TOPIC 9.

SISTEMA FONÓLOGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA III:

ACENTO, RITMO Y ENTONACIÓN. COMPARACIÓN CON EL
SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA O LENGUAS
OFICIALES DE LA COMUNIDAD AUTÓNOMA
CORRESPONDIENTE.

CONTENTS:
I. INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC.
II. STRESS
III. RHYTHM
IV. INTONATION
V. COMPARISON WITH THE SPANISH AND VALENCIAN SYSTEMS.
VI. CONCLUSION
VII. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES.
 I. INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC.
As ESL/EFL teachers we should look for revised ways to teach
speech/pronunciation and for that purpose we need to know about the new and
significantly different trends in instruction today.
Work in the sound system now emphasizes the critical importance of the
suprasegmental features (i.e. stress, rhythm and intonation) and their use not just to
complement meaning but to create meaning.
As awareness of the importance of intelligible speech/pronunciation increases and
new directions in instructional planning develop, the time seems right for teachers to
consider devoting more time and attention to an up-to-date speech/pronunciation
component within the ESL/EFL curriculum.
With suprasegmentals and connected speech, however, the misunderstanding is apt
to be of a more serious nature than with segmentals. Learners who use incorrect rhythm
patterns or who do not connect words together are at best frustrating to the native-
speaking listener, more seriously, if these learners use improper intonation contours,
they can be perceived as abrupt, or even rude; and if the stress and rhythm patterns are
too non native like, the speakers who produce them may not be understood at all.
Stress, rhythm, and adjustments in connected speech allow the speaker to turn the
building blocks of the sound systems (i.e., the vowel and consonant phonemes) into
words, meaningful utterances, and extended discourse. Command of these features is
therefore as critical as command of the segmental features in achieving succesful
communication for second language learners. Stress, rhythym and intonation in
connected speech can be easily overlooked in the language classroom. Nonetheless,
these invisible signals are among the main clues used by listeners to process incoming
speech and are thus of primary importance in the speech communication process.
 II. STRESS
In English there is a special relationship between the different parts of a word. In an
English word of two or more syllables, one of these will have prominence or stress.
That syllable is perceived more prominent because of a complex of features such as
loudness, length of vowel, etc. If the learner doesn’t stress one syllable more than the
another or stresses on the wrong way, it may be very difficult for the listener to identify
the word. This is because the stress pattern of a word is an important part of its identity
for the native speaker. There is a great deal of evidence that native speakers rely very
much on the stress pattern of words when they are listening. In fact, experiments have
demonstrated that often when a native speaker mishears a word, it is because the
foreigner has put the stress in the wrong place, not because he or she mispronounced the
sound of the word. Here is one example: if the word ‘written’ is pronounced with the
stress on the second syllable instead of on the first, the listener can think the speaker
says ‘retain’.
In common speech there are two types of stress: word stress and sentence stress.
Word stress can modify the grammatical category of some words as in this example:
Record- noun; record-verb.
According to the nature of word stress, we can distinguish three kinds of stresses:
PRIMARY STRESS, placed just before the stressed syllable –above- and
characterised by the most prominent increase in intensity within a word.
SECONDARY STRESS, placed just before the stressed syllable –below- and
characterised by a considerable increase in intensity.
UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES, characterised by the absence or decrease in intensity.

The concept of stress is not only applied to words but also to sentences. We call
sentence stress to the notable increase in intensity given in a specific sentence to a
number of syllables so that an interlocutor could clearly notice the prominence of these
syllables over the rest. The purpose of this linguistic phenomenon is to underline those
semantically important words, namely nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
We should bear in mind that speakers have a lot to say in this phenomenon, as they
can intentionally underline a specific word or words in a given clause.
For Example:
‘I’m not going’, meaning not ME, but perhaps YOU, SHE or HE.
‘I’m not going’, meaning I refuse to go.
 ‘I’m not going’, meaning I’m not going... I’m coming back.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRESS.

