ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the realms of the suprasegmentals – features that co-occur with segments but which are separate from them. It looks briefly at stress and rhythm, accent, tone and intonation. Stress, as a glance at the suprasegmentals section of the International Phonetic Association (IPA) chart shows, is a suprasegmental, likewise tone and intonation, duration of speech sounds, and linking. Some languages – English and Italian, for example – use word stress to make changes of meaning. This is part of the role of word stress in such languages. A sub-group of English words with multiple stresses are known as double stress words. The main stress in the intonational phrase coincides in both of these replies with the last or main word stress. In intonation, this stressed syllable is called the nucleus. Sentence stress is the name given to the pattern of rhythmic beats contained within an intonational phrase.
