2.1 Introduction
2.1 Introduction (Prosody)
Prosody is the rhythm and melody of the language and exists in all utterances in Swedish. When it comes to prosodic characteristics like stress, you have to use your hearing. Using the language’s prosody you also express emotions and attitudes. Through prosody you can "hear" if someone is for example happy, angry or sad. Expressions such as "I heard in his/her voice" is a good example of that. But you have to be careful in a foreign language, since different languages have their own characteristic way of expressing emotions through prosody. This can explain why it can feel "unnatural" when you are learning to speak the foreign language. Therefore, it is good to play a role like in a play when you practice prosody. Imitate in a very exaggerated manner. It is very important for communication that you know which words are to be stressed in a sentence, and how they are stressed.
Prosody is closely related to hearing and speech recognition. A situation that is well-known for many is when you are on holiday in another country and you suddenly hear someone speaking your mother tongue some way away. You do not hear what they are saying, but you immediately recognise your own mother tongue, while you often get it wrong in another language. "Was that Italian or Spanish I just heard?"
Prosody is the core of spoken Swedish. Wrong stress can make the message not be understood, or that it takes much longer to understand for the hearer.
If you learn a new language as an adult, it is the case that the prosody of the foreign language is harder to master than individual sounds. When learning the different sounds of the language (vowel and consonant sounds), the learner does not only have the support of hearing, but also feelings and vision. You can feel the articulation movements, above all in the front parts of the mouth made with the lips and front part of the tongue. You can also look in a mirror when you pronounce certain vowel sounds.
The prosodic characteristics of Swedish are:
A. Word stress
Word stress marks which syllable is stressed. All words that are pronounced separately have word stress and are stressed on one (`tiii-ga) or at most two syllables (`taaal-`språååk) and (`jääärn-vägs-sta-`tiooon).
B. Word accent
Word accent is manifested through the tone either rising or falling on the stressed syllable.
A stressed syllable has a word accent, that is either accent 1 (acute) with a rising tone, or accent 2 (grave) with a falling tone.
C. Sentence stress
Sentence stress refers to the change between stressed and unstressed syllables in a sentence. Words in a sentence can be stressed or unstressed depending on semantic or syntactic factors.
In the chapters 2.1–2.4 we will go through the prosodic characteristics of Swedish by first looking at stress patterns at word and sentence levels.