大师作文网求一个500字左右的关于英语语言学的英文小论文.不要复制的.
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求一个500字左右的关于英语语言学的英文小论文.不要复制的.
On suprasegmental features
Introduction
So far we have
been talking about phonetic features as they apply to single phonetic segments,
or phones. Phonetic features can also apply to a string of several
sounds, such as a syllable, or an entire word or utterance. The study of
phonological features which applies to groups larger than the single segment,
are known as suprasegmental
features, such as the syllable or the word. The study of these features is known
as prosody. It mainly includes
syllable, stress, pitch, tone, and intonation. In this paper, I will talk about
the suprasegmental features in
great detail.
Key words: phonetic, suprasegmental.
Syllable
The most obvious prosodic feature in language
is the syllable. Let's briefly discuss the notion of syllables. Like all of our other basic linguistic concepts,
although everyone knows what a syllable is, the concept "syllable" is
difficult to define in absolute terms. A syllable can be divided into three
parts, that is, onset, nucleus, and coda, of which nucleus is a must. A
syllable that has no coda is called an open syllable while a syllable with coda
is called a closed syllable. In English only long vowels and diphthongs can
occur in open syllables. The onset may be empty or filled by a cluster of as
many as three consonants, while the coda position may be filled as many as four
consonants. The maximal onset principle states that when there is a choice as
to where to place a consonant, it is put into the onset rather than the coda.
In some languages, syllables are always open,
that is, they always end in a vowel, never a consonant. (Hawaiian)
On the other hand, every Hawaiian syllable must begin with a consonant. (Aloha spoken as a single word begins
in a glottal stop.) In other languages, syllables are always closed; they must
end in a consonant (Navaho): Háá'ishah dididiljah. Let's build a fire. Táá diné 'ooljéé'go naaskai' Three men went to the moon. (Like
Hawaiian, they must also begin in a consonant.
)
Stress
The nature of stress
The word stress is used differently by
different authors, and the relationship between stress, emphasis, accent and
prominence is also defined differently. Robins has defined it as “a generic
term for the relatively greater force exerted in the articulation of part of
utterance”. The nature of stress is simple enough—practically everyone would
agree that the first syllable of words like“father”, “open” is stressed, that
the middle syllable is stressed in “potato”, “apartment” and the final syllable
is stressed in “about”, “perhaps”, and most people feel they have some sort of
idea of what the difference is between stressed and unstressed syllables,
though they might explain it in many different ways.
The production of stress is generally
believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for
unstressed syllables. From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables
have one characteristic in common, and that is “prominence”. Roach has
manifested that at least four different factors are important to make a
syllable prominent:
i) Loudness: Most people seem to feel
that stressed syllables are louder than unstressed ones; in other words,
loudness is a component of prominence.
ii) Length: The length of syllables has
an important part to play in prominence; the syllables which are made longer
than the others will be heard as stressed.
iii) Pitch: Pitch in speech is closely
related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and to the musical
notion of low-pitched and high-pitched notes; if one syllable is said with a
pitch that is noticeably different from that of the others, this will have a
strong tendency to produce the effect of prominence.
iv) Quality: a syllable will tend to be prominentif it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighboring vowels.
Languages differ in how they use stress.
1) In some languages, eachsyllable is equally stressed or unstressed,as in Cambodian
2) the syllable in eachword is more stressed.
The
place of stress is fixed on a
certain syllable:
1) initial. Finnish,Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages
2) penultimate. Polish,
3) final. French.
4) Complex set of
rules. In Bulgarian nouns and verbs have separate sets of rules for
stress placement. Hopi (phonetic: first syllable of a two syllable
word: síkwi meat; in
words of three or more syllables, accent falls on the first long vowel:
máamatsi to recognize; or on
the first short vowel before a consonant cluster: péntani to write; otherwise it falls on the
next to last syllable: wunúvtu stand
up)
The place of stress is random.
1) In Russian the stress iscompletely random: xoroshó, xoróshi.
2) In English the stress is
more predictable but still random. Usually a middle syllable of a longer
word receives the stress. In two syllable words stress is rando and often
renders differences in meaning: project/to
project, produce/produce, and insult/ to insult.
Some languages have more than one stress per
word: English is such a language. In English, words of four
syllables or more have a primary
and a secondary stress. Some
English compounds have phrasal stress on the first element of the
compound. Phrasal stress often distinguishes meaning in adjective/noun
combinations.
