 Vowels and consonants are the basic segments of speech. Together they form syllables, larger units and eventually utterances. Superimposed on the segments are a number of additional features. They do not characterize a single segment but a succession of segments. These additional features are referred to as suprasegmental, non-segmental or prosodic features. We will use the most common term suprasegmental and will discuss its phonetic groundings in this e-lecture. In particular, we will discuss aspects of loudness with its physical counterpart intensity measured in decibels. We will look at pitch and its physical counterpart frequency. The measure for frequency is Hertz. And we will look at length to which physicists refer as duration, normally measured in terms of time units such as seconds or milliseconds. Additionally, we will look at secondary articulation. That is, we will look at an articulatory phenomenon that stretches over more than one segment. And secondary articulation is the most important of such phenomena. Let us start with loudness. Now, in a spoken utterance, the syllables are never produced with the same intensity. Let's look at an example. Now, here's the name of a well-known English football club. And I will now read out this name without suprasegmental effects, that is, in a steady state mode. Manchester United. And you will certainly agree with me that this is not the normal mode of speech. In real speech, some syllables are unstressed, that is, they are weaker. Other stressed are produced with a higher degree of loudness, that is, they are stronger. Articulatorily, a stressed syllable is produced with an increase of respiratory activity, that is, more air is pushed out of the lungs. From a listener's point of view, stressed syllables can be identified by means of a combination of several suprasegmental features, such as loudness, pitch and vowel length. So, a normal or real pronunciation would be something like Manchester United. And then you would certainly agree that the syllables man and nigh receive more stress than the other syllables. So, in long words, such as these, more than one syllable may be stressed. And it seems suitable to assign degrees of stress to the syllables involved. So, this one would possibly be the main syllable or the syllable that receives the highest amount of stress. Manchester United. Let's look at pitch next. Now, as we said earlier on, the physical counterpart of pitch is frequency and it is measured in hertz. During speech, pitch is changing continuously. There are no steady state pitches. Throughout every syllable in a normal conversational utterance, the pitch is going up and down. Let us illustrate the pitch range used in some standard utterances of British English. And we will use the native speaker we recorded for the Virtual Linguistics Campos. Now, let's listen. Mary gave the money to her father. And we could perhaps assign free pitch levels to this sentence. Now, in the next sentence, we could possibly assign four levels. By the window reading a book. Plus a little onset here associated with the first syllable, I. And finally, three pitch levels again. He wanted to go to town on Monday. The pattern of pitch changes that occurs in these examples is referred to as intonation. The phonetic analysis of intonation is primarily concerned with the exact description of it. When we listen to a stretch of speech of some length, it becomes apparent that it is organized into tone groups. Now, here is this stretch of speech. The intonation of a language can be described as its melody. And you will perhaps agree that this stretch of speech is organized into three tone groups. The intonation of a language can be described as its melody. The boundaries between these tone groups are referred to as terminal junctures. Now, every tone group contains a nucleus. That is, a syllable that is more prominent than any other syllable in the same tone group. So in the first one, in the first tone group, you will agree that the nucleus is associated with the syllable lang. The intonation of a language. And in the second tone group, it is scribed, can be described. And in the third one, it is as its melody. So here we have our three nuclei. I love that plural, nuclei. The syllables preceding the nucleus are referred to as the head, indicated in blue. And the syllables that follow the nucleus are referred to as the tail, indicated in green. The pitch associated with the nucleus is referred to as the nuclear tone. So the tone we have in the first example, the intonation of a language is possibly a fall rise, can be described. Cribed is just a rising tone. And as its melody is a falling tone. So this then is a phonetic analysis of pitch or a phonetic analysis of intonation. Let's look at length next. The length of sounds of syllables and words and even utterances is variable. And the variations are used for a variety of linguistic purposes. Let's look at some of them. For example, vowel length, as we know, occurs in British English, seat versus sit. However, the difference between seat and sit is not just one of length only. It is really a matter of a combination of length and quality because the two vowels involved have different positions on the cardinal vowel chart. In German, the situation is really a difference between length, boat, that is, in the boat versus moral, is only a matter of vowel length. The short O occurs in unstressed syllables and the long O in stressed ones. Now another possibility is to associate length with syllables. Now look at this utterance, shall I leave now? Now if I use a very short syllable as my answer, shall I leave now? Yes. This might involve a lack of interest, lack of emotion and so on. And if I use the second option, shall I leave now? Yes. This of course indicates extreme emotional involvement. For example, and in utterances, we may have utterances that involve high speed where certain portions are lengthened, others are shortened. So for example, in this little stretch, you can read it as follows. The changing of the tempo of an utterance may increase or decrease its character. You will perhaps agree that a decrease is often associated with a high degree of sophistication involved. Now over and above these three main suprasegmental features, we have what we refer to as secondary articulation. Now this is defined as an articulation with a lesser degree of closure occurring at the same time as another primary articulation. Generally, the following types are distinguished. Now let's start with the first one, labialization. Now labialization is referred to as the addition of lip rounding, so this would be some sort of example of constant labialization. Since the tongue is not involved at all, labialization can be combined with any other primary or secondary articulation. Labialized segments are indicated by a W as subscript or placed after it as a superscript. Now the next secondary articulation we want to look at is palatalization. Palatalization is the addition of a high front tongue position to another articulation. Palatalized segments are indicated by a J as subscript or superscript. Palatalized consonants can be found in the Slabonic languages, for example in Russian, where contrasts between brat and brat are made. Vialization involves the raising of the back of the tongue during another articulation. Vialized segments are indicated by a tilde. We know that from the English examples, the English Vialized L as in pool or bill, well let's quickly write them down, so in English we would have something like pool where we have a Vialized L at the end, or we have a special superscript which is often used as a diacritic for the notation of Vialization. Now finally we have pharyngealization. Sorry I forgot to imitate Vialization with a high tongue in the back. This is about how it sounds. And finally we have pharyngealization. Now pharyngealization is the superimposition of a narrowing of the pharynx. So this is about pharyngealization. So it's a narrowing in the back of the mouth. Pharyngealized segments are indicated by a pharyngeal superscript here or subscript. Pharyngealized consonants can be heard in Arabic. Now secondary articulation which often stretches over several segments should not be mixed up with co-articulation. Co-articulation requires that two articulatory postures are of equal rank. Here are two examples. The first one draws a distinction between fronting and retracting. Now whenever ke proceeds a val as in ki, the constriction at the velum is fronted. So here is about the constriction and the additional diacritic is a little plus symbol showing that there is some sort of fronting of the tongue involved. If you compare that with the, so this would be ki, if you compare that with something like cor, you would have a retracted position of the tongue. That is the tongue is further back in the mouth. And of course you would have a second type of articulation namely labialization because you have lip rounding as in cor. Now in another example we have a dental effect. For example in words such as width in present day English you would have an effect of fronting of the d with, because the word final dental fricative automatically leads to this fronting effect making the alveolar plosive resulting in a dental articulation. So perhaps we would have devoicing too here or you could use a t alternatively as a phonetic symbol. Now this dental effect is indicated by this little tooth as a subscript. Let's summarize. We discussed the following suprasegmental features. Loudness and its physical counterpart intensity. Pitch and its physical counterpart frequency. Length and its physical counterpart duration and then we looked at secondary articulation effects. In order to find out how these suprasegmental features function in a particular language consult our respective e-lecture on suprasegmental phonology. For example the e-lecture present day English suprasegmental phonology.