THE STUDY OF THE SOUND FEATURES USED TO COMMUNICATE MEANING

phoneme

phonemic symbol phonemic script

- monophthongs - diphthongs

word stress

stressed unstressed / weak

sentence stress

main stress secondary stress

- connected speech - contractions - rhythm

intonation

rising falling

- express emotions / attitude - emphasise or make less important

Phoneme
phoneme = sound - The word car has three sounds or phonemes /c/ /a/ /r/ = the smallest unit in sound that has a meaning in language a phoneme is represented with symbols a symbol always comes between dashes which represent sound /
/s/ /m/

PHONEMIC CHART IPA International phonetic alphabet

Word stress

= the part of the word which we say with greater energy.

Beautiful Beautiful

Beautiful

Stressed & beau

unstressed / weak syllables ti ful

unstressed or weak syllables get shortened or sometimes even disappear.

Schwa
Important /m'p:tnt/
Student ['stj:dnt]

Ago /'g/ litter /'ltr/ visionPock /'vn/

pencil children important forearm economical terrorism sufficiency

pen-cil child-ren im-port-ant fore-arm econ-omi-cal ter-ror-ism suf-fi-cien-cy

Try to pronounce these

pencil children important forearm economical terrorism sufficiency

pencil child ren important important forearm economical economical terrorism terrorism sufficiency sufficiency

Sentence stress
Different parts of a sentence are more stressed than others. Where the sentence is pronounced stronger, it is called main stress.

The main stress is the one which the speaker

thinks is more important. Jane bought some flowers for her mother. Jane bought some flowers for her mother. Jane bought some flowers for her mother.

Jane bought some flowers for her mother. Means she bought flowers, not chocolates or anything else.

Jane bought some flowers for her mother. Means she was the one that bought the flowers, not somebody else.

Jane bought some flowers for her mother. Means bought them for her mother, not for anyone else.

Youre coming with me, arent you? Youre coming with me, arent you? Oh, youre here!

Oh, youre here!