What term describes the sound-related features that apply to the whole utterance, including word boundaries?

What term describes the sound-related features that apply to the whole utterance, including word boundaries?

• A. Redundancy
• B. Suprasegmental
• C. Cotext
• D. Copula verb

Answer: (B)

Suprasegmental describes sound features that span the entire utterance and even cross word boundaries. These are the prosodic traits that give speech its melody and rhythm—intonation (pitch patterns), stress (which syllables or words are emphasized), rhythm and timing (tempo and length of sounds), and loudness. They govern how an utterance flows from start to finish and help listeners parse meaning and phrasing, not just identify individual sounds.

Redundancy refers to repetition of information, which isn’t about sound shaping. Cotext isn’t a standard term for these features, and a copula verb is a grammatical function (linking subject to predicate). So the term that best captures sound features that apply to the whole utterance, including word boundaries, is suprasegmental.