The Solitary Reaper

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending

I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no mo

Syllable - timed Rhythm

V: By now you must have guessed that in syllable-timed rhythm there is a regular time interval between each syllable,Languages such as Hindi, are syllable - timed. That means that an equal time interval is observed between two syllables. Now, you know why Indians speak English in a different way? They unknowingly make use of syllable timed rhythm while speaking English, uttering all syllables whether stressed or unstressed at equal interval of time.

Syllable-Timed Rhythm.

Listen to the recitation of Hindi/Urdu poem,Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna[Tamanna]. Note how each syllable is pronounced clearly, with equal stress, there is no skipping of words in between.

In order to master the English rhythm it is very essential for us to know which words are stressed and which words are not stressed. In the next section we will know about these words.

Content Words

VI: You must have noticed that while listening to English songs or dialogues, you are able to pick up only those words which sound prominent as compared to others

These words are generally:

Nouns
such as paper, dictionary...
Adjectives
such as loud, beautiful...
Adverbs such as hurriedly,slowly...

Demonstratives
such as some, that...
Action Words/ Main Verbs
such as go, sing, listen...

These words which are pronounced strongly in connected speech, are called Content or Lexical Words.

Task 1: Find content words. Circle or underline content words (stressed words) in sentences. Give these words extra emphasis while reading.

Example: Johnwants to be an actor, and he wants to live in Hollywood.

1. The lifts are very jerky. 2. I left it there this morning. 3. Im sorry to disturb you. 4. Hes busy at the moment. 5. I did my best to be early. 6. There are some interesting items. 7. Its her favourite recording.

Words with varying number of Syllables

Some content words have one /two or more than two syllables. If you wish to be able to speak and comprehend good English conversations you should know which syllable in the word is to be stressed, otherwise you may be misunderstood. For,whether it is a mono-syllabic,di- syllabic, tri- syllabic or a poly –

The words with double stress may lose the first stress when preceded by another strongly stressed syllable, or they may lose the second stress when followed by another strongly stressed syl­lable слова з подвійним наголосом втрачають один з наголосів, коли слову передує, або за ним слідує інший наголошений склад, e.g.: ‘seventeen, ‘number seventeen, ‘seventeen ‘pencils.

Compounds having a double stress are influenced by rhythm in the following way:

- When used finally, preceded by unstressed syllables or when used between unstressed syllables, the compounds have double stress, e.g.: It was first class. It was old-fashioned. There were fifteen of them.

- When preceded by a stressed syllable the compounds are stressed on the second element, e.g.: They are all first-class. It is too old-fashioned.

- When used as modifiers before nouns stressed on the first syllable, the stress falls on the first element of the compound, e.g.: It’s home-made Jam. She’s a good-looking girl.

- Words in the sentence may lose their stress: Find out for me. He didn’t say so. But, Why didn’t you find out sooner, in which didn’t and out have lost their stress under the influ­ence of rhythm.

All nouns are notional words and are usually stressed. How­ever, when two nouns occur together, the first being used attrib­utively, the second is not stressed, e.g.: ‘film star, ‘tel­ephone book, etc.

But if the second noun is polysyllabic it must be stressed, e.g.: ‘picture ‘gallery, de’tective ‘story, ‘English ‘teacher, etc.

Most verbs are notional words. In a combination of a verb and an adverb both normally receive stress, e.g.: ‘take ‘up, ‘take ‘off, ‘put ‘on.

Adverbs lose the stress when preceded by a stressed syllable, e.g.: Put your hat on, but ‘Put it on, in the second case the adverb is stressed because it is preceded by an unstressed syllable.

To acquire a good English speech rhythm one should arrange sentences into intonation groups and then into rhythmic groups; link every word beginning with a vowel to the preceding word; weaken unstressed words and syllables; making the stressed syllables occur regularly within an intonation group.

Functional Words

Functional words or Structural words are those words in a sentence which are not stressed and are uttered quickly. These are the words which you find difficult to follow while listening to English songs and dialogues.

This category of words includes:

Articles
such as a, an, the
Auxiliary Verbs
such as may, can, should
Conjunctions
such as and, as soon as, but
Prepositions such as on, above, under

Personal Pronouns
such as I, you, he, she
Relative Pronouns
such as his, him, their and
Determiners
such as some, many, that, these

Weak Forms

Now we have before us another interesting and crucial aspect of English rhythm. So far you have studied that the Content words are stressed and uttered more clearly than the functional words which have to be uttered quickly so as to maintain the characteristic rhythm of English. While speaking, these unstressed words can be realized in two forms: weak form or strong form. A knowledge and ability to make use of the weak forms of unstressed syllables is very essential if you want to catch the English rhythm.
Given below is a table containing the weak forms of some of the most commonly used functional words with examples. Read them aloud and practice.
Strong and Weak forms of Prepositions,Articles, Conjunctions and Auxiliary Words

PREPOSITIONS

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