Incorrect stress on syllables is an obstacle to communication. For example, in
Spanish if a foreign learner mis-stresses ‘cenicero’ by placing the stress on the second
syllable, the listener may mis-hear and mentally substitute ‘plumífero’ or ‘centímetro’ or
any other combination which has that stress pattern, at least initially. Similarly, in
English in a situation which may not be ideal acoustically, mis-stressing of a word
would cause the hearer to discard other words with a different stress pattern, and infer
that the speaker meant another word with the same patter (e.g. ‘effort’, mis-stressed
might be interpreted as ‘afford’ ‘I thought’ or ‘aboard’).
Very often we can observe functional variations, since the stress and pronunciation
of some words may vary according to their function as nouns, verbs or adjectives, as we
can appreciate in the following examples:
Abstract (noun, adj)- abstract (vb); present (noun, adj)- present (vb); contrast
(noun, adj)- contrast (vb)

III. RHYTHM.
English has a characteristic rhythm and listeners expect to hear all speakers use this
rhythm. It is therefore absolutely vital that learners will use the rhythm that is
characteristic of English. There must be an alternation of stressed and unstressed
syllables, with the stressed syllables occurring on a regular beat, and the unstressed
syllables must have a less-than full vowel.
English rhythm patterns have a specific tempo determined by stress, whereas
Spanish rhythm patterns have a specific tempo determined by syllables. That is why it is
said that English is a stress-timed language and Spanish is a syllable-timed language.
That is also why English-speaking people learning Spanish have the impression
‘Spanish people speak as though they were shooting words with a machine gun’ (since
they give the same full timbre to every single syllable), whereas we Spanish have the
feeling that ‘English speaking people speak with a much more intense but irregular
rhythm (as they only give full timbre to stressed syllables, and they are much more
noticeable than unstressed syllables).
There are two major features which contribute decisively to the different English
rhythm patterns:
 In English there are long and short vowels; thus, some vowels are definitely
lengthier than others,
Vowels within unstressed syllables tend to lose their full timbre.
However, Spanish vowel phonemes are more or less the same length, and the
difference that there may be is hardly noticeable. For these reasons, Spanish rhythm
patterns are considerably different from those of the English language. This means that
Spanish-speaking people need to gradually make a considerable effort to acquire good
rhythm patterns right from the beginning.
In spite of what has been said abut the irregular English rhythm, the truth is that
some linguists state that speech in English is rather characterised by what has been
called isochrony. According to them, between every stressed syllable there is
approximately the same lapse of time. This phenomenon is reflected in the tendency felt
by English speakers to reduce the number of syllables or phonemes to its minimum, as
we can appreciate in examples like ‘every’, ‘secretary’, ‘interesting’, or ‘necessary’. We
can add that this tendency of reduction is even stronger in British English than in
American.

IV. INTONATION.
Intonation is important for intelligibility, because it is used to express intentions. A
speaker can show that he or she is asking for information, or asking for confirmation,
seeking agreement, or simply making a remark that is indisputable or ‘common
knowledge’, through the intonation of the voice. Even though pitch rarely causes
problems with the identification of words, an inappropriate intonation pattern can lead
to misunderstanding just as a mispronounced sound can. Only those who take an
extremely narrow view of intelligibility can disregard the importance of intonation.
Furthermore, the effect of intonation can be cumulative, the misunderstandings may be
minor, but if they occur constantly then they may result in judgements about the
attitudes, character, ways of behaving, etc of a particular speaker. For example, if a
foreign speaker always uses low pitch, without much variation in the melody of the
voice, listeners may get the impression that they are bored or uninterested when this is
really not the case.
The English intonation is overall pretty similar to that of the Spanish language; there
are of course many noticeable differences, but it can be said that intonation is rather the
most difficult suprasegmental feature to be systematised, for there are a great deal of
musical patterns in English as well as in Spanish.
Intonation is difficult to systematise because we have to bear in mind not only the
differences according to grammatical relations or connotative values but also the
idiosyncratic or personal musical patterns developed by a particular person, the dialectic
intonation patterns there are in a specific country or region, the affective indicators
which show e.g. how tired or glad we are, and finally the actual mental state or attitude
of the speaker.
THE MEANINGS OF THE TUNES:
THE FALL: this tune is the most neutral one and it is used for: statements, wh-
questions, commands, exclamations, and question tags expecting agreement.
THE RISE: it can be high or low. The high rise is commonly used to elicit
repetition. The low rise is used in yes/no questions, expressing reassurance, disagreeing
or question-tags which don’t expect agreement.
THE FALL RISE: this is extremely common in English indicating pauses,
reservation, uncertainty and hesitation. (e.g. ‘is it raining? I think so’) sometimes it is
also used for apologising, expressing differences of opinion and irony.
THE RISE FALL: this is comparatively rare in English, but it may be used to show
complacency, criticism or as a challenge.
 V. COMPARISON WITH THE SPANISH AND VALENCIAN SYSTEM.
RHYTHM
Spanish and Valencian are syllable-timed languages, not stress-timed ones. This is
the case in Romance languages.
A stress-timed language like English organises the speech muscle movements to be
regularly spaced in accordance with stressed syllables, while syllable-timed languages
organise the expulsion of air to be regularly spaced in accordance with syllables. In
other words, every syllable in Spanish or Valencian occupies more or less the same
amount of time, whereas in English stressed syllables occupy more time and are much
more noticeable than unstressed syllables.
A consequence of this oposition is that Spanish learners of English make every
syllable ‘prominent’ (from the point of view of English native speakers). This means
that they tend to make all English words have full vowels in all syllables, and thus
cannot find the typical English rhythm, whereas English learners of Spanish pronounce
unstressed syllables too fast and fail to give the sounds their full value, often blurring or
weakening the vowels, and de-stressing words.

