Features of Connected Speech (Stress, Rhythm, Intonation, Fluency & Pause)

Features of Connected Speech           (Stress, Rhythm, Intonation, Fluency,Pause & Juncture)

Introduction:

Stress, Rhythm & Intonation are not luxuries. They are highly important for making person's English understandable or intelligible.

Several aspects of pronunciation:

1. STRESS
2. RHYTHM 
3. INTONATION
4.  FLUENCY 
5. PAUSE
6. JUNCTURE
7. ELISION
8. ASSIMILATION

STRESS:-  

• It refers to a degree of FORCE with which a sound is uttered. 
• It is not just a decoration to the language, it is an important part of it. 
• It gives music to the language and makes it understandable.
• It is an element which has a great significance in spoken language. 
• All syllables in a word :- not equally stressed
• All words in a sentence:- not equally stressed 

There are TWO TYPES OF STRESS which are as follows:-

A) WORD STRESS:- Word stress is stress on syllable or syllables of a word. Most of the English words which are of two syllables have one strongly stressed syllable and one weak or unstressed syllable.

 B) SENTENCE STRESS:- Sentence stress is a pattern of stressed and unstressed words across a sentence. Normally the emphasis is on particular words that has important information. In normal speech like nouns, adjectives etc are STRESSED, while prepositions, articles, conjunctions, helping verbs are NOT STRESSED.

RHYTHM:-

• This is a very important characteristic of English speech.
• One can accomplish oneself in bringing rhythm and in rendering an utterance:- musical and charming.
• It can be in words, phrases or in sentences.

INTONATION:-

• No language in this world is spoken on monotone i.e. on same musical role all the time.
• In normal speech, pitch of our voice goes on changing constantly, going up, going down, and sometimes even remaining steady.
• Different pitches of voice combine to form patterns of pitch tones which together contribute INTONATION of a language.

FLUENCY:-

• Fluency comes from the Latin word 'fluere' which means to "to flow".
• A sound or sequences of sound with no gaps used easily and accurately in speaking or writing in clear and natural manner is fluency.

PAUSE:-

• It comes from the Greek word "Pausis".
• This means temporary stop in action or speech.
• It is denoted by comma, full stop etc.
• it can change the complete meaning of the sentence if not taken care.
• for example:- kirat sit down

                             kirat, sit down.
so, in these two sentences you can see the differnce that when pause is given by putting comma in the sentence it changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

JUNCTURE:- 

• Juncture refers to the presence or absence of pause between :- utterances, words or syllables which makes great difference in the meaning.
• It is the pause or lack of pause which makes big differences in the meaning.
• for eg:- Its wings.

                   It swings.

so by referring to the above example you can the difference in their meaning , if there is an absence of the pause the meaning of the whole sentence changes.

CONCLUSION:- So the aspects of pronunciation i.e. Stress, Rhythm, Intonation, Fluency, Pause and Juncture are highly important so that the meaning of the words or sentences are conveyed accurately.

                                                HAPPY LEARNING
                                           
                                               - KIRAT CHOPRA