Sentence Rhythm

Sentence Rhythm

 Sentence rhythm refers to the phonological structure of the language. English is a rhythmic language. Rhythm refers to the timing pattern. There are two factors that influence the rhythm of English: sentence stress and connected speech. Maintaining a rhythm in a speech makes the speech sound natural and fluent.
Sentences contain both content and function words. The rhythm produced by the stressed and unstressed words in a sentence is a major characteristic of spoken English. Using only the strong forms (i.e. stressing all the words) in sentences may make a speech sound dull and artificial. The listener also may not understand the intended emphasis or meaning in the speech. Speed is another important factor for fluency in English. When we speak, we do not speak words in isolations but group them and speak without any pauses between them. Unstressed words always sound different when used in a sentence as against when used in isolation. The most common feature of connected speech is the weak forms of function words such as of, have, was, to, has, etc., and contractions such as can’t, haven’t, shouldn’t, won’t, didn’t, they’ve, etc. However, we ignore other features, namely elision (losing sounds as in the word listen), linking (adding or joining sounds between words as in ‘far away’), and assimilation (changing sounds when two words are combined s in ‘good girl’), that help preserve rhythm in our utterances. In addition to these features, there is schwa--- the most common vowel sound spoken in unstressed words in English. Stressed and Unstressed syllables are helpful in creating characteristics rhythm in a sentence. Unstressed syllables are clouded together and pronounced rapidly whereas stressed syllables are pronounced more clearly. Thus, accented/stressed syllables with no stressed syllables in between them are prolonged. The speed of delivery, therefore, depends on the number of unstressed syllables between the two stressed ones.