Theoretical phonetics. Study guide for second year students. Борискина О.О - 55 стр.

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ductive use of these features to segment speech and highlight important
information.
      Just as individual utterances can be divided into words and these words into
syllables, so too the larger stream of speech can be broken into smaller units.
The term thought group refers to a discrete stretch of speech that forms a
semantically and grammatically coherent segment of discourse. When we think
about where a speaker can logically pause in the stream of speech, we can
separate an utterance into thought groups. Although written discourse provides
some markers for these divisions or pauses (i.e., commas, semicolons, periods,
dashes), in spoken discourse a speaker may pause at points where such punctua-
tion does not always occur in a written transcription of the utterance.
      Similarly, the term intonation unit describes this same segment of speech
but refers also to the fact that this unit of speech has its own intonation contour
or pitch pattern (Gilbert 1983; Schuetze-Coburn 1993) and typically contains
one prominent element. A single utterance or sentence may include several
intonation units, each with its own prominent element and contour.
      To summarize, each typical intonation unit (or thought group):
      1. is set off by pauses before and after
      2. contains one prominent element
      3. has an intonation contour of its own
      4. has a grammatically coherent internal structure
      There is no foolproof way to divide an utterance into intonation units. In
rapid speech, intonation units may be fairly long; in slower speech, they may be
shorter, and breaks between units will therefore be more frequent. Where the
utterance divisions fall will also depend on the individual speaker, with some
speakers producing fewer breaks than others. Finally, such divisions are
dependent on the performance context. Public speakers, for example, tend to
pause frequently to make their message clearer or more emphatic, as in a
political statement:
      I promise / to serve / my fellow citizens / to the best / of my ability.
      By contrast, if in another context the speaker is communicating urgency,
the intonation units may be longer and the speech may contain fewer breaks:
      I promise that I'll get you the back-ordered merchandise /just as soon as it
arrives in the warehouse.
      There are two additional points to be made regarding intonation units. First,
too many pauses (and therefore intonation units) can slow speech down and
create too many prominent elements, causing the listener difficulty in processing
and comprehending the overall message. Second, blending and linking occur
within intonation units, but not across unit boundaries. For example:
      Dave:          Do you remember (/) when we used to stay up all night (/)
studying for exams?
      Howard: Do I ever! / Finals week was such a killer / that we all drank
coffee (/) by the ton.
      In this dialogue the slashes indicate possible (“/”) and obligatory “/”
intonation unit boundaries. Dave's question could be uttered as one long rapid