In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm, and vocal stress in speech. The prosodic features of a unit of speech, whether a syllable, word, phrase, or clause, are called suprasegmental features because they affect all the segments of the unit. These suprasegmental features are manifested, among other things, as syllable length, tone, and stress. Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist or linguistician. ... Theoretical linguistics studies diverse questions: how certain languages managed to communicate, what properties all languages have in common, what knowledge a person must have to be able to use a language, and language acquisition. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... Syntax, originating from the Greek words συν (syn, meaning co- or together) and τάξις (táxis, meaning sequence, order, arrangement), can in linguistics be described as the study of the rules, or patterned relations that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Lexical semantics is a field in computer science and linguistics which deals mainly with word meaning. ... The Prototype is what a Stereotype is called in cognitive linguitics. ... Stylistics is the study of style used in literary, and verbal language and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... Applied linguistics is concerned with using linguistic theory to address real-world problems. ... Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. ... Cognitive linguistics is a school of linguistics and cognitive science, which aims to provide accounts of language that mesh well with current understandings of the human mind, and is generally opposed to the more syntactocentric approaches to meaning in generative linguistics. ... Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and logical modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. ... Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is actually spoken now (or how it was actually spoken in the past), by any group of people. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist or linguistician. ... Intonation is a term used to cover particular uses of tones in linguistics and music. ... Rhythm (Greek ρυθμός = tempo) is the variation of the duration of sounds or other events over time. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... One might be looking for the academic discipline of communications. ... This article discusses the unit of speech. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together. ... A phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. ... A clause is a group of words consisting of a subject and a predicate, although, in non-finite clauses, the subject is often not explicitly given. ... In linguistics, the timing in a language comprises the rhythmic qualities of speech, in particular how syllables are distributed across time. ... This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ...

Phrases and clauses are grammatical concepts, but they may have prosodic equivalents, commonly called prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units, which are the actual phonetic spurts or chunks of speech, and which may exist as a hierarchy of levels. Such units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries.

Note that prosodic units do not need to correspond to grammatical units, although both may reflect how the brain processes speech.

Different schools of linguistics describe somewhat different prosodic units. One common distinction is between continuing prosody, which in English orthography we might mark with a comma, and final prosody, which we might mark with a period (full stop). This is the common usage of the IPA symbols for "minor" and "major" prosodic breaks (American English pronunciation):

Jack, preparing the way, went on.

[ˈdʒæk | pɹəˌpɛəɹɪŋ ðə ˈweɪ | wɛnt ˈɒn ‖ ]

Jacques, préparant le sol, tomba.

[ˈʒak | pʁepaʁɑ̃ lɵ ˈsɔl | tɔ̃ˈba ‖ ]

Note that the last syllable with a full vowel in a French prosodic unit is stressed, and that the last stressed syllable in an English prosodic unit has primary stress. This shows that stress is not phonemic in French, and that the difference between primary and secondary stress is not phonemic in English; they are both elements of prosody rather than inherent in the words. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

The pipe symbols are phonetic, and so will often disagree with English punctuation, which only partially correlates with prosody.

However, the pipes may also be used for metrical breaks, with the pipe being used to mark metrical feet, and the double pipe being used for both continuing and final prosody, as their alternate names "foot group" and "intonation group" suggest. In such usage, each foot group would include one and only one heavy syllable. In English, this would mean one and only one stressed syllable: Meter (non-American spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of verse. ... Categories: Move to Wiktionary | Stub ...

Jack, preparing the way, went on.

[ˈdʒæk ‖ pɹəˌpɛəɹɪŋ | ðə ˈweɪ ‖ wɛnt ˈɒn ‖ ]

In many tone languages with downdrift, such as Hausa, [ | ] is often used to represent a minor prosodic break that does not interrupt the overall decline in pitch of the utterance, while [ ‖ ] marks either continuing or final prosody that creates a pitch reset. In such cases, some linguists use only the single pipe, with continuing and final prosody marked by a comma and period, respectively. Downdrift is a linguistic phenomenon defined as the lowering of high tones that are separated by low tones. ... Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more. ...

In transcriptions of non-tonal languages, the three symbols pipe, comma, and period may also be used, with the pipe representing a break more minor than the comma, the so-called list prosody often used to separate items when reading lists, spelling words, or giving out telephone numbers.

See also

• Intonation
• Phonological Hierarchy