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Intonation, stress and rhythm


Introduction

Intonation, rhythm and stress contribute greatly to making the New Zealand accent unique (Hay, MacLagan and Gordon, 2008). These features are known as suprasegmental or prosidic features, and "can be produced with variations in a number of dimensions, including duration ('length'), frequency ('pitch'), intensity ('loudness') and pausing" (Kennedy, 2003, p. 39).  Suprasegmental features have a number of functions including helping express the speaker's attitudes or emotional state, giving grammatical information such as distinguishing between questions and statements, and highlighting the importance of  words or sentence parts relative to others (Kennedy, 2003).

 
Illustration Shani Luckman. Courtesy of ALIVE magazine/Southern Cross Health Society

Each of the suprasegmental features refers to something different.  Intonation refers to the melody of  speech (Hay, Maclagan and Gordon, 2008) and the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice (Kennedy, 2003).  Rhythm has to do with the length, timing and grouping of words together in phrases and sentences.  Stress marks the most important syllable in a word or part of a sentence.

Click on the tabs above to learn more about each of these features.

Intonation

 
Intonation is described by Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) as "the pitch pattern of the utterance, the melody of the speech" (p. 27).  The use of rising or falling levels of pitch is argued by Kennedy (2003) to be "very important for expressing meaning" (p. 46).

To learn more about intonation in English and, in particular, in Kiwi English, click on the tabs below.  First, you can learn about an intonation pattern which is very distinct in Kiwi English.  This pattern is referred to as a High Rising Terminal (HRT) because it is identified by pitch rising at the end of sentences.  Then, you have the opportunity to view two video extracts which illustrate Kiwis using HRTs in their speech.  

In learning about how to use English intonation, Kennedy (2003) observes that it is important for English language learners to realise that:

      
learning to use English intonation is not simply a case of applying 'rules'.  The many subtle meanings expressed through the use of stress and intonation result in native speakers' 'tones of voice' which are best learned through participating in discourse with native speakers or carefully observing such discourse. (p. 49)    

In other words, Kennedy is saying that one of the best ways for you to use English intonation correctly, is by talking with Kiwis and listening to them talking with one-another.

Intonation in Kiwi English

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The most notable feature of Kiwi English intonation  for non-New Zealanders, according to Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008), is the way in which pitch tends to rise at the end of sentences, even when questions are not being asked.  These authors note that this non-question final rising intonation is referred to as a High Rising Terminal Intonation contour, or HRT.  Further they note that this rising intonation pattern was initially observed to be used by young Kiwi women, but it is now used by most New Zealanders of varying ages and genders, with speakers of Māori English using it more than other Kiwi speakers (Bell, 2000, cited in Hay, Maclagan and Gordon, 2008).  While HRTs are a distinctive feature of Kiwi English, Kiwi speakers are not alone in using this intonation pattern;  speakers from Wales, North East England, Australia and Canada also use it (Hay, Maclagan and Gordon, 2008; Kennedy, 2003).  

HRTs are noted by Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) to have two main functions in Kiwi English: First, for the speaker to check they are giving the information the listener wants, and to check that the listener understands what they are saying. Second, for the speaker of narratives to establish rapport with the listener. Underlying both of these functions is the desire of the Kiwi speaker to be polite, as they seek to check up on the 'wants' and feelings of their listeners (Holmes, 1990).  Read on to learn more about these functions!

Function 1: Checking the listener is getting the information they want, and that they understand

The first function of High Rising Terminals in Kiwi English is that of questions, not to ask for information, but for the speaker to check that they are giving the information the listener wants, and to check that the listener understands what they are saying.

The following example of a typical exchange between a visitor to New Zealand and a local Kiwi is given by Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008, p. 28) to illustrate this first function of rising intonation, and highlight the difficulty it may present to the visitor because they don't understand why pitch is rising at the end of each of the Kiwi speaker's sentences. Click here to listen:

    
Visitor: Can you tell me where the grocery store is please
Local:  There's a Dairy down a block↑ And then you turn right↑ And it's second on the left↑

Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) observe that not only is there potential confusion at the use of the Kiwi English term dairy for grocery store, the HRT intonation pattern adopted by the Kiwi speaker is also likely to cause confusion.  Hay, Maclagan and Gordon explain:

             
For the visitor, a rise in pitch has two basic meanings: it can signal a question, or else it indicates uncertainty on the part of the speaker.  Since the visitor knows that the local is answering a question rather than asking one, he assumes that the local isn't sure where the shop is, and the exchange can easily end up with the visitor saying, 'Thanks, I'll check with someone else', a response that makes no sense at all to the local (p. 28).

