Prosody (linguistics)

In linguistics, prosody (from Ancient Greek:  prosōidíā "song sung to music; tone or accent of a syllable", Attic Greek pronunciation: [prosɔː(i)díaː]) is concerned with those elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech. These contribute to linguistic functions such as intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of language that may not be encoded by grammar or by choice of vocabulary.

In the study of prosodic aspects of speech it is usual to distinguish between auditory measures (subjective impressions produced in the mind of the listener) and acoustic measures (physical properties of the sound wave that may be measured objectively). Auditory and acoustic measures of prosody do not correspond in a linear way. The majority of studies of prosody have been based on auditory analysis using auditory scales.

There is no agreed number of prosodic variables. In auditory terms, the major variables are

in acoustic terms, these correspond reasonably closely to

Different combinations of these variables are exploited in the linguistic functions of intonation and stress, as well as other prosodic features such as rhythm, tempo and loudness. Additional prosodic variables have been studied, including voice quality and pausing.

Prosodic features are said to be suprasegmental, since they are properties of units of speech larger than the individual segment (though exceptionally it may happen that a single segment may constitute a syllable, and thus even a whole utterance, e.g. "Ah!"). It is necessary to distinguish between the personal, background characteristics that belong to an individual’s voice (for example their habitual pitch range) and the independently variable prosodic features that are used contrastively to communicate meaning (for example, the use of changes in pitch to indicate the difference between statements and questions). Personal characteristics are not linguistically significant. It is not possible to say with any accuracy which aspects of prosody are found in all languages and which are specific to a particular language or dialect.

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