Prosody

Articulation Formants Phonetic scripts Prosody Intonation, stress, focus Speech processing · Praat notes · Praat plugins and toolkit notes · Praat scripting notes

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Prosody is the part of spoken language that are properties of larger-than-single-phoneme units (you'll often see terms like 'non-segmental' / larger than single segments).

Prosody is usually categorized as part of phonetics, though it has tendrils in more than that, largely due to what different languages use it for.

A lot of prosody material tends to focus on syllables and the way we lay intonation (in non-tonal languages), stress, and rhythm into them, which is mostly because that is common in a lot of languages we study, not because that is the only thing in prosody.

There are also questions like that pauses technically do not fit that description directly, but because they are sort of the whitespace around the content, they could be considered prosodic boundaries, so may be is typically considered part of prosody as well - the sound equivalent of "this sentences changes meaning depending on where you put the comma"

Also consider the argument whether pauses are part of rhythm or not. In rehearsed speech pauses tend to be intentional and creative rhythm, while in in spontaneous speech it is often primarily hesitation, which has little to no contentful information. Also, longer pauses are often none of the above, and at best are considered separation from the last utterance.

When you study prosody, it may be practical to organize into

Physical - what we can measure

Perceptual - how we experience

Lingtuistic - what linguistic mechanisms use this

...also because a number of terms tend can be though of differently from each view

For example

fundamental vocal fold frequency is physical, pitch may be perceptual, intonation linguistic

similar with intensity, loudness, (its effect on e.g. stress)

mode of vocal fold vibration is physical, laryngeal voice quality more perceptual

duration, perceived duration

tone and stress is on the linguistic side, and what does and doesn't determine it varies with language

lots of individual tidbits, like that embedded sentences might often have lower fundamental frequency, are linguistic

...and it can help to keep those three angles separated in your head even if the terms sometimes fail to do so.

Prosodic unit

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.