Suprasegmentals in action

In what follows, a notated excerpt of a presentation by a British Telecom man­

ager (recorded in 1995 at Balatonkenese, Hungary), will be analysed and com­

pared with the rendition of the same by two Hungarians. The aim is to see what useful information the suprasegmental features may convey to the listener /inter­

preter (illustration 7).

Medium of the language symbol. The term ‘medium’ is used in stylistics to subsume differences between oral speech and written speech (Crystal 1969), i.e. to denote the means by which the language symbol is transformed into meaningful text. For the interpreter it is important to know whether it goes about a live text, or about reading out, i.e., an oral reproduction of a written text. Comprehension of reading out may be more difficult not only because the syntax, the sentence structure of written texts is normally deeper, but also because when reading, a na­

tive speaker tends to ignore segmentation of the speech flow by the effect of junc­

tures, and the tempo of reading is faster than that of spontaneous speech. Non-na­

tive speakers are even worse: normally, foreign language courses only teach pro­

nunciation, i.e. how to articulate phonemes, and neglect intonation.

In our excerpt the two hesitation breaks, three hesitation lengths, abundant boundary junctures and the moderate tempo indicate that it goes about sponta­

neous speech. The elaborate tone patterns, large intervals, the low pitch band to indicate inserted explanative tone-groups, the almost impeccably even rhythm im­

ply a prepared (as opposed to unprepared) public discourse variety of English.

Person of the speaker. The segmental features of the excerpt would be suffi­

cient to conclude that we hear a native speaker of British (as opposed to American English). Looking carefully at the notated suprasegmental features allows to arrive at the same conclusion without even listening to the recording, because large inter­

vals (PI-6 at the first tone-groups initial), a pitch range of seven levels, two rise- fall-rise tone patterns (‘...textbooks I guess...’ and ‘... supposed to be about...

‘could hardly occur in a single sentence of American English. The sex and age- group of the speaker is betrayed by his voice quality. The segmental features as well as the above described tone patterns are also indicative of a social status that obliges to speak standard English in public. For this reason, the speaker would not allow his (segmental and) suprasegmental features to betray the ‘province’ (i.e. ‘oc­

cupational or professional activity being engaged in’ Crystal 1969) he belongs to.

People engaged in certain occupations (entertainment, acting, sports, crime, cleri­

cal activity, etc. ) can be recognized also because of the suprasegmental aspects of their professional jargons. The social status of a manager would also forbid to give expression to uncontrolled emotions or attitudes (by means of extreme pitch levels and intervals, emphatic stress, hesitation junctures, distorted rhythm, etc.) in public.

Intention of the speaker. The probable intentions of the speaker in public speech are to inform, to impress the audience, to express his or her judgement or attitude and to interact with the listeners, i.e. provoke questions, comments. There is general agreement among researchers of English, Hungarian, and Russian on the fact that the speaker’s intention is conveyed by means of the direction of the pitch, i.e. the shape of the tone patterns of the peaks of prominence or tone-group finals. A shared function of sustained pitch is ‘oblique orientation’, to indicate ab­

straction from the person of the speaker, uncertainty, suspense. Falling peaks or tone-group finals proclaim what is new, that what is being said is to be understood as informative, affirmative, instructive, final, complete, requiring no response. Rise- fall implies appeal, order and is emphatic. A rising peak inquires, projects continu­

ation. A fall-rise invites the listener to agree, to respond. A divided or undivided rise-fall-rise expresses politeness, deference, invitation to interact (see examples of peak patterns in the notation table).

Out of the eight tone-groups of our excerpt, five end in rising inflections, refer­

ring to ‘common ground’ and eliciting interaction with the audience. The rise- fall-rise TP of the fifth tone-group final implies respect, empathy. The last tone- group final ends in a fall to signal the end of the utterance. Five tone-groups, from the second to the sixth one, are uttered in the low pitch band to indicate that their content is inserted, explanative. The first and the last of these end in a rising glide.

The sevenths tone-group, ‘...is this idea of having a core business...’, is the most prominent tone-group of the utterance, with a peak stress on ‘business’ which ends in a falling inflection to affirm its importance.

On the basis of the above, we may conclude that the intention of the speaker is to inform and to interact with his audience, as well as to express an attitude of

col-József Bendik

legiality and respect. The interpreter also learns from the suprasegmentals analysis that he/she has to deal with prepared spontaneous speech, in British English, deliv­

ered by a male belonging to the managerial social stratum, with no speech defects or any other idiosyncratic features.

