suprasegmental

Suprasegmental refers to features of speech that extend over more than one segment (phones or phonemes) in a sequence. These features govern the prosody of an utterance and include aspects such as stress, intonation, tone, rhythm, duration, and juncture. Unlike segmental properties, which operate at the level of individual consonants and vowels, suprasegmentals organize larger units of speech, such as syllables, words, and phrases.

Stress involves the relative emphasis placed on syllables or words, which can affect duration and vowel quality and can distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning in some languages. Intonation concerns the pitch contour of an utterance, signaling questions, statements, attitudes, or focus. Tone is a phonological system in tone languages where pitch differences distinguish lexical items, as in Mandarin or Yoruba. Rhythm and timing relate to the sequencing and speed of syllables and the use of pauses, while juncture refers to boundary phenomena such as linking or pausing between words. Length or duration can also function suprasegmentally in some languages, affecting the overall tempo and perception of utterances.

Analyses of suprasegmentals often use phonological representations of prosodic structure, such as intonational phrases and phonological phrases, and rely on acoustic measurements like fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Transcription commonly employs diacritics or tone letters in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to mark stress, tone, or intonation contours.