HRTs with the function of the speaker checking that they are giving the information the listener wants, and checking the listener understands what they are saying are very common in Kiwi English.  As you are communicating with Kiwis and listening to them communicate with others, see if you notice this pattern.

Function 2: To establish rapport with the listener when narrating stories

Another important function of High Rising Terminals (HRTs) is for the speaker to establish rapport with the listener when they are narrating a story. HRTs are particularly used at the beginning of a story as the narrator seeks to establish rapport with the listener. When HRTs  are used to establish rapport in this way, the narrator is seeking to check that the listener has similar interests and values to them.  If the narrator receives negative feedback, he or she may choose to drop the topic. HRTs are also used at the end of narratives when the speaker and listener evaluate if the story was worthy of being told (Warren and Britain, 2000).

The use of the High Rising Terminal in everyday speech is illustrated in two video clips.  Click on the tab below 'Examples of High Rising Terminals' to view these.


Video examples of high rising terminals

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This section has two video extracts of high rising terminals used in everyday Kiwi speech. 

The first from New Zild: The Story of New Zealand English gives you two opportunities to listen to some Kiwis use the HRT in an exaggerated way (see examples below). Click here to view.   

    
 Example 1  

That’s when the intonation rises at the end of a sentence↑ so that it sounds more like a question↑ and is a bit uncertain↑.

    
Example 2 
You know I went down the road↑. And I was riding my bike↑. I fell over↑.  

The second from a TV One News bulletin gives you the chance to listen to a Kiwi tourist narrate his experience of almost drowning while on holiday in Phuket, Thailand.  Play the video clip twice.  As you watch it the first time listen carefully to hear when William, the male tourist, uses high rising terminals.  Play the video clip again and look at the transcript below to see if you identified these high rising terminals correctly.

Click to play

    
William: Oh yeah, we were scared.          
Woman: Scared. Petrified.          
William: There was so much water coming over the front that the boat started filling up with water↑ and the captain stopped the boat↑ and gave us all life-jackets↑ and told us to put life-jackets on↑. And then about five minutes later the boat sank. So we all jumped off.          
Woman: We had to jump off.          
William: And we were floating in the sea.  

Stress

Word and sentence stress is an important suprasegmental feature in English because it has a very significant influence on meaning.  For example, if you listen to the following sentence (said three times), you'll discover that the each time it is said, the stress is placed on a different word, the one the speaker wants to draw attention to:
   He doesn't like kiwifruit.
(Place your mouse here to discover which word the speaker has emphasised each time the sentence is repeated.)

As you may have noticed in the above example, variations in stress can be made by changing one or more of the following dimensions on syllables and words: duration (length), frequency (pitch), intensity (loudness) and pausing (Kennedy, 2003). 

Word stress needs to be considered with both function words (i.e., determiners, conjunctions, auxiliaries, prepositions, and pronouns) and content words (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs).  If you wish to learn more about the unique features of function word stress, click here on the link to ELE phonology. Further, to learn a few useful and simple rules which will help you know how to stress words with suffixes like "globalisation" and "instutionalise" click here.


Lexical stress: Differences between Kiwi, British and American English

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The most important syllable in a word is marked by lexical stress (Hay, Maclagan and Gordon, 2008).  As you've probably noticed, stress sometimes differs in the pronunication of British and American English words such as laboratory and aluminium.  Kiwi English tends to follow British stress (and spelling) patterns, but sometimes follows American patterns. 

There is no clear rule which will enable you to learn whether a particular word in Kiwi English adopts the same stress pattern as British or American English.  However, there are a number of New Zealand dictionaries which you can refer to that will give you this information.  The New Zealand Oxford dictionary is one such dictionary.  It is available at ELE and in the University of Auckland library. 

In this dictionary, information for pronunication in Kiwi English is given in IPA symbols immediately after the word in bold.  (Click on the link to Consonants and Vowels to learn which sound each of the IPA symbols represent.)  The 'primary' stress is indicated with the stress mark ' immediately before the syllable which receives the main stress and the 'secondary' stress is indicated with the stress mark ˌ immediately before the syllable which receives some stress, but not as much as the primary stress.

The above dictionary entry shows that in Kiwi English the word aluminium /ˌæljə'mmi:əm/ receives primary stress before the third syllable, and secondary stress before the first syllable, whereas in American English this word receives primary stress before the second syllable /ə'lu:mənəm/.

The two tables below provide a few more examples of words in which the lexical stress differs in Kiwi, British and American English.  In the first you'll see examples of words which in some speakers of Kiwi English adopt American English stress patterns, and in the second you'll see words which usually adopt British English stress patterns.  Click on each word and as you listen, observe where the stress is placed.  You will probably notice a variation in length, pitch and/or loudness on the stressed syllable.  You will also see that the symbol ' is used to denote primary stress (that is, the main stress) in the word.

Table 1: Examples of words in Kiwi English which may adopt an American English stress pattern.

Kiwi English British English American English

'spectator

spec'tator

'spectator

'dictator

dic'tator

'dictator

'frustrate

 frus'trate

'frustrate

 

Table 2: Examples of words in Kiwi English which adopt a British English stress pattern

Kiwi English

British English

American English

ro'tate

ro'tate

'rotate

la'boratory

la'boratory

'laboratory

 alu'minium alu'minium a'luminum

Lexical Stress: Stress on nouns and verbs in Kiwi English

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One way in which Kiwi English differs from other dialects of English is that when there are pairs of words (nouns and verbs) such as "import" which are in common usage ("an import" - noun and "to import" - verb), the stress does not necessarily fall on different syllables as it does in other dialects of English (Hay, Maclagan and Gordon, 2008).  Normally, in British English, for example, if the word is a noun, the stress is placed on the first syllable, 'import whereas if it is a verb, it is placed on the second syllable, im'port.  Click on the following sentences to hear where a British speaker places the stress on words according to whether the word is a noun or a verb:

    
In New Zealand there is a ban on the import of poisonous snakes. 
In New Zealand it is against the law to import poisonous snakes.
 (import as noun)
 (import as verb)

Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) observe, however, that for quite a long time in Kiwi English both the noun and the verb tend to be stressed on the first syllable where pairs of words are the same.  You may notice, therefore, a distinction in the way in which older and younger Kiwi speakers pronounce these words.  Click on the following sentences to hear where Kiwi speakers of different ages place the stress on "import" and "protest" and place the mouse over the highlighted words to find out if you were correct:

 

Older speaker

Younger speaker

Import
noun

verb

In New Zealand there is a ban on the import of poisonous snakes. 

In New Zealand it is against the law to import poisonous snakes.

In New Zealand there is a ban on the import of poisonous snakes. 

In New Zealand it is against the law to import poisonous snakes.

Protest
noun

verb

 

The student's protest lasted five hours.

The students wanted to protest about the government cuts to funding. 

The student's protest lasted five hours.

The students wanted to protest about the government cuts to funding.

You may find variation in the way in which Kiwi speakers place stress on other pairs of words (nouns and verbs).  While some Kiwis may retain the original stress pattern (placing the primary stress on the first syllable of nouns  and second syllable of verbs), others may place the primary stress on the first syllable of both the nouns and verbs. Be prepared to hear both! 

Listen to the way in which this Kiwi speaker places the stress on record and insult. Can you hear where the stress is placed on nouns and verbs? (Place the mouse over the highlighted words to find out if you were correct.)

    

She kept a good record of attendance.  (record
He wanted to record the lecture.  (record as verb)

I consider your remarks to be an insult. (insult as noun)
He wanted to insult me.  (insult as verb)


Rhythm

"Rhythm", according to Ballard (2007),  "refers to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech" (p. 275). Generally, unless we are nervous or hesitant for some reason, our speech is fairly rhythmic (Ballard, 2007).  Languages construct rhythm in two main ways:

      

1. Giving all syllables approximately the same duration
Languages which construct rhythm in this way are referred to as syllable-timed languages.  Examples of syllable-timed languages include French, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese.

 

 2. Keeping a fairly regular spacing of stressed syllables no matter how many unstressed syllables occur between them
Languages which construct rhythm in this way are known as stress-timed languages, and English is one such language. Stressed syllables normally fall on content words (e.g., cup, tea) and unstressed syllables usually fall on function (or structural or grammatical) words (e.g., a, of).   (To learn more about the stress normally attributed to function words click on the link to ELE Phonology.) 

 

English as a stress-timed language

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Ballard (2007) illustrates the way in which English speakers adjust the rhythm of their speech to make it more regular, by considering the rhythm in the following two noun phrases (which you can click on to listen to):

   

a cup of tea
a piece of cake

In each of these phrases, the stressed syllables are the monosyllabic nouns cup, tea, piece and cake, whereas the unstressed syllables are the grammatical words, a and of which are pronounced /ə/ and /əv/ respectively.  As can be seen in these phrases, the alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables results in a regular rhythm.  To indicate where the stress falls, the stress mark ' is put before the nouns.  Examples of this can be seen below:

   
a 'cup of 'tea
a 'piece of 'cake

When these two phrases are joined with the conjunction and Ballard (2007) observes that the stressed syllables are still spaced at approximately equal intervals.  Even though the regularity is broken by the fact there are now two unstressed syllables (i.e., and a) between tea and piece, it is as though there is a regular beat to the utterance and the unstressed syllables fit into this beat.  The example below (which you can listen to) shows that this beat is indicated with dots over the stressed syllables:

    
     •          •              •           •
 a 'cup of 'tea and a 'piece of 'cake

Kennedy (2003) observes that the speech of English language learners who are not familiar with stress-timing may seem to be jerky because they appear to give equal emphasis to each English syllable.  You may have noticed this, for example, with speakers of some varieties of English such as Hong Kong English. For practise listening to someone speak with a Hong Kong dialect (who uses syllable-timing), click here.  To listen to this passage spoken by a Kiwi speaker (who uses stress-timing), click here


Characteristics of rhythm in Kiwi English

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Two characteristics of rhythm that mark Kiwi English as being different to other varieties of English are timing and rate of speech. Kiwi English is noted to be less stress-timed than other varieties of English such as British English.  Further, there is some evidence to suggest that Kiwi English is spoken more quickly than other dialects.  Each of these characteristics, cited by Hay, Malagan and Gordon (2008), will be examined in turn:

1. Timing of Kiwi English
While Kiwi English is stress-timed rather than syllable-timed, Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) note that it is notably less stress-timed than other varieties of English such as British English. The influence of the Māori language and its rhythm which is syllable-timed is cited by Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) as a possible reason for the difference in rhythm of Kiwi English to other English varieties.  Indeed, speakers of Māori English are observed to use more syllable timing than other speakers of Kiwi English.

The tendency of Kiwis to use more full vowels in unstressed syllables than other varieties of English is the main reason why Kiwi English is considered to be less stress-timed than other varieties of English.  For instance, when the days of the week are pronounced in Kiwi English, the second syllable is normally pronounced with a full day /sʌndei/ rather than Sundy, /sʌndi/ as in many (but not all) dialects of English English.  Click on the words in the table below to hear the difference in pronunication:

Kiwi English /ei/

British English /i/

British English /ei/

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday


Another time when Kiwi English sometimes adopts the use of full vowels, is in the pronunciation of function (or grammatical) words.  Usually, these are pronounced with reduced vowels (click on the link to ELE Phonology to learn more).  However, in Kiwi English some function words are pronounced with full vowels. Three words which Hay, Maclagan and Gordon (2008) cite as having a relatively full vowel quality in Kiwi English, instead of the usual unstressed schwa, are of, have and her.  Listen to the following sentence pronounced by a Kiwi speaker. In the first, function words are pronounced with full vowels and in the second, with reduced vowels:

Function words with full vowels

Function words with reduced vowels

I have one of her papers. 

I have one of her papers.

A further time when full vowels are used in unstressed syllables in Kiwi English is in certain lexical words.  For example, one of the Wellington rugby teams is known as the Hurricanes. Kiwis tend to pronounce the team's name with a full vowel in the second syllable of hurricanes /'hʌrɪkeinz/ rather than a reduced vowel hurricanes /'hʌrɪnz/Thus, even though stress is on the first syllable, they pronounce the last syllable with a full vowel /ei/.

As mentioned above, speakers of Māori English are observed to use more syllable timing than other speakers of Kiwi English.  Research has found that radio broadcasters who speak Māori English used more full vowels in unstressed words than other speakers of English, both those of Kiwi and British English (Warren, 1998).

2. Speed of speech
One complaint of non-New Zealanders is that Kiwis tend to speak particularly fast.  However, it should be noted that it is not only difficult to judge rate of speech, but that it is common for people who don't understand a language to consider that it is spoken quickly (Hay, Maclagan and Gordon, 2008). 

While it is difficult to judge rate of speech, there is some research evidence to suggest that Kiwi English is spoken more quickly than other English varieties.  For example, the speaking rates of Kiwis reading a passage has been found to be significantly faster than those of Americans reading the same passage (Robb, Maclagan and Chen, 2004).   Furthermore, the rate of speech in news broadcasts from the government and several commercial NZ radio stations has been found to be faster than the BBC (Warren, 1998).  While the rate of Kiwi speech in New Zealand radio stations has been found to be faster than that of the BBC, research has found that the rate of speech in the Māori station, was found to be slower than all other New Zealand radio stations and the BBC.


Further practice

If you want to study more...

There are a number of options available to you!

First, try to watch the following movies:

  • An Angel at my Table
  • Sione's Wedding
  • The Piano
  • Whale Rider

Second, take time to watch and listen to New Zealand television and radio.  You may wish to access some of the following broadcasts, for example:

  • Radio New Zealand National
  • Maori TV
  • Te Karere
  •  Fair Go

 

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