Come and see me tomorrow. Read and retell text 5.

These regular stress-timed pulses of speech seem to create the strict abrupt and spiky effect on English rhythm. Russian – more flexible and smooth. In order to bring the meaning of the utterance the stress syllables of the notional words are given more prominence and the unstressed (form words) are left very weak. So speech rhythm is traditionally defined as recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals.

Professor Антипова: «the basic rhythmic unit is a rhythmical group. It’s characterized by one stressed syllable + one/ two/ more unstressed, attached to it.”

Unstressed have a tendency to clin to the preceding stressed. They are called enclitics. Or they have a tendency to the following – proclitics.

Each sense group is pronounced at approximately the same period of time. Normally unstressed are pronounced more rapidly. A rhythmic group may comprise a whole phrase like “I can’t do it” or a single word: “unfortunately” or even a one-syllable word “yes”.

There are some differences between the rhythmic patterns of speech realization, rhythmic organization of:

1. Disapproving monologue – is different form a familiar emotional conversation.

2. Informal spontaneous dialogues reveal a rich variety of rhythm organization and the change of rhythmic patterns. The beginning of the rhythmic unit is said on a higher level, louder, slower than the end of it.

They painted the table pale grey Come and see me tomorrow That’s the very man who had a felt hat on

The phenomenon of rhythm is closely connected with phonetic nature of stress and sentence stress.

SENTENCE STRESS

Sentence stress – a greater prominence of words which are made more or less prominent in an intonation group. Under the rhythm stress may undergo alternations. Some rules concerning words which are usually stressed (un) in this or that utterance.

Stressed:

• verbs

• nouns

• adjectives

• numerals

• interjections

• demonstrative pronouns

• indefinite (sb or sth) used as subject

• indefinite negative (no one)

• all, each, every, other, either, both

• much, more, little, few

• notional verbs

• auxiliary verbs (negative contracted forms)

• only, also, too, even, just

Unstressed:

• personal pronouns

• reflexive pronouns

• relative pronouns

• possessive pronouns

• indefinite (sb or sth) – used as object (I want to tell you sth)

• auxiliary verbs (affirmative)

• prepositions

• conjunctions

• articles

• particles

• modal verbs (with the exception of negative forms and in general questions)

• weak forms of the words

The influence of rhythm in flow of speech is very important. Under it words which are normally pronounced with 2 stresses may lose one.

Read text sixteen

I like Piccadilly Circus

Stresses in an utterance provide the basis for identification and understanding of the context. A rhythmically organized speech is easily perceived. It’s capable of expressing different degrees of emotional influence on the …

How did you found out about that row?