Rhythm and Tone in Words

Pronunciation of words involves more than simply stringing vowels and consonants together. This course examines how pitch, duration and intensity - the three phonetic correlates of prosodic events - are used in language to structure words. We will learn how speech sounds are organized into rhythmic patterns and how prosodic features interact with the rhythmic structure. We will explore the notions of stress, accent and tone and survey a variety of word prosodic systems from around the world. We will also consider how such systems arise and the historical transformations they may undergo.