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Let's come back to our analogy of cooking. Knowing something about the phonemic system of a language has equipped us with the ingredients of the dish. Now we will have to go a step further to be fully prepared for the cooking. We need to know something about the seasonings needed for our dish. For example, do I need sugar, salt, vinegar or soy sauce? How much sugar shall I mix into the dish? When shall I add some salt?
In our speaking, these seasonings are the PROSODIC FEATUREs such as length, pitch, stress, tone, etc. They form an important part of the sound patterns of language. They add color to our speech and even realize special meanings. Without them, our speech would become tasteless, or, meaningless. So if you listen to a lecturer who always speaks in even pitch, even speed and even tone, it's quite easy for you to fall asleep at his lecture, but it's very difficult to catch his meaning.
So Phonology studies not only the phonemes of a language, but also the SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATUREs of a language, such as how sounds are combined into larger units, and what/how prosodic features function in actual speaking.
As speakers of a language, we have some intuitions about syllables. We can count the syllables of a word. For example, you will have no difficulty in finding out that "phonology" has 4 syllables, and if you work carefully enough, you can divide "antidisestablishmentarianism" into 10 syllables. But what is a syllable? And why do we need such a concept?
When we are speaking, our utterance is made up of several sequences of sound. We use the word "syllable" to refer to the basic sound sequence unit. So you will have to remember that syllable has nothing to do with the spelling of a word. We identify it more easily when we are listening than when we are reading. The syllable as a sound unit may:
(1) represent one word (MONOSYLLABIC word), such as "one" [wen];
(2) be part of a word (POLYSYLLABIC word), such as [ju:] and [nit] in "unit";
(3) join two words (while you are speaking fast), such as [ʤu] in "could you" [kəʤu].
To figure out the structure of a syllable, let's start with a simple sequence of sounds: "cat" [kæt]. [kæt] consists of only one syllable. Its sound sequence is C(consonant) V (vowel) C. This example tells us that a syllable can be composed of a consonant followed by a vowel and a consonant.
Now let's try different monosyllabic words in the same way, and we may discover more syllable structures:
tea [tiː] CV a [ei] V
at [æt] VC tree [triː] CCV
ask [ask] VCC skit [skit] CCVC
task [task] CVCC stamp [stæmp] CCVCC
strap [stræp] CCCVC stray [strei] CCCV
strength [streŋθ] CCCVCC strengths [streŋθs] CCCVCCC
sixths [siksθs] CVCCCC
Each of the above monosyllabic structures contains only one vowel. So the vowel is the core of a syllable. But the number of consonants before the vowel may vary from 0-3, and the number of consonants following the vowel may vary from 0-4. The English syllabic structure can be represented as (C(C(C))) V ((((C)C)C)C). The consonants in the brackets are optional.
Now, can you figure out what syllable structures are allowed in Chinese? [1]
When we utter a word, we don't give equal force to each of the syllable. We tend to stress one or two syllables so that they become more prominent than others. We hear those stressed syllables more clearly because the speaker emphasizes them by raising the pitch, making the syllable louder and longer. Most English words have one stressed syllable. Words of more than three syllables may have a PRIMARY STRESS and a SECONDARY STRESS. Normally the primary or main stress is indicated by a short vertical line "ˈ" at the left top of the alphabet. The secondary stress is indicated by the same symbol at the left bottom of the alphabet. For example:
ˈminister apˈpointment ˌfundaˈmental
Stress plays an important role in realizing the meaning of a sequence of sounds. For example, in the following pairs, where the stress falls decides the meaning of the phrase:
ˈtightrope: a rope for acrobatics
tight ˈrope: a rope draw taut
ˈhotdog: a roll bread
hot ˈdog: over-heated animal
ˈWhite House: residence of the US president
white ˈhouse: a house painted white
In a sentence, normally it is the content words that receive more stress. If you keep a distance to people who are talking about politicians, you may hear "... president ... left ... White House ... evade ... conflict ...". You have missed quite a few words, still you can figure out what they mean is "The president has left the White House to evade a conflict on ..." What you have actually heard is the content words. Content words deserve more attention in the sentence, so they are stressed and become prominent in actual speaking. The last content word in the sentence often expresses the most important information and becomes the SENTENCE STRESS.
Sometimes the speaker may deliberately vary the sentence stress so as to convey extra meaning. For example, when you say:
I am ˈ glad to see you.
By stressing "glad", you negate the proposition "I am not glad to see you." But if you want to show you are not interested in other people but only the addressee, you may stress the last word—"you":
I am glad to see ˈ you.
Or to imply that you are the only person who appreciates the coming of the addressee, you choose to stress "I":
ˈ I am glad to see you.
In this way, by stressing a particular syllable in the sentence, you are expressing a contrastive meaning—you remind the addressee that there is something different from normal expectation in your sentence. "glad", "you" and "I" are the sentence stresses of the above different utterances.
So in our speaking, syllables receive different degrees of stress. The sentence stress is the most prominent because it sounds the highest, loudest and longest. The PHRASE STRESSes may receive the secondary stress, but still they stand out from the word stresses. The least stressed are the functional words, such as "a", "an", "and", "the", etc. Speakers sometimes deliberately weaken them in order to speak faster and still be understood. In this way, our speaking tends to be quite musical because the speaker is constantly changing his pitch, length of sounds and loudness of voice.
Different languages may have different RHYTHM patterns. To an English-speaking person, the rhythm of many other languages sounds too regular—syllables of nearly the same length, pitch and strength are burst out one after another. Such utterances sound like a line of soldiers of the same height, marching at even intervals. (See Fig. 3-2)
Fig. 3-2 The rhythm of languages—1 (Prator 1972, p. 26)
But English is more musical. If we compare the stress(es) of a word to the parent(s) in a family, then sequences of syllables in English sound like a series of family groups, each composed of one or two adults accompanied by several small kids of different height. (See Fig. 3-3)
Fig.3-3 The rhythm of languages—2 (Prator 1972, p. 27)
Most of the languages in the world are Tone Languages. For example, in Chinese, the same sound segment may take on five different tones. Take (ma) as example, it has five forms—“妈”（mā）, “麻”（má），“马”（mǎ），“骂”（mà）and“吗”（ma）, each different from one another in meaning. But this tone difference does not affect the meaning of a word in English. Saying "Màrs" or "Márs," is a personal choice or choice of the context, but that does not lead to different meanings.
If you say "he asked curiously in a rising tone" or "he always speaks in a falling tone, which makes him sound authoritative", you are talking about INTONATION. Like a musician who can compose music with different notes, speakers always change the tone to realize a certain intonation. So we can represent the intonation of sentences by writing them as something like a musical staff. For example:
In phonological study, we use a simplified mode to mark intonation. Tones are divided into four types: normal (represented by a line at the base of the letters), high (a line above the word), extra-high (a line some distance above the word) and low (a line some distance below the word). So a rising—falling intonation, which indicates a statement or a general question, starts by a normal tone, rises to a high tone and finally glides/ falls to a low tone. For example:
And a rising tone, which marks a question, starts with a normal tone and rises to a high tone:
The same sequence of sounds may be uttered with different intonations. When it takes on different intonation, it may carry different implications. In the following example, the utterances are of the same sound sequences, but different intonations. In (1), the rising-falling intonation may indicate "I know you have been there twice"; while in (2), the rising intonation may imply a sense of disbelief—I don't believe you have been there twice, or uncertainty—Do you mean you have been there twice?
