Prosodic/Suprasegmental Features (Part of Paralanguage)

Length of a Sound Vowel length contrasts occurs in languages such as Danish, Finnish, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Cree, Yap, etc. Examples from Korean /il/ "day" /i:l/ "work" /seda/ "to count“ /se:da/ "strong" /pam/ "night“ /pa:m/ "chestnut“ Consonant length contrasts are more rare but occur in Finnish, Turkish, Hungarian, Luganda and Arabic Examples from Arabic /oakara/ "he remembered" /oakkara/ "he reminded“ In English we use length for emphasis "Baaaaad!"

Pitch/Tone Changes Languages which use pitch changes to indicate different meanings include Chinese, Thai, Yoruba, Zulu, Luganda, Navajo, Sarcee, Latvian Chinese examples of nouns with different meanings Hi level ma "mother" fu "skin Hi rising ma "hemp" fu "fortune" Low falling-rising ma "horse" fu "axe" Fallingma "scold" fu "woman" Bini (Nigeria) examples of verbs with tense changes Low pitch ima "I show" High/low ima "I am showing" Low/high ima "I showed" English use pitch in sentences and phrases to change meaning Statement: They came in. Question: They came in?

Stress/Accent Some languages have automatic and uniform stress rules, for example: Czech, Finnish, Hungarian - accent always on first syllable French and Mayan - accent always on last syllable Polish, Swahili and Samoan - accent always on next-to-last syllable Stress may differentiate meaning between otherwise identical words English example: Word Noun Verb 1st syllable accented 2nd syllable accented / / present pre/sent pre/sent / / object ob/ject ob/ject / / construct con/struct con/struct / / implant im/plant im/plant / / retest re/test re/test