Annex 1: Prosodic elements in speech

Phonetics is the linguistics branch that focuses on how the most common sound types in different languages are perceived and produced.

There are elements in speech that are not related to vowels and consonants but that focus on the properties that sentences have when they are uttered.

Prosody studies, for example, stress, pauses, pace, pitch and intonation. These can be correlated with musical properties such as melodic contour, expressive accents, loudness and tempo.

In the context of phonetics in general, and prosody in particular, we will examine structures in speech as coherent elements with a set of common properties used for annotation and transcription.

Stress

Stress is the emphasis placed on one element of an utterance to make it more salient than another.

Stressing words can change the meaning of a sentence:

• Are you driving to the mall? (the question is about the subject)
• Are you driving to the mall? (the question is about the intention)
• Are you driving to the mall? (the question is about the action)
• Are you driving to the mall? (the question is about the place)

Syllables in a word are stressed to change its meaning:

• I will record a video tomorrow
• I will buy Beyonce's new record

Pause

These are brief moments of silence in speech. However, these pauses can be filled audibly with repeated syllables or words.

• I knew it would be bad but ... just not like this (mark importance, silent)
• Can you please (uhm) pick up the kids tomorrow? (hesitation, audible)

Pace