In order to reveal the extent of similarity of suprasegmentals of non-native speakers, two Hungarians have been requested to record the same excerpt. Both are males, belonging to the age-group of the native speaker. Both were requested to read out the above utterance, as if they were delivering a prepared spontaneous presentation. They were only allowed to listen to the native speaker’s version after the recording session was over (two words: ‘management’ and ‘which’ were omit­

ted from the transcription for no mistake of theirs).

One of the Hungarians, the Speaker, is a manager of this country’s main tele­

com, learned English in the past few years at a series of intensive courses, frequently communicates with native speakers, delivers speeches and presentations at interna­

tional professional meetings. Let us examine the suprasegmental features of the Hungarian Speaker (second line of illustration 7). His pitch range in this excerpt is four levels, the largest interval is three (as opposed to six and five levels of the na­

tive speaker). No use is made of the lower pitch band to signal explanative tone- units. This is due to the fact of the narrower average pitch range of Hungarian in comparison with English. The Speaker is aware of the importance of speech seg­

mentation, his tone-group boundary junctures coincide with those of the native speaker, but are more numerous (fourteen tone-units as opposed to eight of the native speaker and four hesitation junctures). Here are some of his tone-group boundaries and patterns that send the wrong signals to the listener (interpreter):

‘So...’ with its falling pattern is hardly justified at the beginning of an utterance.

The prominence of‘...thingsin the second tone-group and then in the last line again by means of a three level interval is misleading. The Speaker demonstrates his command of the typically British rise-fall-rise tone-pattern, but applies it to

‘... decided...' in his third tone-group which hardly helps to decipher the sentence meaning, let alone speaker meaning. To be fair, ‘...core...' gets its three PL promi­

nence, but the listener has to be alert to catch the noun which fails to get its due word stress (in fact, on first hearing the two words sounded as ‘co-business’, in­

stead of‘core business’). Remarkably, the Speaker quite successfully avoided a typ­

ical mistake of Hungarians in English: moving word stresses to first syllables, as is the rule in their mother tongue. It only betrayed him twice: in ‘... idea...' of the second line and in ‘... to be...' of his last but one tone-group.

The above analysis helped the interpreter to understand why he had felt that his fellow Hungarian’s English presentation was more tiresome to translate than the native speaker’s.

The third line of illustration 7 depicts the suprasegmental features of the Inter­

preter. He had learnt and taught English at language schools and universities in Hungary and in the U K. He spent ample time in native speaker environment with his Scottish wife’s family. His rendition of our excerpt could make him a ‘dream speaker’ for any interpreter.

The distinguished reader, who takes the pain of comparing the Interpreter’s lines with those of the Hungarian Speaker, will know why, without hearing the recording.

table 1.

SUPRASEGMENTAL MEANS

SYLLABLE SYLLABLE SEQUENCE

pitch levels pitch bands

pitch glides pitch intervals

pitch range

loudness volume

duration pause

SUPRASEGMENTAL EFFECTS stress

tone patterns junctures rhythm tempo

SUPRASEGMENTAL FUNCTIONS extralinguistic information

speech flow segmentaion syntatic relation

attitudes/ emotions

József Bénáik

table 2.

THE SUPRASEGMENTALS NOTATION SYSTEM

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illusstration 1., 2., 3.

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illustration 4., 5., 6.

ILLUSTRATION 4.

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illustration 7.

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References

Bendik J. 1987. A konferenciabeszéd prozódiája az angol, a magyar és az orosz nyelvben. (The Prosody of Conference Speech in English, Hungarian and Russian). Unpublished PhD dissertation. Budapest.

Brazil, D. 1985. The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Birmingham: The University Press.

Crystal, D. 1969. Prosodic System and Intonation in English. London, Cambridge University Press.

Fónagy I., Magdics K. 1967. A magyar beszéd dallama. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Gile, D. 1995. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Kingdon, R. 1958. Groundwork of English Intonation. London: Longman.

Lehiste, I. 1970. Suprasegmentals. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lieberman, Ph. 1967. Intonation, Perception and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Martin, H. R. 1981. The Prosodic Component of Speech Melody. The Quarterly Journal of Speech. 67. 81-92.

Varga L. 1975. A Contrastive Analysis of English and Hungarian Sentence Prosody. Budapest:

MTA KÉSZ Sokszorosító.

and Some Teaching Implications

In document TRANSLATION STUDIES (Pldal 185-194)