Natural Prosody

Elements

• Low Pitch

  Speakers use a low pitch for spoken elements that are not considered very important, this allows the speaker to speak more quickly and/or more economically.
  

• Weak Sounds

  Weak sounds are also used for elements that are less important and importantly allows the speaker to speak more quickly and/or more economically.
  

• Linking

  Natural speech will use linking sounds (so combining words rather than isolating words) in order to speak more quickly and/or more economically.
  

• Faster Ideas

  The ability of speaking more quickly combined with the basic prosody of stressing important elements allows the speaker to move almost rhythmically from key idea to key idea. [So-called 'stress timed'.]
  

• Down Intonation

  ...because FLAT intonation is NOT default/normal/natural. The default intonation is downwards, even if the word-stress is at the end of the word.
  

Principles

Useful Theory