Students: Melina García Verón

Marina Silva

Reading guide:
1. What parts can you find in the TONE UNIT? What are their names in Wells’
system of intonation?
The parts of the tone unit according to Brazil are proclitic segment, tonic segment
and enclitic segment and their corresponding names in Wells´ system of intonation
are (pre head) and (head), nucleus and (tail). The tone unit in Wells´system is called
Intonation phrase. We could say that the tonic segment in Brazil corresponds to not
only the nucleus in Wells but also the head since the first prominent syllable in an IP
constitutes the onset which is where the head begins. There are no tonic syllables in
the proclitic and enclitic segments but there are prominent syllables in the heads in
Wells´s system. However, the tonic syllable could be an equivalent to Wells´ nucleus
if we analyse Brazil´s examples.
2. What is important to remember about PROMINENT SYLLABLES?
First of all prominent syllables are not necessarily stressed syllables even though
they can co-occur. While accented syllables are inherent properties of certain words,
prominent syllables constitute a meaningful choice and make up the set of
meaningful contrasts known as intonation and are associated with certain pitch
patterns. When we give prominence to certain syllables we disregard words that are
more or less predictable which we consider to have no important information load to
the hearer even if they have accented syllables.
3. What do we learn about prominence in this chapter?
We learn that even when prominence is strictly a feature of the syllable, its
significance is attached to the whole word since it reflects the speaker judgement
that the word in question is informing something to the hearer, that is to say it
contains information which is neither semantically nor pragmatically predicable to
the hearer and needs to be made prominent to convey a certain meaning. We also
learn that intonational meaning is carried by the tonic segment and prominence
indicates both the boundaries of the tonic segment and those words within it which
are informing. Also, when we choose key we need to pay attention to the first
prominent syllable in the segment whereas when we choose tone we need to focus
on the last one of said segment. We can also say that there is a relationship between
pitch variation and the distribution of prominence.