Short Notes

Unit 2---- Nucleus

In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus (sometimes called peak) is the central part of
the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with
an onset and end with a coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory
is the nucleus. The nucleus and coda form the rime of the syllable. The nucleus is usually the
vowel in the middle of a syllable. The onset is the sound or sounds occurring before the
nucleus, and the coda (literally 'tail') is the sound or sounds that follow the nucleus. They are
sometimes collectively known as the shell. The term rime covers the nucleus plus coda. In the
one-syllable English word cat, the nucleus is a (the sound that can be shouted or sung on its
own), the onset c, the coda t, and the rime at. This syllable can be abstracted as a consonant-
vowel-consonant syllable, abbreviated CVC.

Examples

Word Nucleus
cat [kæt] [æ]
bed [bed] [e]
beet [bi:t] [i:]
bite [bait] [ai]
rain [rein] [ei]

[i]
bitten
[ə]
 Unit 3
Breath Group
We divide long stretches of utterances into smaller bits while speaking. In other words, we
pause here and there in the middle of utterances. The stretch of speech between any two pauses
in a long utterance constitutes a group. The sentences given below will be said in one single
group, without a pause anywhere in the middle.
 I’m going to buy a car.
 I’m going
 Can we go there?
 All of us make mistakes.
On the other hand the sentences written below, will normally be said in two groups. In other
words, the speaker will pause once in the middle of each of these.
 When you go out, / shut the door.
 If it rains, / stay back in the office.
 When the cat is away, / the mice play.
 She has been playing all day / now she’ll be ill.
 If I had studied / I would not have failed.
 With the money I’ve got / i cannot even buy a sandwich.
In the above given sentences each such group is called a breath group, indicating the primary
object in breaking up an utterance into smaller bits is physiological- we pause in the middle of
a long utterance in order to take more air into the lungs, I.e., the air we breathe out for
articulating all the speech sounds in English.
Tone Groups
In English, the intonation patterns are on groups of words. These groups can be called tone
groups.

Tone groups can contain only one word or as many as seven or eight.

• /no / I really can't put up with it / good-bye/

Because tone groups are said in a single breath, they are limited in length and average about
two seconds, or about five words.

An understanding of tone groups is crucial to understanding the difference between written and
spoken language. In written language, the basic unit is the sentence; in spoken language, it is
the tone group. We break up spoken language into tone groups because we need to breathe,
and so there is a physical reason for this structure. But there is also the need to think; that is,
tone groups also have a cognitive basis. While we are speaking one tone group, we are planning
the next one, and so the tone group carries only one idea at a time. Thus the pace of the tone
groups, and the information they convey, matches the speaker's thoughts.

From time to time, it is necessary to pause and draw breath, and also to plan.
 These planning pauses are often marked by um or er, which are technically called voiced
hesitations.The division of a sentence into tone groups can affect the meaning in some cases.

• Do you take sugar?

o / I don't / no /
Meaning: I don't, no.

o / I don't know/
Meaning: I don't know.

Sense Group

We speak to share information. When we speak, we want the listener to understand what we
say. Often we speak without visual aid, in the form of a written script, for instance. Unless we
speak clearly, the message cannot be shared with the listener fully.

The span of memory is also important. The speaker cannot be legible unless he or she speaks
only a small group of words at a time. Longer stretches cannot be retained by memory.

Therefore, the speaker will facilitate the listener to share the message completely by giving him
or her clues to brief units of meaning, each at a time, in order to reach the total meaning of the
utterance without confusion. Each brief unit, discretely spoken, is called a sense group and the
clue to understand it is the silence (or pause) that occurs before and after it. The meaning of an
utterance will depend on how we identify sense groups with the pauses. For example, the
meaning of the following utterance changes according to how we mark off sense groups with
pauses:

The government of South Africa said the Zambian President has

neglected the incident of AIDS.

Note sense groups and note how they alter the meaning:

a. The government of South Africa / said the Zambian President / has neglected /
the incident of AIDS /
b. The government of South Africa said / the Zambian President / has neglected /
the incident of AIDS /

When the pause is used after the initial sense group, “The government of South Africa", the
latter becomes the subject of the sentence, as in (a) above. If, however, the pause is after the
sense group "The government of South Africa said" (as in (b)), "The Zambian President"
becomes the subject instead. The answer to the question, "Who neglected the incidence of
AIDS?" will, therefore, depend on determination of sense groups with appropriate pauses.

Division of sense groups depends on the identification of parts of sentences, which make
convenient units of sense. The separation of units is according to some grammatical cues. In
the following sentence:

Rosy said/that Vimala was stopped abruptly/ on the way to college/

and abducted / by a gang of youngsters in black masks /
The sense units are introduced by grammatical words such as relative pronoun, conjunction
and preposition. Separating the particles from the clauses to which they belong will affect both
meaning and fluency. Clues to demarcation of sense groups lie in very short internal pauses
and a slightly longer terminal pause at the end of each utterance.