Lx I The sounds of German
Lecture 7 – Week 9
Stress and intonation in
German
- suprasegmental phonology
suprasegmental phonology
• This is just a posh way of
saying that we are not looking
at features of individual
phonemes, but at phonological
regularities that affect several
phonemes at a time (syllable
structure is also an aspect of
suprasegmental phonology)
What is stress?
Listen to the following:
Sie schrieben ihre Hausaufgaben abends vor
dem Fernseher
Can you hear that the underlined words carry
stress or emphasis (and that -gab- carries a
lesser stress)?
What we hear as stress is a combination of:
• greater duration
• greater volume;
• change in pitch
compared to surrounding speech sounds
I. Word-stress
•Basic rule for native German words: stress on
first syllable: 'Mutter, 'Bahnhof, 'Apfel, 'arbeiten,
'sauer ….*
• *NB we use a raised ' (a straight, vertical dash)
before the syllable to indicate that it gets the
primary stress
• By the way … this Anfangsbetonung is one of
the features that, back ca. 500BC (?), helped
make the Germanic languages a separate
language family within the Indo-European
language family
[Germanic within Indo-European]
Another feature distinguishing this group was the
Germanic sound shift (or Grimm‘s Law) that only
affected the Germanic languages (but not others, like
Latin ...) ca. 500 BC
b > p labial / lip
d > t dental / tooth
g > k genu / knee
p > f paternal / father
t > th fraternal / brother
k > [x], then h cordial /
heart
[Germanic within Indo-European]
Another feature distinguishing this group was the
Germanic sound shift (or Grimm‘s Law) that only
affected the Germanic languages (but not others, like
Latin ...)
b > p labial / lip
d > t dental / tooth
g > k genu / knee
p > f paternal / father
t > th fraternal / brother
k > [x], then h cordial /
heart
i.e. all voiced stops
become voiceless;
all voiceless stops
became voiceless
fricatives
I. Word-stress
• This Anfangsbetonung also explains …
•1. why there are so many weak forms in German,
where the ends of words get reduced or lost
•2. why the inflectional endings are so similar (all
e, es, er etc…) – they used to be different, but
because they were unstressed, they all became
reduced, most often with the vowel sound ə
•(in Dutch even more got lost, and in English
more still!)
[endings in older forms of German]
• compare Middle High German (1050-1350),
where diu and die nom. and acc. fem. were still
distinct!)
• or Old High German (750-1050), where verb
endings still had full vowels, e.g. horta, hortost,
horta = ich hörte, du hörtest, er hörte
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
1. inseparable prefixes are unstressed: ver-, er-,
zer-, be-, ent-, ge• ver'stehen, er'arbeiten, zer'stören,
be'einflussen, ent'halten, ge'winnen
• Also for the nouns: Er'holung, Be'deutung,
Ver'stand
• but contrast 'Urlaub, 'antworten (where ur- and
ant- are cognate with er-, ent- but still take
stress)
Prefixes ….
NB …
hinter- is an inseparable verb prefix that is
unstressed:
hinter'gehen ('to deceive')
Also in adverbs like hinter'her, hinterein'ander
But in nouns, it is stressed:
der 'Hintergrund
Prefixes ….
Some prefixes may or may not be stressed –
when separable, they are stressed; when
insep., they are not stressed
'übersetzen – er setzte sie über an das andere
Ufer; vs. über'setzen – sie übersetzte den Text
'umgehen – sie gehen um in dem Saal vs.
um'gehen – wir um'gehen das Problem
unter'schreiben vs. 'untergehen
'durchsetzen – wir setzten den Plan durch vs.
durch'setzen – mit Juwelen durch'setzt
Prefixes …. MissMiss- when added to a simple verb is
unstressed:
miss'lingen, miss'brauchen
But added to a verb, noun or adjective that
already has a prefix, it IS stressed:
'Missverstehen, 'Misserfolg,
Also:
'missmutig ('sullen')
Prefixes …. unUn- is usually stressed : das Unglück, ungenau
But not when the un- word has become
lexicalized – i.e. it no longer simply means the
opposite of the word without un-, but has
another, somewhat different meaning of its
own, which you can't guess by adding together
un- and the base word
e.g. uner'hört ('outrageous'), un'sagbar
('unspeakable')
Prefixes …. unUnstressed or secondary stress only before an
insep. prefix: [,]unver'weigerlich,
[,]unver'ständlich
NB , (a low straight vertical dash for which I am
substituting the comma on these slides) before
a syllable indicates a secondary stress.
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
2. Some native German words are just irregular:
For'elle, Hol'under ('elderberry')
le'bendig, be'hände ('nimble')
So are some native compounds:
Kar'freitag, Grün'donnerstag, zwischen'durch
Including those where the first element is a
numeral:
Elf'meterschuss, Drei'zimmerwohnung
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
3. Borrowed words
Words obviously from French typically take the
stress on the final syllable: Restau'rant,
Bal'kon, Chau'ffeur (just as in French!)
