Prosodic Features

Prosodic Features

1. Length

   • Vowels
     • In some languages, the prolongation of vowels can make difference between words
       • Lax Vowel
         • Short
       • Tense Vowels
         • Long

2. Stress

   • Stressed Syllables
     • Syllables in a word that are louder, slightly higher in pitch, and somewhat longer in duration
   • Stress-Timed Language
     • It means that some syllables will be longer, and some will be short. e.g. English
   • Syllabic-Timed Languages
     • It means that each syllable has the same length. e.g, French, Spanish

3. Pitch

   • It depends on how fast the vocal cords vibrate, the faster they vibrate, the higher the pitch
     • If the larynx is small, as in children
       • The shorter vocal cords vibrate faster and the pitch is higher
     • If the larynx is larger, as in adults
       • The longer vocal cords vibrate more slowly and the pitch is lower
   • Intonation
     • It is the variation of pitch that is not used to distinguish words
     • Intonation Languages
       • They are not tone languages. e.g. English, French
   • Tone
     • Types of tones
       • Register Tone
         • It happens when the pitch is level across the syllable
       • Contour Tone
         • It happens when the pitch changes across the syllable, from high to low or vice versa
     • Tone Languages
       • They are languages that use pitch of individual vowels or syllables to contrast meanings of words. e.g. Mandarin, Thai
         • Tones lexical function
           • They make a difference between words
         • Tones-Grammatical function
           • The tone on monosyllabic verbs followed by a direct object indicates the tense and transitivity of the verbs

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