Suprasegmental aspects of speech

Suprasegmental are often referred to as the prosodic, temporal, or patterned features of speech, or as the “melody” of speech.
Speech features are rhythmic in that they occur in patterns which differ from language to language.
Speech rhythm carries meaning, aids understanding, conveys emotional state ,and expresses esthetic qualities.
Suprasegmental features are produced by controlled changes in voice ,pitch ,loudness and duration.
Suprasegmental, in phonetics, a speech feature such as stress, tone, or word juncture that accompanies or is added over consonants and vowels; these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over syllables, words, or phrases.
All of the Suprasegmental features are characterized by the fact that they must be described in relation to other items in the same utterance. It is the relative values of the pitch, length, or degree of stress of an item that are significant.
suprasegmental features includes- accent,stress/emphasis,intonation,phrasing,rate.

1. SUPRASEGMENTAL ASPECTS OF SPEECH ANSHITA SINGH (ASLP)

2. Suprasegmental are often referred to as the prosodic, temporal, or patterned features of speech, or as the “melody” of speech. Speech features are rhythmic in that they occur in patterns which differ from language to language. Speech rhythm carries meaning, aids understanding, conveys emotional state ,and expresses esthetic qualities. Suprasegmental features are produced by controlled changes in voice ,pitch ,loudness and duration. INTRODUCTION

3. Suprasegmental , in phonetics, a  speech  feature such as  stress ,  tone , or word juncture that accompanies or is added over consonants and vowels; these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over syllables, words, or phrases . All of the Suprasegmental features are characterized by the fact that they must be described in relation to other items in the same utterance. It is the relative values of the pitch, length, or degree of stress of an item that are significant. CONT ….

4. Suprasegmental information applies to several different linguistic phenomena (including pitch, duration, and loudness). Suprasegmental are often regarded as the "musical" aspects of speech. CONT….

5. The effect of Suprasegmental is easy to illustrate. In talking to a cat, a dog or a baby, you may adopt a particular set of Suprasegmental. Often, when doing this, people adopt a different voice quality, with high pitch  register , and protrude their lips and adopt a tongue posture where the tongue body is high and front in the mouth, making the speech sound 'softer.'" USE OF SUPRASEGMENTALS

6. "Suprasegmental are important for marking all kinds of meanings, in particular speakers' attitudes or stances to what they are saying (or the person they are saying it to), and in marking out how one  utterance  relates to another (e.g. a continuation or a disjunction). Both the forms and functions of Suprasegmental are less tangible than those of consonants and vowels, and they often do not form discrete categories."(Richard Ogden,  An Introduction to English Phonetics . Edinburgh University Press, 2009) CONT….

7. ACCENT - It is produced primarily by increasing voice intensity and making stressed syllables longer, and also by some relative change in pitch. Generally Indian Languages do not use accent. STRESS/EMPHASIS - Emphasis refers to the stressing of a word or words within a phrase. Like accent it is produced primarily by a combination of increased intensity and increased duration of syllable within the stressed word with an accompanying change in voice frequency {generally high pitch}. FEATURES

8. CONT…. It does not have a regular pattern peculiar to the language as accent has, but is used to communicate speaker intent. Emphasis affects pronunciation of speech sounds, too INTONATION - It is refers to variation of pitch in connected speech as a function of time. Intonation patterns are described by the direction of pitch change, the degree of change, and by absolute pitch levels. Patterns of intonation are governed both by individual characteristics of speakers and by common usage of the language.

9. PHRASING - A speech phrase is a continuous utterance bounded by silent intervals. Phrasing organizes words into groups related to units of thoughts, which help in under-standing the conversation. RATE- Rate refers to the number of syllables uttered per unit of time. It is affected by both stress and phrasing patterns. CONT….

10. www.britannica.com www.thoughtco.com Fundamentals of Speech and Speech T eaching REFRENCE