Unit 12 Rhythm of English

Speech
Xu Dehua

Rhythm and its Features

Rhythm
Rhythm is the internal law of English language. It is the regular occurrence of
phonetics in a given time.
Rhythm in English speech is based on stress . It is ,in brief, the pattern of regular
arrangement and alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables.
2. Rhythm group and its division
1) The smallest unit of English rhythm is the rhythm group, which is called a foot
in English poetry. The rhythm group is made up of only one stressed syllable
plus what unstressed syllable(s) that may follow.
2) Any unstressed syllables that precede the first rhythm group may be regarded
as silent beat.
|John and his / |brother / | went into the / `room/.
|Would you / |mind / |calling back /`later/?
Its /|not /|quite what I / `wanted /.

3. Features of English Rhythm

English rhythm has two prominent features:

1) The basic tendency of English rhythm is that the stressed syllable follow each
other at roughly equal interval of time. The correct English rhythm is natural and
wave like .
English is a stress timed language, which implies that stressed syllables tend to
occur at a fairly regular intervals of time, i.e., the period of time from each stressed
syllable to the next is approximately the same, irrespective of the number
of intervening unstressed syllables.

| Pat is / |staying at the / |cheap ho/ `tel /.

| Have you any / |silk of this / |colour and / ``pattern/ ?

This feature of English has great influence upon the speed of utterance and
the length of sounds, especially the vowels.

I/ |think he / |wants to /`go/ .

The |Daniel |Jones Pro |nouncing |Dictionary | lists |most |versions of |
modern |English pronunci `ation.
It would have been/ |better not to have / |paid for it be / |fore you had
re/ `ceived it.
2) The other characteristic of English rhythm is the alternation of the stressed
and unstressed syllables.

In actual speech , stressed syllables are not always evenly separated

by unstressed ones. In order to maintain an evenness of the beat throughout
the utterance, it is necessary for us to regulate the distribution of stresses, thus
we can attain smooth rhythm in speaking or reading aloud. We generally
regulate the distribution of stresses by the following two ways.

How to regulate the distribution of

sentence stress?
1) By dropping some stresses alternately.

If stressed syllables succeed one another in

connected speech, we usually drop
some stresses.
e.g. The |big brown |bear ate |ten white `mice.

2)By shifting the placement of word stress

Words with two stresses ( including compound words )

may lose the first when closely preceded by another
stressed syllable or they may lose the second when
closely followed by another stressed syllable.

e.g.

|John

can |speak Chi`nese.

The |Chinese |people are |hard |working `people .