Suprasegmentals (06-Nov-2003)

A suprasegmental is defined by Collins as "denoting those features of a sound or sequence of sounds that accompany rather than form part of the consecutive segments of a word or sentence, as for example stress and pitch in English". Two of the most important suprasegmental features in spoken language are stress and intonation, which are referred to as prosodic features. Other suprasegmental features such as changes in voice quality (creaky voice, whispering voice) may be used in some cultures as a means of conveying extra information to a spoken utterance - these are referred to as paralinguistic features.

Suprasegmental elements may be used to alter meaning, disambiguate, or convey extra information, depending on the language being spoken:

Useful book readings for this lecture:


Sounds, Grammar and Meaning page