SUPRASEGMENTALS
The term suprasegmental refers to those properties of an utterance which are not properties of any single segment. In chapter four, you were familiarized with the binary features that sought to distinguish between the different sound segments of English. Since these features were considered to be the qualities of sound segments, they are sometimes called segmentals. It is also vital to note that speech is not a sketchy haphazard use of random sounds. Rather, it is a more or less continuous, unified, and organized use of sounds that form syllables which, in turn, form words, phrases, sentences, and so on. Therefore, it is readily perceivable that features of speech are not confined to the binary features of sound segments. In fact, there are certain other features that belong not to any single sound segment, but to groups of them. These other features are called suprasegmental features, or suprasegmentals.
Phoneticians talk of five major types of suprasegmental features that exist in almost all languages of the world. They include (a) stress, (b) tone, (c) intonation, (d) length, and (e) syllable. Notice that while a language like Chinese makes full use of tone, a language like English does not employ this suprasegmental feature. Therefore, your attention is drawn to the fact that the languages of the world make their own choices of suprasegmentals.
