Suprasegmental phonology

• Traditional phonology deals in segments (phones)—individual

SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY speech sounds like vowels and consonants

John Fry • Suprasegmental phonology studies those aspects of speech

San José State University that extend over more than one segment
– Stress is associated with syllables
– Rhythm, tempo, and intonation are associated with phrases
and sentences

• Suprasegmental features like stress, rhythm, tempo, and

intonation are sometimes referred to collectively as prosody

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Intonation F0 contour for Jane, Pat, and John

• Intonation refers to the contrastive use of pitch or melody in

speech

• Different levels of pitch (tones) are used in particular

sequences (contours) to express a wide range of meanings

• For example, all languages seem to make use of the difference

between a falling and rising pitch pattern over utterances
– They’re waiting.
– They’re waiting?
– They’re waiting??!

F0 is the physical basis of perceived pitch

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 Intonation phrase
• The part of a sentence over which a particular intonation
pattern extends is called an intonation phrase
• The intonation phrase is a unit of information rather than a
syntactically defined unit, but it often overlaps with syntactic
units like phrases, clauses, or sentences
Linguistics 101: Introduction to Linguistics, Spring 2005, SJSU
Bonny told Peter she’d plans to leave (×2)
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Pitch declination
• Most languages exhibit a general downward trend of pitch
(declination) over the course of an intonation phrase
• The completion of a full grammatical unit such as a declarative
sentence is often signaled by a distinctive fall in pitch
• Incomplete utterances, such as mid-sentence clause breaks
where the speaker intends to show there is more coming,
often exhibit a slight rise in pitch
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Some functions of intonation
1. Grammatical: distinguishing grammatical units and contrasts
They’re waiting. vs. They’re waiting?
2. Emotional: expressing surprise, boredom, friendliness, . . .
They’re waiting??!
3. Information structure: new vs. old information
He likes the PINK one vs. He LIKES the pink one
4. Textual: identifying discourse units like paragraphs
IBM announced today that. . .
5. Social: identifying social groups and occupations
I went to, like, USC?
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 Tone languages Two types of tone language

• In tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, it is possible to
change the meaning of a word simply by changing the pitch
level at which it is spoken
• Distinctive pitch variations that affect the meaning of a word
are called tones
1. Level tone languages specify a particular pitch level (say,
high or low) for each syllable
• Shona (Zimbabwe) has a 2-way (high/low) distinction:
[kùtSérá] ‘to draw water’, [kùtSèrà] ‘to dig’
• Yoruba (Nigeria) has a 3-way distinction: [ó wà] ‘he existed’,
[ó wā] ‘he looked for’, [ó wá] ‘he comes’

• Examples of tone languages include Zulu, Yoruba, Shona, 2. In Contour tone languages, pitch changes within the syllable
Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai
• For example, Mandarin Chinese has four contour tones:
• In fact, a majority of the world’s languages are tone languages Tone Example Meaning
1. level mā mother
2. rising má hemp
3. falling-rising mǎ horse
4. falling mà scold

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Pitch-accent languages Stress

• Japanese, Swedish, Serbo-Croat, and certain other languages

are referred to as pitch-accent languages • A stressed syllable is pronounced with greater force than an
unstressed syllable, and is perceived as more prominent
• Recall that in tone languages, every syllable is associated with
a particular tone • Whereas tones are based on pitch, stress is based on energy

• In a pitch-accent language, one particular syllable in a word is • Languages in which stress contrasts are important include
pronounced with a special tone, or ‘accent’ English, German, Czech, Polish, and Swahili

• Like tones, pitch accents are contrastive—they can distinguish – Czech words nearly always have the stress on the first
different words syllable, irrespective of the number of syllables in the word
– In Polish and Swahili, the stress is usually on the
• Examples from Japanese: penultimate (next to last) syllable
– English stress patterns are much more complicated
[hàsi] ‘chopsticks’
[hasì] ‘bridge’
[hasi] ‘edge’

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 Some stress patterns in English words Sentence stress in English

• Noun-verb oppositions
• English is sometimes called a stress-timed language, because
an "insult, to in"sult; an "overflow, to over"flow; stressed syllables tend to recur at regular intervals of time

• Compound words • Example:

a "walkout, to "walk "out; a "pushover, to "push "over "Stresses in "English "tend to re"cur at "regular "intervals of
"time
• Noun-noun vs. adjective-noun compounds
a "hot dog, a "hot "dog • Because English tries to avoid having stresses too close
together, stresses on alternate words are dropped in sentences
• Other patterns where they would otherwise come too near one another
Noun 1 Noun 2 Adjective – The "big brown "bear ate "ten white "mice
"diplomat di"plomacy diplo"matic – The "unknown "man vs. The "man is un"known
"photograph pho"tography photo"graphic
"monotone mo"notony mono"tonic

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Suprasegmental phonology: summary

• Suprasegmental phonology studies intonation and other

aspects of speech that extend over more than one segment

• An intonation phrase is a part of a sentence over which a

particular intonation pattern or pitch contour extends

• Tone languages like Mandarin Chinese assign contrastive

(meaning-changing) tones to each syllable in a word

• In pitch-accent languages like Japanese, one particular syllable

in a word is pronounced with a special tone, or ‘accent’

• English is an example of a stress-timed language

• A stressed syllable is pronounced with greater force than an

unstressed syllable, and is perceived as more prominent

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