know what i mean?"
•Rhythm is not a part of prosody as pitch and loudness are, but it is important to a languages phonology.
•Rhythm is learnt mainly during the early stages of life.
•English is stress-timed language which means that stressed syllables are said at regular intervals, while unstressed syllables are shortened to fit a rhythm. Syllables most often end with a consonant.
•Words of functional meaning rather than grammatical meaning are stressed more often.
•French, spanish, greek, italian, yoruba and telegu are syllable time languages. Syllables recur at approximately equal intervals. Syllables often end with a vowel.
•Rhythmic patterns can be used to signal differences in syntactic structure.
The 2000-year-old skeletons
The two 1000-year-old skeletons
Emotion can change a person’s prosody unintentionally, and can help convey additional signs of the speakers true intentions. It can be used intentionally, as when sarcasm or irony is used in humour, for example. The brain works to stitch together the semantics of the speakers chosen words (verbal channel) and the accompanying facial expressions and tone (vocal channel) to determine the true intentions of the speaker.
Anger: In comparison to neutral speech, anger is produced with a lower pitch, higher intensity, more energy (500 Hz) across the vocalization, higher first formant (first sound produced) and faster attack times at voice onset (the start of speech).
Disgust: In comparison to neutral speech, is produced with a lower, downward directed pitch, with energy (500 Hz), lower first formant, and fast attack times similar to anger.
Fear: Fear can be divided into two types: "panic" and "anxiety". In comparison to neutral speech, fearful emotions have a higher pitch, little variation, lower energy, and a faster speech rate with more pauses.
Sadness: In comparison to neutral speech, sad emotions are produced with a higher pitch, less intensity but more vocal energy (2000 Hz), longer duration with more pauses, and a lower first formant.
Emotional prosody has to be decoded by the listener in order for them to understand what the person has said better. They observe emotional tone and facial expressions toghether to understand whether what has been said is positive or negative.
Tone of voice can contribute subconsciously to a conversation, but it is harder to decode emotion from prosody than it is to decode from facial expressions.
Anger and sadness: High rate of accurate identification
Fear and happiness: Medium rate of accurate identification
Disgust: Poor rate of accurate identification
Unique prosodic features have been noted in infant-directed speech (IDS) - also known as baby talk, child-directed speech (CDS), or motherese. Adults, especially caregivers, speaking to young children tend to imitate childlike speech by using higher and more variable pitch, as well as an exaggerated stress. These prosodic characteristics are thought to assist children in acquiring phonemes, segmenting words, and recognizing phrasal boundaries. And though there is no evidence to indicate that infant-directed speech is necessary for language acquisition, these specific prosodic features have been observed in many different languages.
Infant Directed Speech is usually delivered with a "cooing" pattern of intonation different from that of normal adult speech: high in pitch, with many glissando variations that are more pronounced than those of normal speech. It frequently displays hyperarticulation, which is an increase in the distances between peripheral vowels (such as [i], [u], and [a]) Baby talk is also characterized by the shortening and simplifying of words. Baby talk is similar to what is used by people when talking to their pets (pet-directed speech). When adults talk to each other using baby talk it is generally to either show affection by emulating the fondness shown by adults for children, or as a form of bullying or condescension as children are much less cognitively developed than adults, implying that the adult receiving the baby talk is less intelligent than the adult talking to them.
•Stress is the emphasis given to certain words or syllables in a word and is seen by an increase in volume, length, and sometimes pitch.
•The stress placed on words within a sentence is called “prosodic stress”.
•The position of "lexical stress" in a word can vary depending on accent or dialect.
•Prosodic stress is used to change a sentence pragmatically and can change or clarify the meaning of a sentence.
“I didn’t take the test yesterday”