Theoretical background

Key words

RHYTHM

Unit 9

Rain

English rhythm practice

Self-check questions

1. What types of word stress do you know?

2. What prepositions usually have strong forms?

3. What is a stress shift?

4. Speak on the usage of weak and strong forms of personal pronouns.

5. What do you remember about sentence stress?

6. What English tones do you know?

7. Read the conversation and mind the words with the sound |q|. Practise the conversation:

A: What shall we have for su pper?

B: Would you like ba con and eggs?

A: No, not ba con and eggs to night. What else have we got?

B: There are some po ta toes, and lots of to ma toes. We could have baked po ta toes, and a to ma to sa lad.

A: I had a baked po ta to yes terday.

B: Well then, you can buy some fish and chips, from the shop at the end of the road.

A: OK. Shall we have a bo ttle of wine?

B: No, just a jug of wa ter.

Listen to this poem. Practise reading it.

It was raining, raining, raining hard.

It was falling on my head.

It was falling on the stars.

It was falling on the sun.

It was falling on my shoes.

I got soaking wet.

I got soaking wet.

But I stayed outside.

I stayed outside.

The rain was sweet.

The rain was warm.

The rain was soft.

It reminded me of home.

It was raining, raining, raining hard.

It was falling, falling, falling on the stars.

It was raining, raining, raining hard.

It was falling, falling, falling on the stars.

Soft rain

Raining, raining

Sweet rain

Raining, raining

Warm rain

Raining, raining

Sweet soft Raining, raining

Warm rain Raining, raining

Sweet soft Raining, raining

Warm rain Raining, raining

Lesson	Topic	Hours	References
	Rhythm
	Rhythm. Stress groups.		O’Connor – p.95-97, Karnevskaya – p.55-57
	Rhythm units.		O’Connor – p.97-100, Headway Pr.Pron. – p.14, Headway Int.Pron. – p.15, 43 “Leisure”

rhythm

stress group

rhythm unit

stress shift

The notion of rhythm /rIDm/ involves some event happening at regular intervals of time; one can detect the rhythm of a heart-beat or of a piece of music. It is often said that English speech is rhythmical, and that the rhythm in speech can be defined as regular occurrence of stressed syllables. It is not of course suggested that the timing is as regular as a clock – the regularity of occurrence is only relative.

English has stress-timed rhythm, that is stressed syllables tend to occur at relatively regular intervals regardless whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not. So, the time from each stressed syllable to the next is approximately the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables.

All word groups or utterances can be divided into stressgroups. A stress group is formed by a stressed syllable with any unstressed syllables which may follow it. And the fundamental rule of English rhythm is this: each stress group within an utterance (or a word group) is given the same amount of time.

The shortest stress group consists of one stressed syllable without any unstressed ones following it. In this case the length of the syllable depends on the natural length of the vowel and the following consonant(s), if any.

/naV/ is a very long syllable because it has a diphthong and no following consonant;

/mHn/ is also very long because it has a long vowel followed by a weak consonant;

/wen/ is a little shorter because it has a short vowel, but it is made slightly longer by the following weak consonant;

/jes/ is the shortest of these syllables because it has a short vowel followed by a strong consonant which makes it a little shorter.

The stressed syllable may be followed by some unstressed syllables. But these unstressed syllables are not said very quickly; what happens is that the stressed syllable and the following unstressed syllable(s) share equally the amount of time which a single stressed syllable would have; so /*naIn/, /*naIntI/ and /*naIntIqT/ will be pronounced within the same period of time. And it happens like this: (I••••••I – shows a period of time given for the pronunciation of each stress group)

/*naIn/	/*naIn - tI/	/*naIn - tI - qT/
I••••••I	I••• - •••I	I•• - •• - ••I

So, in /*naIn/ the stressed syllable is made rather long; in /*naIntI/ the stressed syllable and the unstressed syllable are equal in length and they are only half as long as the stressed syllable in /*naIn/; and in /*naIntIqT/ all three syllables have the same length and they are three times as short as the stressed syllable in /*naIn/.

If there are several stress groups in an utterance they are all given the same amount of time, too. For example, in /*lets *vIzIt *grxnmADq/ there are three stress groups and each of them is pronounced within the same time interval.

The stressed syllable may also have some unstressed syllables before it. These unstressed syllables are said very quickly, so they are all very short, as short as you can make them; but the stressed syllable is as long as before, so there is a great difference in length between the unstressed syllables and the stressed one (e.g. /aI m *hIq/; /aI wqz *hIq/; /aI wqz In *hIq/ - the stressed syllable is very long and unstressed syllables are very short).

A unit which has a stressed syllable as its centre and any unstressed syllables which may come before it and after it is called a rhythm unit. A rhythm unit is usually bigger than a stress group (because it also has unstressed syllables before the stressed one which a stress group has not). But sometimes they can coincide; it happens when there are no unstressed syllables before the stressed one.

In an utterance it is sometimes difficult to decide what words or syllables go together in a rhythm unit. There exist some rules:

1. Any unstressed syllables at the beginning of a word group must go together with the following stress group:

|| aIwqzIn*lAndqn || (I was in London)

2. If the unstressed syllable(s) is part of the same word as the stressed syllable they belong to the same rhythm unit:

|| *CJpq *feqz || (cheaper fares)

|| *CJp q*feqz || (cheap affairs)

3. If the unstressed syllable(s) is closely connected grammatically to the stressed word, although not a part of that word, they belong to the same rhythm unit:

|| *RskIm *tqdHIt || (ask him to do it)

4. Whenever you are in doubt as to which rhythm unit unstressed syllables belong to, put them after a stress rather than before it. So in He was older than me, if you are doubtful about /Dqn/, put it with /qVldq/ and not with /mJ/:

|| hJwqz*qVldqDqn *mJ ||

There is a tendency in English to avoid neighbouring stressed syllables. And in order not to place primary stresses on neighbouring syllables such phenomenon as stress shift takes place. When a word (simple or compound) has in isolation a primary stress preceded by a secondary stress, the primary stress may be moved to the syllable carrying secondary stress in isolation (e.g. thir teen, but thirteen shillings; Japa nese, but a Japanese doctor). It should be noted, too, that, when a strongly stressed syllable closely precedes, secondary stress may be lost (e.g. eight thir teen).

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