Sentence stress in English
According to He Shanfen (1992), Englishsentence stress has two main functions:
⑴ to indicate the important words in the
sentence; ⑵ to serve as the
basis for the rhythmic structure of the sentence.
Consequently, in connected English speech,
sentence stress usually falls on content ( or lexical) words, which carry the
basic meaning of a sentence, e.g. nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc. Those which
are usually unstressed in sentences are form (or structural) words, which show
grammatical relationships, such as articles, auxiliary and modal verbs,
monosyllabic prepositions, etc.
Pitch
Another prosodic feature is pitch, defined as the frequency of
vibration of vocal cords. Pitch is measured in hertzes. Physiologically, pitch tends to be higher in
woman than in men and higher before puberty than after puberty. Also, the
pitch of women's voices tends to lower with old age; the pitch of men's voices
tends to get higher with age. Despite these physiological, non-linguistic
universal, each language uses pitch distinctions for linguistically
meaningful purposes. Starting
from the lowest pitch on the initial syllable, the pitch of each subsequent
syllable raises until the word reaches the "peak". From that point,
pitch either remains at the same level for the remainder of the word or it
drops again. The choice between maintenance of high pitch or allowing it to
drop is a matter of formality: pitch is maintained in formal or careful speech,
but dropped in colloquial usage.
七．Conclusion
Being the most important part, suprasegmental features can not be despised in phonology research.
From the whole passage, we can understand that suprasegmental
features not only has its phonology significance, but also the practical
use as well. We can not say this person is a good language user just by his or
her vocabulary, as well as the grammar. Spoken language is also very useful. I
do hope that the paper will be sufficient to prove that suprasegmental features is an efficient way for our studies and encourage
more and more students to pay attention to using it.
Reference
【1】Cao
Jianfen. The Rhythm of Mandarin Chinese. Institute
of Linguistics of Chinese Academy
of Social Science. RPR-IL/CASS (2000-2002).
【2】Chen Ying.
2001. Contrastive Study of Suprasegmental Phonology in English and Chinese: a
Functional Perspective. MA: Southwest
China Normal
University.
【3】Chomsky,
N. & Halle,
M. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers.
再问： 这是谁些的，超音段是什么，不是很了解
再答： 这是我在海大读研究生时候写的，绝对原创
Introduction
So far we have
been talking about phonetic features as they apply to single phonetic segments,
or phones. Phonetic features can also apply to a string of several
sounds, such as a syllable, or an entire word or utterance. The study of
phonological features which applies to groups larger than the single segment,
are known as suprasegmental
features, such as the syllable or the word. The study of these features is known
as prosody. It mainly includes
syllable, stress, pitch, tone, and intonation. In this paper, I will talk about
the suprasegmental features in
great detail.
Key words: phonetic, suprasegmental.
Syllable
The most obvious prosodic feature in language
is the syllable. Let's briefly discuss the notion of syllables. Like all of our other basic linguistic concepts,
although everyone knows what a syllable is, the concept "syllable" is
difficult to define in absolute terms. A syllable can be divided into three
parts, that is, onset, nucleus, and coda, of which nucleus is a must. A
syllable that has no coda is called an open syllable while a syllable with coda
is called a closed syllable. In English only long vowels and diphthongs can
occur in open syllables. The onset may be empty or filled by a cluster of as
many as three consonants, while the coda position may be filled as many as four
consonants. The maximal onset principle states that when there is a choice as
to where to place a consonant, it is put into the onset rather than the coda.
In some languages, syllables are always open,
that is, they always end in a vowel, never a consonant. (Hawaiian)
On the other hand, every Hawaiian syllable must begin with a consonant. (Aloha spoken as a single word begins
in a glottal stop.) In other languages, syllables are always closed; they must
end in a consonant (Navaho): Háá'ishah dididiljah. Let's build a fire. Táá diné 'ooljéé'go naaskai' Three men went to the moon. (Like
Hawaiian, they must also begin in a consonant.
)
Stress
The nature of stress
The word stress is used differently by
different authors, and the relationship between stress, emphasis, accent and
prominence is also defined differently. Robins has defined it as “a generic
term for the relatively greater force exerted in the articulation of part of
utterance”. The nature of stress is simple enough—practically everyone would
agree that the first syllable of words like“father”, “open” is stressed, that
the middle syllable is stressed in “potato”, “apartment” and the final syllable
is stressed in “about”, “perhaps”, and most people feel they have some sort of
idea of what the difference is between stressed and unstressed syllables,
though they might explain it in many different ways.
