The Relation of Rhythm in Spoken Discourse - Book Report/Review Example

It becomes tedious for the audience to organize the flow of speech into parts that make sense (Tone and Moody 30). Can a comparison between spoken and written discourse bring confusion? However, they are principles that make an idea in spoken remain very flexible. For instance, hesitation marks like uh or exclamations like a dude! Have the ability to compromise a whole unit if is denoted as a prominent tonic syllable. On the other hand, a speech that is organized as a tone unit is capable of completing a syntactic chunk comprising 7-8 words and a prolonged melodic contour. The article provides us with machinery whereby competent English speakers and listeners can comprehend spoken discourse.
The Pitch is adopted as the tone unit that fragments sketches of spoken text. Pitch movement and level of prominence are applied in the identification of the tonic segment boundary. I think the article provides the ground for an expansion of tone units whereby intermediate prominences can be incorporated. The article provides us with numerous ways whereby unit boundary recognition can be realized among English users. This begs the question of whether these boundaries are easily recognizable. The boundaries are not identifiable (Tone and Moody 34).

The article spells out that there is no exact recognition concerning unit boundaries is significant in contrasting tonic segments designated by pitch choices.

Competency in speaking and hearing English requires skills and knowledge of the language. How can a speaker be able to emphasize given information in tone unit? The prominence feature helps in the identification of the tonic segment margin. The usage of CAPS indicates this. This makes me understand why I hear prominence as an amplified use of length, pitch, and volume on the stressed syllable in a prominent word. Consequently, we can tell when a speaker stresses certain information in tone unit (Tone and Moody 56).
By reading the article, I understand that pausing is the common boundary marker that comes to mind when considering speech units. It has come to my attention that in public speaking, pausing is considered the key aspect when it comes to tone unit segmentation. At this juncture, a question catches my mind whether pausing is the only cue necessary when it comes to tone unit boundaries.

While reading the article, I learned that pausing is not necessary but it's very typical regarding tone unit boundary. This is because dissimilar speech genres vary in their boundary cue. For instance, this is a speech made by Princess Diana in 1993 to support women with mental health needs: Where// do we begin// from those// I have spoken to through my work with ‘Turning Point'// the beginning seems to be// that women in our society are seen as the careers// whatever life throws at them// they will always cope// on-call// twenty fours hours a day// seven days a week// whether their children are sick// their husbands are out of work// or their parents are old and frail// and need attending//

This prepared speech, Princess Diana gives it with long pauses between each unit. Most units have a length of five words though in some cases they may be shorter. This is the case in her opening remark://Where// do we begin//

This reading has enhanced my comprehension of tone units. The article has made me understand our perception that languages have different rhythmic configurations and in some cases, we discriminate them. The most efficient way to view these differences is by working in the context of the discourse intonation model. This will help us conceptualize the norms that bring about how information is structured in a given language and often leads to a typical prominence collection that sounds conversant with English speakers and hearers. Read More