5. Speech units
 Imagen de Catalina Olavarria en Flickr bajo licencia CC |
Have a look at these two interactive presentations in order to learn about prominent words in speech units:
As you can see, within a speech unit some words are made prominent and others non-prominent. The words that are made prominent show the emphasis because they carry important or interesting information. Consequently, non-prominent words are not so important. It is possible for a speech unit to have more than one prominent word in it.
Have a look at the following saying:
Money is the root of all evil.
When you say this sentence, you can choose to make a specific word prominent, depending on where you want the emphasis for the important information to be. Notice the capitalized words are the ones that carry the emphasis.
MONEY is the root of all evil.
Money is the ROOT of all evil.
Money is the root of ALL evil.
Listen to how the three senteces above are pronounced.
Reflexión
Which words carry the prominence in the following idioms?
- I need to tighten my belt
- It costs an arm and a leg
- These drinks are on the house
- A penny for your thoughts!
- You need to save for a rainy day