Diacritics and Prosodic Notation

IPA diacritics are glyphs used for phonetic detail, also referred to as an accent, diacritical mark, or diacritical sign. The word is Ancient Greek for “distinguishing,” They can appear below or above letters to change the sound value, and sometimes they are in other positions, such as between two letters or within one. The International Phonetic Alphabet uses diacritics to show a modification of a letter’s pronunciation. 

Any IPA letter can function as a diacritic by making it superscript and transferring elements of its pronunciation to the base letter. When placed after a letter, they can modify the sound and the phonetic detail of the sound at the end. Diacritics placed before a letter indicate a glottalized sound at the beginning.  

What is Prosody?

Often referred to as the music of language, prosody represents the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. It may indicate an emotional state in the form of a question, a statement, or a command. In linguistics, it deals with the segments of speech that are not individual phonetic vowels and consonants. They have properties of larger speech units and functions such as stress, intonation, and rhythm. It may also indicate suprasegmental elements grammar and vocabulary cannot, such as sarcasm, irony, contrast, and focus. 

Suprasegmentals

Prosodic elements are suprasegmental because they are parts of speech bigger than a particular segment. When studying the prosodic elements of speech, the goal is to distinguish subjective auditory 

Impressions of the listener, objective properties of sound waves. Since they do not correspond in a linear way, studies are based primarily on the analysis of auditory scales.

It’s essential to distinguish variable suprasegmentals, like the use of pitch, to determine the difference between a question and a statement. Different graphic symbols and diacritics are designated by the IPA to convey prosody, stress, length, pitch, intensity, tone, and extended articulation of sounds, as well as rhythm and intonation of speech.

Stress

Stress marks ⟨ˈ ˌ⟩ appear before a syllable to mark the boundary and signal the emphasis on particular words or syllables. Stress is added by increasing the length and volume or changing the pitch to be lower or higher. The main stress mark is doubled ⟨ˈˈ⟩ for additional stress, and some dictionaries put both stress marks before a syllable, ⟨¦⟩, to show pronunciations with primary or secondary stress.

Boundary Markers

There is a boundary mark for a syllable break ⟨.⟩, a minor prosodic break ⟨|⟩, or a significant break ⟨‖⟩. The marks signify prominence to make it easier for the listener to identify pauses. Icelandic and Hungarian languages often mark the initial syllables of words, and French at the end of a phrase or word. English listeners tend to be biased toward marking a stressed syllable at the beginning of a new word. 

Pitch and Tone

Pitch is the lowness or highness of a speech tone identified by the ear and relies on vocal cord vibrations. Pitch corresponds acoustically with tone and intonation. In linguistics, the tone is the variation of the pitch when speaking. Tone helps distinguish words using pitch characteristics when they are otherwise identical.

Relative pitch is essential in tone languages, each with a finite number of pitch contrasts. The two types are level-tone or register-tone languages and contour-tone languages. Many West African languages are register-tone with a constant rate of pitches, and Contour-tone languages, such as those of Southeast Asia, have more complex pitch movements.

Comparative Degree

The IPA uses double diacritics to show an extra degree of the character. Extra-low and extra-high tones are marked by doubled diacritics, although not directly regulated by the IPA. Mainly it is used to convey contrastive and emphatic stress.