phrase-final and non-final

[Xinran S]

Hi, I dont understand what is phrase-final and non-final? I have Google it but I cant get the idea.

[Simon]

I think it’s one of those terms that linguists use so frequently, they forget to define it carefully. First we need to know what a phrase is. In the context of speech, we mean the prosodic phrase. This short sentence has a single prosodic phrase when spoken:

“The cat sat on the mat.”

and this one has two:

“The cat sat on the mat, and the dog ran round the tree.”

Phrase-final means the last word, syllable or phone in a prosodic phrase. It’s important because special things happen in phrase-final position: syllables become longer, and F0 often lowers (in statements), for example.

[Author]

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