Prosodic Features of English

Students become acquainted with the prosodic features of the English language. A detailed analysis of word stress (primary and secondary stress, stress in compounds) is followed by an overview of prosodic features in connected speech (assimilation, elision, weak forms of function words, rhythm, sentence stress,). Various models of English sentence intonation are explained, followed by a detailed description of the division of speech in intonation phrases, the structure of the intonation phrase, the position of the nuclear syllable and the functions of nuclear tones. Due to the nature of the subject matter, there is a strong focus on students' active work, in order for them to acquire appropriate accentuation and intonation, as well as to attain fluent loud speaking and reading. Active work on phonemic and phonetic transcription is continued, paying special attention to the features of connected speech.