Abstract:

The metrical language Language sequences sounds into words and the words into hierarchical syntactic units. There is a potential pause between words. The sound sequence is segmented in another way also in speech, which co-occurs with the segments of sounds in words and with the sequence of words in sentences. It is called supra-segmental or prosodic features of sounds and its kinds include tone, stress, pitch and intonation. Tone and stress operate on words and intonation operates on larger units. Prosodic sound features are as important for human communication (and in grammar such as the relation between word classes and sentence types) as the segmental features are. They are the only features in animal communicative sounds such as bird songs, which do not divide the message into words and phonemes. The above mentioned prosodic features are characteristic of natural languages. Some Tamil examples where some prosodic difference makes semantic difference are பலகை ‘plank, board’, பல கை ‘many hands’; பத்துப்பாட்டு ‘name of a Sangam Anthology’, பத்துப் பாட்டு ‘ten songs’; சொல்லிக்கொடு ‘teach’, சொல்லிக் கொடு ‘tell and give’; நானா சொன்னேன் ‘did I say (this)’, நானா சொன்னேன் (in speech) ‘I said (it) myself’.