Chapter 5: PHRASING AND LINKING
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Q. What is phrasing?
A. In conversation, speakers do not say long sentences once in one breath. Instead, they divide them into smaller groups of words that form grammatically coherent units that express an idea. Phrasing is a process of dividing speech into meaningful groups of words. These groups of words are called various names such as “thought groups”, “meaning groups”, “rhythm groups”, “intonation groups”, “breath groups” and so on. In this book, we will refer to them as thought groups. In written English, punctuation marks such as commas and periods are used to indicate thought groups. However, in spoken English, thought groups are marked with a short break, namely a pause.
Q. Why is phrasing important?
A. Phrasing has beneficial impacts on intelligibility. Speakers divide their speech into thought groups to make the meaning clear. Thought groups also help listeners better understand the information in the speakers’ speech by organizing it into comprehensible chunks that are easy to process. Also, when an utterance is phrased differently, it can change the meaning of the utterance.
Listen to the sentences below. (Track 5-1)
The boss said, “The secretary was hard-working.”
“The boss”, said the secretary, “was hard-working”.
The first sentence where a pause is placed after The boss said, means The secretary was hard-working. On the other hand, the second sentence with a pause after The boss and before was hard-working means The boss was hard-working. Changing the place of a pause in an utterance can result in a difference in meaning.
Q. How often should speakers pause when they speak?
A. There are no strict rules for how long each thought group should be or how often speakers should pause. Pausing may differ from speaker to speaker, depending on the meaning and the situation. For instance, in informal conversations or slow speeches, thought groups may be shorter, and pauses between the groups may be more frequent than formal speeches or long speeches.
Q. Are some words within a thought group said as if they are one word?
A. In English, words which are within the same thought group are linked together as if they are one word.
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