A lecture on Prosody

Watch the latest excerpt from a lecture on prosody by Peter Roach here. A new part will be added every month.

You can subscribe to our RSS feed to make sure you catch the latest installment. (What is this and how do I sign up?)

Part 7: Rhythm and production

Peter Roach looks at learning to produce rhythm in English and the effects of manipulating rhythm.

Flash Player upgrade required

You can view previous parts below:

Part 1: Prosody – the early days

• Play part 1

Peter Roach presents the early days of research into prosody, including David Crystal's continuum for examining prosody and John Laver's framework for analysing voice quality.

Part 2: Prosody, linguistic structure and interaction

• Play part 2

Peter Roach discusses the importance of both the form and function of prosodic features. For example, the use of intonation to signal attitude and tempo to signal information status.

Part 3: Stress and intonation

• Play part 3

Peter Roach highlights the interrelatedness of stress and intonation with each other and with other prosodic features. He concludes by discussing methods of teaching and learning word stress.

Part 4: Transcribing intonation

• Play part 4

Peter Roach describes the ToBI system for transcribing and analysing intonation. He goes on to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the system.

Part 5: Discourse intonation

• Play part 5

Peter Roach examines the advantages and disadvantages of the discourse intonation perspective on prosody. Discourse intonation looks at how speakers use intonation interactively; however, many prosodic features are excluded from analysis.

Part 6: Rhythm and stress-timing

• Play part 6

Peter Roach discusses the importance of rhythm in comprehending English. He then goes on to discuss the evidence for and against the stress-timing theory.