Accentuation definition
Accentuation means changing (generally increasing) the rel- ative prominence of a syllable within a word or a group of words. It is usually accomplished by controlling the fundamen- tal frequency, duration, and intensity, though languages differ in the way they use these features. ‘Phrasing’ means group- ing together a string of words into a perceptually coherent con- stituent. It is generally done by controlling the fundamental frequency and the local speech rate. ‘Pausing’ literally means putting a pause after a constituent (which can be one word or more in length), to indicate that the constituents at both sides of the pause should be processed separately. Thus it is often accompanied by ‘phrasing,’ but not vice versa.
Examples of Accentuation in a sentence
For trichotomic structures, see: Raymond de Hoop, “‘Trichotomy’ in Masoretic Accentuation in Comparison with the Delimitation of Units in the Versions: With Special Attention to the Introduction to Direct Speech,” in Unit Delimitation in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Literature, eds.
Cohen, The System of Accentuation in the Hebrew Bible, (Minneapolis, MN: Milco, 1969), 35–42.
For the final two quotations, see: William Wickes, Two Treatises on the Accentuation of the Old Testament: On Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; On the Twenty-one Prose Books (Oxford: Clarendon, 1887), 29.