Prosodic unit
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In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation (a single pitch and rhythm contour), or tonal patterns. Prosodic units occur at a hierarchy of levels, from the syllable, the metrical foot and phonological word to the intonational unit (IU) and to a complete utterance. However, the term is often restricted to intermediate levels which do not have a dedicated terminology. Prosodic units do not generally correspond to syntactic units, such as phrases and clauses; it is thought that they reflect different aspects of how speech is processed, with prosodic units being generated through on-line interaction and processing, and with morphosyntactic units being more automated.
In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation (a single pitch and rhythm contour), or tonal patterns. Prosodic units occur at a hierarchy of levels, from the syllable, the metrical foot and phonological word to the intonational unit (IU) and to a complete utterance. However, the term is often restricted to intermediate levels which do not have a dedicated terminology. Prosodic units do not generally correspond to syntactic units, such as phrases and clauses; it is thought that they reflect different aspects of how speech is processed, with prosodic units being generated through on-line interaction and processing, and with morphosyntactic units being more automated.
Defining characteristics
Prosodic units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as pitch movement, pre-boundary lengthening, and pauses. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only occurs at the boundaries (pausa) between higher units. Several short contours may carry an additional overall gradual decline in pitch and slowing of tempo; this larger unit is termed a declination unit (DU). At the boundaries (pauses) between declination units, the pitch and tempo reset; for this reason the final one of the shorter internal contours is said to have final prosody, whereas the others are said to have continuing prosody. These two levels of the hierarchy may be schematized as follows:
Cognitive implications
While each prosodic unit may carry a large information load in rehearsed speech, in extemporaneous conversation the amount of information is much more limited. There is seldom more than a single lexical noun in any one IU, and it is uncommon to have both a lexical noun and a lexical verb in the same IU. Indeed, many IUs are semantically empty, taken up by filler words such as um, well, or y'know. Chafe (1994) believes that this reflects the constraints of information processing by the brain during speech production, with chunks of speech (IUs) corresponding to chunks of cognitive output. It is also a possibility that the distribution of information across IUs is designed to maximize language comprehension by the other party.
See also
Phonological hierarchy Tone terracing Upstep
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