Syllables vary in their perceptual prominence. In the chain of continuous speech, the pronunciations of some syllables are made to stand out more strongly than others. As a very broad generalization, the more prominent the syllable to the listener, the greater the muscular effort that has been devoted by the speaker to the performance of its constituent segments. Other things being equal, one syllable is more prominent than another to the extent that its constituent segments display higher pitch, greater loudness, longer duration or greater articulatory excursion from the neutral disposition of the vocal tract.

The patterns of varying syllabic prominence that result from the interactions of these four elements – pitch, loudness, duration and articulatory quality – give each language a characteristic texture, over and above the segmental detail of the language. This texture is made up of the interweaving of three main patterns of suprasegmental organization. These three patterns are those of the prosodic, metrical and temporal organization of the speech material. Metrical organization will be described in chapter 16, and temporal organization in chapter 17. The function of the present chapter is to consider the contribution to the suprasegmental texture of speech of the patterns of prosodic organization of pitch and loudness, in the variations of melody and sonority in individual utterances. Matters of pitch will be discussed first, then matters of loudness.

The perception of pitch

The melody of an utterance is communicated chiefly by movements in time of the pitch of the voice. Pitch as such is a perceptual concept.