The Melody and Rhythm of Speech

The melody and rhythm of speech: General and Swedish prosody is the only book of its kind on the market. It deals with features of speech that together with consonants and vowels contribute to create meaning in utterances and contribute to give speech its maximal strength as means of human communication. The book deals with prosody at all levels, from the word to text and dialogue and presents models for rhythmic and tonal prominence using an Autosegmental Metrical theoretical approach. On the practical side, the book also describes methods for carrying out prosodic analysis and for transcribing prosody. Aspects of applied prosody are also taken up, including dysprosody, language acquisition, and speech technology. The book gives a coherent and pedagogical presentation of speech prosody by Gösta Bruce, one of the most outstanding international experts on prosody of our time.