Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This book is concerned with the linguistic description of the so-called ‘prosodic’ features of speech, which are generally taken to include length, accent and stress, tone, intonation, and potentially a few others. The description and the definition of these features have always been something of a problem for linguists; for many years, and especially in the formative period of modern linguistic theory in the second quarter of the twentieth century, the study of these features suffered from relative neglect. With some exceptions, phonological descriptions were based primarily on ‘segments’-vowels and consonants-and prosodic features were either ignored or forced into an inappropriate segmental mould. In recent years this imbalance has been redressed, and several phonological theories are now available which are not merely more sympathetic to prosodic features but are even largely based upon them. However, it remains the case that there is no universal consensus among philologists about either the nature of prosodic features themselves or the general framework for their description, and it is difficult to obtain a clear picture of the field as a whole. The purpose of this book is to examine the nature of these features, and to consider some of the principles on which such a framework can be based.