Phonology phonological phrases

We can also consider the phonological hierarchy, which is a different, parallel hierarchy which focuses on the sound patterns in a sentence. In this, we have the additional units of syllables, which are a structural sound unit used to group phonemes together and phonological phrases, another structural sound unit that groups words together within the sentence. Representations using these units can also be expressed in a hierarchy of sentences, prosodic phrases, words, syllables and phonemes. 

Prosodic phrasing is to some extent governed by purely phonological, phonetic or acoustic factors which can override the syntax. In the classic example, Chomsky [89] commented on the fact that in... 

Emphasis, prominence, accent and stress are all terms used to indicate the relative strength of a unit in speech. These terms are used with a variety of definitions in the literature, so to avoid confusion we will use these these terms as follows. Stress indicates lexical stress, which is an inherent property of words, and indicates for instance that the first syllable in table is stronger than the second, while the second syllable in machine is stronger than the first. We discuss this type of stress more fully in the section on phonology in Chapter 7. Prominence is used to indicate the strength of a word, syllable or phrase when it is used in a sentence. We will use the term accent solely to indicate intonational phenomena associated with pitch, and emphasis to indicate a specific use of prominence in discourse. 

Figure 9.2 High Fall, "Anna came with Manny 1 . This shape corresponds to a British high fall , + raised or pitch level 4. In this particular utterance there is still a single intonation phrase, and the word "anna also has an accent, but this accent is pre-nuclear. Some may argue that there is no phonological distinction between fall and high fall, and that the high fall is really just an extra prominent fall.

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