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v. t. e. In linguistics, prosody (/ ˈprɒsədi, ˈprɒz -/) [1][2] is the study of elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but which are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such elements are known as suprasegmentals.
Speakers vary their speed of speaking according to contextual and physical factors. A typical speaking rate for English is 4 syllables per second, [5] but in different emotional or social contexts the rate may vary, one study reporting a range between 3.3 and 5.9 syl/sec, [6] Another study found significant differences in speaking rate between story-telling and taking part in an interview.
Speech segmentation is the process of identifying the boundaries between words, syllables, or phonemes in spoken natural languages. The term applies both to the mental processes used by humans, and to artificial processes of natural language processing. Speech segmentation is a subfield of general speech perception and an important subproblem ...
Semantics is the study of meaning in languages. [1] It is a systematic inquiry that examines what linguistic meaning is and how it arises. [2] It investigates how expressions are built up from different layers of constituents, like morphemes, words, clauses, sentences, and texts, and how the meanings of the constituents affect one another. [3]
A sonority hierarchy or sonority scale is a hierarchical ranking of speech sounds (or phones). Sonority is loosely defined as the loudness of speech sounds relative to other sounds of the same pitch, length and stress, [1] therefore sonority is often related to rankings for phones to their amplitude. [2] For example, pronouncing the vowel [a ...
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress).Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel or with certain other vowels that are described as ...
A masculine ending and feminine ending or weak ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. In general, "masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable; "feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. The terms originate from a grammatical pattern of the French language.
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds, typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. [1] They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic ...