prosodia

Prosody, sometimes referred to as prosodia in some languages, is the study of the suprasegmental aspects of speech that extend beyond individual phonemes. It includes rhythm, stress, intonation (pitch movements), tempo, loudness, duration, and juncture. These features organize spoken language into units, signaling grammatical structure, discourse relations, and speaker attitude, as well as helping listeners identify word boundaries and focus.

Prosody serves multiple functions: it marks sentence type (for example, rising intonation in questions), highlights focus or contrast, indicates topic structure and information status (given/new), and conveys emotions or stance. Cross-linguistically many languages rely on distinct prosodic patterns, and there is debate about broad typologies such as stress-timed, syllable-timed, and mora-timed rhythm, as well as how tone, rhythm, and intonation interact in different languages.

Acoustic correlates of prosody include fundamental frequency (F0) contours, amplitude, duration, spectral tilt, and pause placement. Researchers analyze prosody with tools like spectrograms and acoustic software (e.g., Praat) and use transcription schemes such as ToBI (Tone and Break Indices) to annotate tonal and boundary information.

Beyond spoken language, prosody is relevant in sign languages through facial expressions and body movements that convey prosodic information, and in music and poetry where rhythm and intonation intersect with performance.

Applications of prosody include speech synthesis and recognition, language teaching, forensic linguistics, and clinical assessment of prosodic disorders such as dysprosody following neurological impairment.