The production of stress is generally
believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for
unstressed syllables. From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables
have one characteristic in common, and that is “prominence”. Roach has
manifested that at least four different factors are important to make a
syllable prominent:
i) Loudness: Most people seem to feel
that stressed syllables are louder than unstressed ones; in other words,
loudness is a component of prominence.
ii) Length: The length of syllables has
an important part to play in prominence; the syllables which are made longer
than the others will be heard as stressed.
iii) Pitch: Pitch in speech is closely
related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and to the musical
notion of low-pitched and high-pitched notes; if one syllable is said with a
pitch that is noticeably different from that of the others, this will have a
strong tendency to produce the effect of prominence.
iv) Quality: a syllable will tend to be prominentif it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighboring vowels.
Languages differ in how they use stress.
1) In some languages, eachsyllable is equally stressed or unstressed,as in Cambodian
2) the syllable in eachword is more stressed.
The
place of stress is fixed on a
certain syllable:
1) initial. Finnish,Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages
2) penultimate. Polish,
3) final. French.
4) Complex set of
rules. In Bulgarian nouns and verbs have separate sets of rules for
stress placement. Hopi (phonetic: first syllable of a two syllable
word: síkwi meat; in
words of three or more syllables, accent falls on the first long vowel:
máamatsi to recognize; or on
the first short vowel before a consonant cluster: péntani to write; otherwise it falls on the
next to last syllable: wunúvtu stand
up)
The place of stress is random.
1) In Russian the stress iscompletely random: xoroshó, xoróshi.
2) In English the stress is
more predictable but still random. Usually a middle syllable of a longer
word receives the stress. In two syllable words stress is rando and often
renders differences in meaning: project/to
project, produce/produce, and insult/ to insult.
Some languages have more than one stress per
word: English is such a language. In English, words of four
syllables or more have a primary
and a secondary stress. Some
English compounds have phrasal stress on the first element of the
compound. Phrasal stress often distinguishes meaning in adjective/noun
combinations.
Sentence stress in English
According to He Shanfen (1992), Englishsentence stress has two main functions:
⑴ to indicate the important words in the
sentence; ⑵ to serve as the
basis for the rhythmic structure of the sentence.
Consequently, in connected English speech,
sentence stress usually falls on content ( or lexical) words, which carry the
basic meaning of a sentence, e.g. nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc. Those which
are usually unstressed in sentences are form (or structural) words, which show
grammatical relationships, such as articles, auxiliary and modal verbs,
monosyllabic prepositions, etc.
Pitch
Another prosodic feature is pitch, defined as the frequency of
vibration of vocal cords. Pitch is measured in hertzes. Physiologically, pitch tends to be higher in
woman than in men and higher before puberty than after puberty. Also, the
pitch of women's voices tends to lower with old age; the pitch of men's voices
tends to get higher with age. Despite these physiological, non-linguistic
universal, each language uses pitch distinctions for linguistically
meaningful purposes. Starting
from the lowest pitch on the initial syllable, the pitch of each subsequent
syllable raises until the word reaches the "peak". From that point,
pitch either remains at the same level for the remainder of the word or it
drops again. The choice between maintenance of high pitch or allowing it to
drop is a matter of formality: pitch is maintained in formal or careful speech,
but dropped in colloquial usage.
七．Conclusion
Being the most important part, suprasegmental features can not be despised in phonology research.
From the whole passage, we can understand that suprasegmental
features not only has its phonology significance, but also the practical
use as well. We can not say this person is a good language user just by his or
her vocabulary, as well as the grammar. Spoken language is also very useful. I
do hope that the paper will be sufficient to prove that suprasegmental features is an efficient way for our studies and encourage
more and more students to pay attention to using it.
Reference
【1】Cao
Jianfen. The Rhythm of Mandarin Chinese. Institute
of Linguistics of Chinese Academy
of Social Science. RPR-IL/CASS (2000-2002).
【2】Chen Ying.
2001. Contrastive Study of Suprasegmental Phonology in English and Chinese: a
Functional Perspective. MA: Southwest
China Normal
University.
【3】Chomsky,
N. & Halle,
M. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers.
再问： 这是谁些的，超音段是什么，不是很了解
再答： 这是我在海大读研究生时候写的，绝对原创