Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm, and vocal stress in speech. The prosodic features of a unit of speech, whether a syllable, word, phrase, or clause, are called suprasegmental features because they affect all the segments of the unit. These suprasegmental features are manifested, among other things, as syllable length, tone, and stress.
Different schools of linguistics describe somewhat different prosodic units. One common distinction is between continuing prosody, which in English orthography we might mark with a comma, and final prosody, which we might mark with a period (full stop). This is the common usage of the IPA symbols for "minor" and "major" prosodic breaks:
- Jack, preparing the way, went on.
- [ˈdʒæk | pɹəˈpɛəɹɪŋ ðə ˈweɪ | wɛnt ˈɒn ‖ ]
- Jacques, préparant le sol, tomba.
- [ʒak | pʁepaʁ̃ɑ lɵ sɔl | t̃ɔba ‖ ]
Note that these symbols are phonetic, and so will often disagree with English punctuation, which only partially correlates with prosody.
However, these symbols may also be used for metrical breaks, with the pipe being used to mark metrical feet, and the double pipe being used for both continuing and final prosody, as their alternate names "foot group" and "intonation group" suggest. In such usage, each foot group would include one and only one heavy syllable. In English, this would mean one and only one stressed syllable:
- Jack, preparing the way, went on.
- [ˈdʒæk ‖ pɹəˈpɛəɹɪŋ | ðə ˈweɪ ‖ wɛnt ˈɒn ‖ ]
In many tone languages with downdrift, such as Hausa, [|] is often used to represent a minor prosodic break that does not interrupt the overall decline in pitch of the utterance, while [‖] marks either continuing or final prosody that creates a pitch reset. In such cases, some use only the single pipe, with continuing and final prosody marked by a comma and period, respectively.
In transcriptions of non-tonal languages, the three symbols pipe, comma, and period may also be used, with the pipe representing a break more minor than the comma, the so-called list prosody used to separate items when reciting lists, letters when spelling out words, or numbers when giving out telephone numbers.