third lecture
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In its smallest form the tone-unit may consist of only one syllable, so it would be wrong to say that it is always composed of more than one syllable.
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the tonic-syllable:
it is a syllable which carries a tone.
e.g: is it you (an utterance of three syllables, consisting of third lecture:
one tone-unit syllable that carries a tone is the third one)
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the structure of the tone-unit:
Each simple tone-unit has one and only one tonic syllable, this means that the tonic-syllable is an obligatory component of the tone-unit.
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the other components in the tone-unit:
** the head:
it is all of the part of a tone-unit that extends from the first stressed syllable up to the tonic syllable( but not including the tonic - syllable)
e,g: Those (one syllable utterance)
give me those (the head consists of the first two syllables)
Bill called to give me those (the head consists of the first five syllable)
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Note:
if there is no stressed syllable before the tonic- syllable, there is no head.
**the pre-head:
it is composed of all the unstressed syllable in a tone-unit preceding the first stressed syllable.
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the pre heads are found in two main environments:
1:when there is no head (i.e. no stressed syllable preceding the tonic-syllable).
e.g:
in an hour
2:when there is a head
e.g:
in a little less than an hour
**the tail:
it is any syllables between the tonic- syllable and the end of the tone-unit.
e.g:look at it what did you say
both of them
where her
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when it is necessary to mark stress in a tail, we will use a special symbol which is a raised dot "."
e.g: what did you say
both of them were here
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we can summarize tone-unit structure as follows:
(pre head) (head) tonic syllable(tail)
(pH) (H) TS (T)
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الاتنسوا سوا الاشكال