A Matter of Prosody, or Why Prosody Matters

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概要

• 論文の詳細を見る

• This essay takes as its starting point a fact which no-one disputes: that the prosodic characteristics of nihongo are radically different from those of eigo, and, in certain crucial respects, a good deal less complex. It follows that Japanese learners experience great difficulty in accustoming themselves to the alien rhythms, stress habits and intonation contours of English; from this, it follows that students need to be consciously aware that these prosodic differences do indeed pose problems and that the problems must be faced: a failure to do so can result in serious breakdowns in communication. Since few Japanese high school teachers are competent to teach the prosodic features of English, and almost none of them tries, native-speaking teachers of English have a duty to make up for this deficiency, and are, of course, best-placed to do so. This essay offers first a brief account of the rhythm of Japanese, a syllable-timed language, against which to set a more extended description of the rhythm of English, a stress-timed language; it then seeks to demonstrate how the rhythmic beat of English under-pins phonological stress, and is thus related to the semantic function of stress as a marker of information. Since stress and intonation work in partnership, issues of intonation are, from the beginning, inevitably woven into the discoursive fabric, until, finally, the essay deals more specifically with the various functions which intonation fulfills as the over-arching prosodic melody, the tune of speech: to highlight contrasts, to express emotion, to mark cohesion and coherence, to reveal a speaker's affiliations, education and class.

• 北海学園大学の論文
• 1996-10-31

著者

• Jones Willie

  北海学園大学英米文化学科

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• The Figure in the Idiom
• A Matter of Prosody, or Why Prosody Matters

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