Department of Linguistics
PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
The Foot and Word Stress
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Feet and Rhythm in a Limerick
This document attempts to illustrate the often very complex relationship between word, foot and prosodic phrase boundaries. This is one possible analysis of such a text. This limerick could be analysed in a number of ways depending upon the model being used and also upon the actual speech patterns of someone speaking this verse. This analysis predicts only one possible way of saying this verse.
|ǁ||there|||||WAS an | old||ǁ|||||MAN from ǁ ne-|||||PAL||ǁ|||||ǁǁ|
|ǁ||who|||||WAS so in-||ǁ|||||CRED-ib-ly||ǁ|||||TALL||ǁ|||||ǁǁ|
|ǁ||that|||||WHEN he | looked||ǁ|||||DOWN||ǁ|||||ǁǁ|
|ǁ||he|||||THOUGHT he would||ǁ|||||DROWN||ǁ|||||ǁǁ|
|ǁ||but|||||NOW he's just||ǁ|||||SCARED that he'll||ǁ|||||FALL||ǁ|||||ǁǁ|
Several features of this Limerick should be noted:-
- "|" represents a foot boundary, "ǁ"
represents an "intermediate phrase" boundary, and (for the purposes
of this example) "ǁǁ"
represents an "intonational phrase" boundary (see below). When
2 or 3 different types of boundaries are adjacent their order is not significant
and they should be seen as being simultaneous. The only example of a higher
level boundary not coinciding with a lower level boundary is the intermediate
phrase boundary between "from" and "Nepal" in the first
line. This occurs because foot boundaries occur before a stressed syllable
(because they are primarily rhythmic) whilst intermediate phrase boundaries
occur at word boundaries (because they are primarily semantic).
- Each line commences with a single unfooted unstressed syllable (although
its also possible for some of these words to be stressed but unaccented).
These syllables have not been associated with the preceding foot (ie. at
the end of the preceding line) because Limericks are recited so that each
line is realised as a separate intonational phrase. Feet can ignore word
boundaries and even intermediate phrase boundaries, but they cannot ignore
intonational phrase boundaries (which are often realised acoustically by
a pause). An unstressed syllable cannot be associated with a preceding foot
which is on the other side of an intonational phrase boundary. (see the
topic on Intonation, for more information
on prosodic phrases).
- Some words, such as "was" and "when", which can be
unstressed are stressed in a Limerick because the structure of the Limerick
places an accent on them. The lines of the Limerick are realised as intonational
phrases, but the placement of accents on the capitalised words in this Limerick
divides these intonational phrases into two or three intermediate phrases
(a lower level prosodic phrase containing a single accented word). (see
the topic on Intonation, for more
information on accented syllables). Note that intermediate phrase boundaries
can occur in the middle of a foot (see line 1 "Nepal") and, unlike
foot boundaries, they always occur at word boundaries. This is because intonation
is associated with meaning and words are basic units of meaning whilst feet
are associated with rhythm which is not so strongly linked to meaning
- The function words are unstressed.
- Some content words, such as "old" and "looked", which
would normally have a primary stressed syllable may be pronounced unstressed
in Limericks. It is also possible that this Limerick could be pronounced
with "old" and "looked" stressed. If this were so then
this would result in an extra foot, but not an extra intermediate phrase,
on lines 1 and 3 (as indicated by the foot boundaries placed immediately
before "old" and "looked").
- In this example some feet consist of more than one word and some words
are broken into more than one foot.
- If we ignore the optional line-initial unfooted unstressed syllables, we can see that Limericks have the following rhythmic structure: 5 lines consisting of 3, 3, 2, 2 and 3 accented words (with definitely the same number of intermediate phrases, and in some cases the same number of feet).