STRESS
Spanish and Valencian stresses are free, just like English; that is to say, speakers of
these languages have to ‘predict’ through their learnt word stress patterns where every
word stress is supposed to fall on.
In English, words of Germanic origin are bound to have their word stress on their
first syllable. Words of Latin or French origin are bound not to follow this tendency, and
thus have their word stress on any syllable. This makes the prediction of the word stress
somewhat a little complicated.
All this means obviously that both English-speaking people learning Spanish and
Spanish-speaking people learning English must make a considerable effort to learn
where every word stress corresponds in every case. In Spanish there is of course a
considerable difference, as far as stress is concerned, for besides there is the graphic
strss, which gives additional information ro help about the word stress. In English there
is no such thing as a graphic stress or tilde. Therefore, English speakers must know
beforehand which syllables are to be stressed and which are not, because there is no
graphic help whatsoever to that end.
 INTONATION
In general, Spanish and Valencian use the rising tune much more often than English
does in questions, which can lead to minor problems in understanding Spanish speakers
who transfer their rising tune patterns from Spanish to English.
In addition, the fall-rise pattern is rarely used in Spanish. For comment clauses and
adverbials, which are incorporated into the intonation group in English, the Spanish
system usually assigns a separate unit. E.g. ‘Está oscureciendo, ¿sabes?’- two intonation
units; ‘It’s getting dark, you know’- one intonation unit.
It would probably take too much time to systematise all the significant differences in
intonation patterns between these languages, but as it is not really necessary for
methodological reasons, we could sum up by stating that English intonation patterns are
highly similar but not really identical to those of Spanish or Valencian.
Therefore, intonation should not draw teachers’ attention as much as stress, since
frequently it can only cause minor problems of communication.
Thus teachers should underline just those tunes or patterns which are considerably
different and may provoke confusion or misunderstanding.

VI. CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING

Because of their major roles in communication, stress, rhythm and intonation merit
greater priority in the teaching programme than attention to individual sounds. In
addition, since students usually have a limited time fram for formal language study, they
should work on the features of pronunciation that have the greatest bearing on
communicative effectiveness. This is not to say that the pronunciation of individual
sounds is irrelevant, but it is neither automatically the starting point nor the focus of
learning to speak a language.
Teachers should be suspicious of any theory related to communicative language
which ignores the essential need for active rehearsal and production of phonology
(vowel and consonant sounds), stress, rhythm and intonation patterns (signalling
meaning and attitude) and syntax (also related to meaning via concepts such as time and
completion).
We, as teachers, should not neglect stress, rhythm and intonation, as an inner part of
the teaching of the oral language, for it is simply impossible to speak a foreign language
properly and fluently without mastering suprasegmental features at an acceptable level.
 For these purposes, we should do the following so as to make students produce
proper utterances: to show them strategies to word out the stress of words through the
spelling (i.e., through the most typical stress patterns) and encourage them to recognise
the different English intonation and rhythm patterns; to always show them where the
stress is to fall on in every word; and to correct students when necessary.

VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alcaraz y Moody. 1993. Fonética inglesa para hispanohablantes. Ed.Marfil
David Brazil et al. The communicative value of intonation in English.
Headway: Upper-intermediate pronunciation guide. Sarah Cunninghan and Bill
Bowler.