But so do many others: Pak'et, kon'kret, Kon'takt,
Kon'flikt, Pro'test, Pro'dukt, Phon'em
And some place names: Berlin, Schwerin,
Sonthofen, Lahausen …
Some take penultimate (second-last) stress:
Analyse, Maschine, Genese
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
4. Words with the following suffixes, which take
the stress (on their first syllable, if there is
more than one)
Certain suffixes for describing people
-ant, -ent, -and: Militant, Assistent,
alsoTransparent ('banner'), Doktorand(-in)
-ist: Pianist, Linguist(-in), Germanist(-in)
-oge: Biologe
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
4. Words with the following suffixes, which take
the stress (on their first syllable, if there is
more than one)
Certain suffixes for describing people
-ant, -ent, -and: Militant, Assistant, also
Transparent ('banner'), Ak'zent, Doktorand(-in)
-ist: Pianist, Linguist(-in), Germanist(-in)
-oge: Biologe
NB the case of –or: 'Doktor, but Dok'toren in pl.
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
4. …
Certain suffixes for forming adjectives and some
nouns
-ell: formell, Naturell, aktuell
-al: real, banal, Skandal
-ar, är sekundär; sekundar (= 'secondary' with
respect to schools …)
-abel, -ibel: penibel, rentabel ('profitable')
-iv: aggressiv (but 'positiv and 'negativ)
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
4. …
Certain suffixes for nouns, often abstract nouns
-anz, -enz: Domin'anz, Resi'denz
-tät: Universi'tät, Reali'tät
-ik: Mu'sik, Katho'lik, Poli'tik
[but Gramm'atik, Phon'etik]
-ose: Hypnose
-ismus: Realismus, Naturalismus,
Expressionismus
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
4. …
Certain suffixes for nouns, often abstract nouns …
-tion: Information, Spedition
-ur: Literatur, Architektur
-itis: Bronchitis
-ie: Biolog'ie, Soziologie, Zeremonie, but NB
'Studie
-ade: Parade, the all-important Schokolade
-age: Blamage, Reportage (cf. also in English)
-elle: Frikadelle, Tabelle
Exceptions to Anfangsbetonung
4. …
The verb suffix –ieren and all the forms of the verb
stud'ieren, ich stud'iere
resig'nieren, resig'niert
Stress in compounds
Basic principle:
'Primary stress on first element
,secondary stress on other elements, but not in
syllable adjacent to primary stress
'Haushalt (not usually 'Haus,halt)
'Sehens,würdigkeiten, 'Wortak'zent
This also applies to verb compounds:
'teilnehmen, 'teilhaben, 'nachvoll,ziehen,
Co-ordinating compounds
In co-ordinating compounds, where the meaning
is "both X and Y", both halves of the
compound take a primary stress:
e.g.
schwarz-weiß,
rot-grün,
Nordrhein-Westfalen
first elements or prefixoids with
intensifying meaning
These also result in two primary stresses:
'stein'reich, 'heil'froh
'stink'sauer
'super'cool
'mords'hungrig
(sometimes elements like super- are called
prefixoids because, like "real" prefixes, they are
very productive, i.e. can be added to a lot of
words, not just the occasional compound)
II. Sentence stress
So far we have talked about stress for individual
words, pronounced singly.
Usually, we talk in longer utterances, and do not
give equal stress to every word.
• Recall our example sentence
Sie 'schrieben ihre 'Hausauf,gaben 'abends vor
dem 'Fernseher
Stress is normally on lexical content words,
rather than on grammatical / function words (like
pronouns, articles, prepositions …)
Stress-timed languages
• Japanese is a syllable timed language. When he
say a word like "katakana", in Japanese each
syllable gets equal duration
• German, like English and all (?) European
languages, is stress-timed – the stresses in a
sentences are roughly equidistant, but there may
be none, one or several syllables crammed in
between 2 stresses
• Each main stress begins a metrical "foot" (der
Takt)
Stress-timed languages and
reduction of syllables
Take the sentence which has 3 feet (between | |)
'Heute ,habe ich einen Ter'min um 'elf
|X
1
2
3 4 5
6 |X
1
|X |
You can see that the number of syllables between
main stresses varies – those that are unstressed
are prone to reduction, as we have seen: 'hɔɪtə hap
ɪç n tɛɐ'mi:n ʊm 'ɛlf
(note loss of –e, reduction of einen to syllabic n, some glottal stops
missing)
Intonation
•Intonation refers to changes in pitch that we use
to help interpret sentence meaning
•(contrast this use of pitch to that in tone
languages like Chinese, where a change in pitch
on a syllable changes the whole meaning of the
word to something else – German does not have
tones like this ….)
