Suprasegmentals
7 Rhythm
Zoe Zawadzki
- Understand what rhythm is
- Understand the rhythm of English
- Identify strong vs weak forms of words
- Explain why rhythm is important in English
- Help to teach rhythm
7.1 What is rhythm?
Rhythm refers to the timing patterns of a language. This means that the timing patterns of the language are built around the stressed syllables, which are pronounced as longer syllables with clearer pronunciation of vowels and consonants. Syllables that are unstressed, on the other hand, are pronounced less clearly. The vowels of unstressed syllables are often pronounced similarly, as schwa, no matter how they are spelled. The consonants of unstressed syllables are also more likely to be pronounced in unexpected ways, including being changed or deleted. This means that the ‘beat’ of English rhythm is created from the combination of strong and weak (stressed and unstressed) syllables and words. This is represented by people standing in line in Figure 1.
To understand how rhythm is affected by different types of words, it is helpful to understand the role of function and content words in contributing to the patterns of English rhythm. Content words carry the majority of the meaning in a sentence or phrase. They are represented by nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and negative words (e.g., no, never, not, nothing). Function words are those that carry little lexical meaning but instead signify grammatical relationships within sentences. Common function words are determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, modals, qualifiers, and question words. In the following example sentence, the content words are bolded, and the function words are not.
I saw a dog and the cat.
Saw, dog, and cat (verb, noun, noun) are content words, are stressed, have clear vowels, and carry the most important semantic information of the sentence, while I, a, and, and the are function words that glue together the meaning by specifying the grammatical relationships among them. The function words are pronounced without stress, are spoken more quickly and less clearly, and often are reduced (they have a schwa). Reduction is a key feature of English rhythm. Syllable reduction also contributes to other features of speech such as deletion, illustrated in the example sentence when and loses its final [d].
The alternations of stress/unstress in content and function words helps to create rhythm in English. The connected speech chapter has more information about the effects of reduction and how reduction and other effects of listening affect listening and speaking.
Rhythm is pronounced within thought groups, which reflect where pauses or perceived pauses are used when speaking. A thought group is a chunk of speech that is semantically and grammatically coherent (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010). Rhythm, prominence, and intonation are pronounced within thought groups, and the many thought groups produced by speakers in connected speech create the