On suprasegmental features 一． Introduction So far we have been talking about phonetic features as they apply to single phonetic segments， or Phonetic features can also apply to a string of several sounds， such as a syllable， or an entire word or The study of phonological features which applies to groups larger than the single segment， are known as suprasegmental features， such as the syllable or the The study of these features is known as It mainly includes syllable， stress， pitch， tone， and In this paper， I will talk about the suprasegmental features in great Key words: phonetic， 二． Syllable The most obvious prosodic feature in language is the Let's briefly discuss the notion of Like all of our other basic linguistic concepts， although everyone knows what a syllable is， the concept "syllable" is difficult to define in absolute A syllable can be divided into three parts， that is， onset， nucleus， and coda， of which nucleus is a A syllable that has no coda is called an open syllable while a syllable with coda is called a closed In English only long vowels and diphthongs can occur in open The onset may be empty or filled by a cluster of as many as three consonants， while the coda position may be filled as many as four The maximal onset principle states that when there is a choice as to where to place a consonant， it is put into the onset rather than the In some languages， syllables are always open， that is， they always end in a vowel， never a (Hawaiian) On the other hand， every Hawaiian syllable must begin with a (Aloha spoken as a single word begins in a glottal ) In other languages， syllables are always closed; they must end in a consonant (Navaho): Háá'ishah Let's build a Táá diné 'ooljéé'go naaskai' Three men went to the (Like Hawaiian， they must also begin in a )三． Stress The nature of stress The word stress is used differently by different authors， and the relationship between stress， emphasis， accent and prominence is also defined Robins has defined it as “a generic term for the relatively greater force exerted in the articulation of part of utterance” The nature of stress is simple enough—practically everyone would agree that the first syllable of words like“father”， “open” is stressed， that the middle syllable is stressed in “potato”， “apartment” and the final syllable is stressed in “about”， “perhaps”， and most people feel they have some sort of idea of what the difference is between stressed and unstressed syllables， though they might explain it in many different The production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed From the perceptual point of view， all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common， and that is “prominence” Roach has manifested that at least four different factors are important to make a syllable prominent:i) Loudness: Most people seem to feel that stressed syllables are louder than unstressed ones; in other words， loudness is a component of ii) Length: The length of syllables has an important part to play in prominence; the syllables which are made longer than the others will be heard as iii) Pitch: Pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and to the musical notion of low-pitched and high-pitched notes; if one syllable is said with a pitch that is noticeably different from that of the others， this will have a strong tendency to produce the effect of iv) Quality: a syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighboring Languages differ in how they use 1) In some languages， each syllable is equally stressed or unstressed，as in Cambodian2) the syllable in each word is more The place of stress is fixed on a certain syllable:1) Finnish， Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages2) Polish，3) F4) Complex set of In Bulgarian nouns and verbs have separate sets of rules for stress Hopi (phonetic: first syllable of a two syllable word: síkwi meat; in words of three or more syllables， accent falls on the first long vowel: máamatsi to recognize; or on the first short vowel before a consonant cluster: péntani to write; otherwise it falls on the next to last syllable: wunúvtu stand up)The place of stress is 1) In Russian the stress is completely random: xoroshó， xoró2) In English the stress is more predictable but still Usually a middle syllable of a longer word receives the In two syllable words stress is rando and often renders differences in meaning: project/to project， produce/produce， and insult/ to Some languages have more than one stress per word: English is such a In English， words of four syllables or more have a primary and a secondary Some English compounds have phrasal stress on the first element of the Phrasal stress often distinguishes meaning in adjective/noun Sentence stress in English According to He Shanfen (1992)， English sentence stress has two main functions:⑴ to indicate the important words in the sentence; ⑵ to serve as the basis for the rhythmic structure of the Consequently， in connected English speech， sentence stress usually falls on content ( or lexical) words， which carry the basic meaning of a sentence， nouns， adjectives， adverbs Those which are usually unstressed in sentences are form (or structural) words， which show grammatical relationships， such as articles， auxiliary and modal verbs， monosyllabic prepositions，