Intonation
• The phonology of intonation is trickier to pin
down than most other rules about the production
of language sounds.
• There are certain intonation patterns that are
common, but there is a lot of optionality,
depending on the type of nuance the speaker
wants.
• Still, there are some basic patterns that we can
identify …
Intonation
•Just as a phoneme is not realized exactly the
same way very time it is pronounced, so the
intonation contours we use vary with each
utterance …
•We can hear this action by "humming" a
sentence:
Was willst du denn hier?
(rise-fall in an exclamation)
Intonation
•We represent different intonation patterns
schematically, identifying their most salient
features.
In German we have:
• fall \
• rise /
• level -• rise-fall ^
• fall rise V
The parts of the tone-group
An intonation pattern applies to one tone group
at a time. The tone group may be one word, a
phrase, or a whole sentence.
The parts of the tone-group
We can divide a tone group into
1. a nucleus (der Nukleus, die Tonsilbe) the
stressed syllable on which, or immediately
following which, the most noticeable change in
pitch occurs.
•The nucleus is usually the first stressed syllable
of the last lexical word in the tone group:
Am 'Donnerstag gehe ich 'ein
kaufen
|nucleus|
The parts of the tone-group …
2. A head (or pre-nucleus; der Pränukleus), from
the first stressed syllable to the syllables before
the nucleus
3. a pre-head = any unstressed syllables before
the head
4. a tail = syllables following the nucleus
An example
Am
'Donnerstag gehe ich 'ein
|pre-head| head
kaufen
|nucleus| tail |
Can you hear the fall \ on the nucleus ein?
• Here the head is relatively high – this is typical
of German heads
An example
Am 'Donnerstag gehe ich 'ein
|pre-head| head
kaufen
|nucleus| tail
|
Can you hear the fall \ on the nucleus ein?
• Here the head is relatively high – this is typical
of German heads
• Note that the head (beginning with "Donn...")
has a slight upward drift; contrast with English,
which typically has a slight downward drift.
• Syllables in the pre-head are usually low or midpitch
The fall \
Am 'Donnerstag gehe ich 'ein
|pre-head| head
kaufen
|nucleus| tail |
•This example illustrates a fall.
•As with all these intonation patterns, a fall can
also occur within a single syllable (i.e if there is
no following tail):
\Gut
(note that we place the symbol for the intonation pattern
before the nucleus – normally it would be in superscript,
but this is tricky in Powerpoint, sorry!)
Use of the fall \
• Typically for statements, assertions – the
"neutral" intonation
• Used in English in a similar way, but the fall is
more abrupt /sharper in German, and this is most
noticeable where we have just one syllable:
•Contrast: \Gut and \Good
•Also used in commands: Komm \her!
•And in W-questions*: Was \machst du? Wo \bist
du?
•(*i.e. Wo, was, wie, wer, wann )
The rise /
• Typically used for questions:
Peter kommt /mit ins Theater?
(Contrast fall as statement:
Peter kommt \mit ins Theater.
(shows that intonation does carry meaning in
some way!)
NB Like the fall, the rise tends to be sharper in
German than in English.
The rise / …
• Also used for w-questions, to sound a bit more
friendly, polite:
• More polite: Was /machst du? Wo /bist du?
• Contrast the more Neutral w-question:
• Was \machst du? Wo \bist du?
• Expressing surprise, seeking clarification in a
question: /Was willst du?
• In non-final tone groups:
• Wenn wir /Zeit haben, …. (eg. As if talking to a
child)
(more usual would be level, cf. below)
Level intonation -• A kind of "holding" intonation – tells the listener
to expect more …
• Wenn wir --Zeit haben, gehen wir \mit.
• Möchten Sie --Rot- oder \Weißwein?
• --Achtung, --Fertig, \los!
• --Morgen (non-committal!)
•(In English used for non-committal greetings,
otherwise not v. common)
Rise-fall ^
Typically expresses enthusiasm, personal
involvement:
•Fan^tastisch!
•Ich habe ge^wonnen!
•Wie hast du das bloß ge^schafft?
[harder to hear on one syllable like this! Try
humming to hear it]
• Again, the rise-fall is similar to English but
tends to be a bit sharper
Fall-rise v
• Typically used to express a contrast, or to give
special emphasis
vPeter
war in Italien? (und nicht Dieter)
• Also in friendly warnings (eg. As to a child)
vVorsicht!
Avoid … English rise-fall-rise
• /v Sarah? (slightly anxious)
• /v I hope not
• /v she sings well, (but her acting is terrible)
(NB German would instead use lexical means,
e.g. modal particles : sie singt zwar \gut, aber …