Suprasegmentals
Intonation
Babies Cry with Their Parents' Intonation: A story from National Public Radio about patterns in babies' crying. The recording starts with a commercial about economic news. The real story is after that. (About 4 minutes long.The transcript is below.)
Babies Cry with Their Parents' Intonation: A story from National Public Radio about patterns in babies' crying. The recording starts with a commercial about economic news. The real story is after that. (About 4 minutes long.The transcript is below.)
Another very short clip about babies' crying:
Twin baby boys have a conversation. No words, but the intonation is unmistakable. (Same video; two formats.)
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"The Linguistic Genius of Babies." A very interesting talk on how babies learn the sounds of their own language. http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html
Hard Knocks: A radio interview about Hard Knocks, a reality TV show about a football team's training camp. The speakers are an interviewer, the show's director, and one of the football players. Listen to 1:07-2:15. What differences do you notice in the way the speakers talk? (Think about pauses, rhythm, and intonation.)
What's the difference between rhythm and intonation?
These two concepts are related, but not the same. Look at this example sentence and think about it in terms of musical notes:
The cartoon below is called "The Power of Punctuation," but what it really illustrates is the power of intonation. This man would use very different intonation for the two sentences.
("You're breaking up" can have two meanings: "Your voice isn't very clear" or "You don't want to be my girlfriend anymore.")
Rhythm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMM5eCvi8w A short video about stress-timed and syllable-timed languages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMM5eCvi8w A short video about stress-timed and syllable-timed languages.