Definition

In speech, a phonological property of more than one sound segment. Also called nonsegmental.
As discussed in Examples and Observations below, suprasegmental information applies to
several different linguistic phenomena (such as pitch, duration, and loudness). Suprasegmentals
are often regarded as the "musical" aspects of speech.
The term suprasegmental (referring to functions that are "over" vowels and consonants) was
coined by American structuralists in the 1940s.

Examples and Observations

"The effect of suprasegmentals is easy to illustrate. In talking to a cat, a dog or a baby,

you may adopt a particular set of suprasegmentals. Often, when doing this, people adopt
a different voice quality, with high pitch register, and protrude their lips and adopt a
tongue posture where the tongue body is high and front in the mouth, making the speech
sound 'softer.'
"Suprasegmentals are important for marking all kinds of meanings, in particular speakers'
attitudes or stances to what they are saying (or the person they are saying it to), and in
marking out how one utterance relates to another (e.g. a continuation or a disjunction).
Both the forms and functions of suprasegmentals are less tangible than those of
consonants and vowels, and they often do not form discrete categories."
(Richard Ogden, An Introduction to English Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press,
2009)

Common Suprasegmental Features

"Vowels and consonants are considered as small segments of the speech, which together
form a syllable and make the utterance. Specific features that are superimposed on the
utterance of the speech are known as supra-segmental features. Common suprasegmental features are the stress, tone and duration in the syllable or word for a
continuous speech sequence. Sometimes even harmony and nasalization are also included
under this category. Supra-segmental or prosodic features are often used in the context of
speech to make it more meaningful and effective. Without supra-segmental features
superimposed on the segmental features, a continuous speech can also convey meaning
but often loses the effectivess of the message being conveyed."
(Manisha Kulshreshtha at al., "Speaker Profiling." Forensic Speaker Recognition: Law
Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism, ed. by Amy Neustein and Hemant A. Patil.
Springer, 2012)

Varieties
"A very obvious suprasegmental is intonation, since an intonation pattern by definition
extends over a whole utterance or a sizable piece of an utterance. . . . Less obvious is
stress, but not only is stress a property of a whole syllable but the stress level of a syllable

can only be determined by comparing it with neighboring syllables which have greater or
lesser degrees of stress. . . .
"In most of these cases, the phonetic realization of the suprasegmental actually extends
over more than one segment, but the key point is that, in all of them, the description of
the suprasegmental must involve reference to more than one segment."
(R.L. Trask, Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed., edited by Peter
Stockwell. Routledge, 2007)

Suprasegmental Information
"Suprasegmental information is signaled in speech with variations in duration, pitch,
and amplitude (loudness). Information like this helps the hearer segment the signal into
words, and can even affect lexical searches directly.

Suprasegmental and Prosodic

"Although the terms 'suprasegmental' and 'prosodic' to a large extent coincide in their
scope and reference, it is nevertheless sometimes useful, and desirable, to distinguish
them. To begin with, a simple dichotomy 'segmental' vs. 'suprasegmental' does not do
justice to the richness of phonological structure 'above' the segment; . . . this structure is
complex, involving a variety of different dimensions, and prosodic features cannot simply
be seen as features which are superimposed on segments.