The Speech Devices

Stressing

Stressing is a technique developed in the 1960's to avert rail track problems that can occur when installing Continuous Welded Rail (CWR). When installing new rail the rail must be returned to its former temperature or length.

Technique

Unconstrained large sections of steel will shrink as the temperature drops and expand as it increases. Since the ends of CWR are fixed the rail will experience tensile stress in extreme cold and can fracture if it grows too great. In extreme heat, it will experience compressive stress and if that force grows too strong, the rail will buckle.

Imagine a length of CWR 1 kilometer long on track that has some stress in it. Each end of that rail is fixed to the track. Also imagine a 1 kilometer long length of rail lying on the ground next to the track. In a hot summer, the unconstrained rail lying next to the track is going to expand, and the rail fixed to the track will experience compression. The unconstrained rail will actually be longer than 1 kilometer. Likewise, in extreme cold, the unfixed rail will shrink and actually be shorther than 1 kilometer, while the rail that is constrained to 1 kilometer will experience tension.

Obviously, there is a temperature where the length of the rail as fixed on the track is equal to the length of the unfixed rail. This is known as the rail neutral temperature. Note that rail neutral temperature does not actually measure the temperature of the rail. Instead it measures stress because rail neutral temperature is merely the ambient air temperature where the fixed length of rail has no compressive or tensile stress.
When working with rail (laying new track, repairing track, changing out sleepers/ties), this rail neutral temperature can be induced even if the ambient temperature is different by adding stress to the rail.

The act of stressing rail is inducing the proper rail neutral temperature so that there will be no fracturing or buckling at the temperature extremes. Since environmental extremes will vary, there is no universal rail neutral temperature. In the UK all rail is stressed to 27 degrees Celsius (81 Fahrenheit) (mean summer rail temperature). US standards range from 90 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (35 to 43 Celsius) depending in large part on expected temperature range over the course of a year.

Stress is frequently induced when a piece of rail is removed (a defective rail) or when an IBJ (Insulated Block Joint) is to be replaced. In these cases: The rail is marked and clips removed. The start point of the new rail is then cut. At this point the rail should shrink (a gap is created) due to the stress being lost in the rail. The technician then calculates how much stress is lost and needs replacing. The second cut is made and the old rail removed. The new rail is fitted and welded at one end. A stressing kit is then fitted at the end still to be welded. The kit is clamped to the rail and it pulls the gap together, leaving space for the second weld. Once the rail is stressed to the appropriate temperature the weld is made. After setting the weld the stress kit is removed.

The stress or neutral rail temperature of track can change over time, particularly under heavy traffic conditions. Besides resetting the rail neutral temperature when making repairs, rail testing is often employed to attempt to calculate the rail neutral temperature of a particular track to determine if prescriptive measures are needed.

What is blending?
Definition

Blending is the process of forming a word by combining parts of words.

Discussion

In blending you sound out a sound or phoneme and combine it with the next sound or phoneme of the same word. Eventually, all sounds or phonemes of a word form the word itself.

Blending is used in the phonics approach to teaching reading and works well with phonemic orthographies.

Examples

Here are some examples of blending:

When you blend the sounds /b/ /a/ /t/ , they become the word bat.
When you blend the syllables /ba/ /na/ /na/ together, they make the word banana.



Phrasing

A Sentence Phrasing Analysis is a way of presenting the text of a passage visually to show the grammar of the passage and the relationship between the parts of the sentence.
Basic Terminology

Sentences are composed of clauses. A clause is a group of words containing a subject/noun and a predicate/verb.

There are two kinds of clauses: independent and dependent clauses. Independent clauses are defined as those clauses which can stand alone as complete sentence. They consist of a subject and a verb and sometimes a direct object. The subject is the actor in the sentence, the verb is the action taking place, and the direct object is the recipient of the action.

Dependent clauses (also called subordinate clauses) cannot stand alone as an independent sentence. In English, dependent clauses usually begin with a subordinate conjunction or relative pronoun. It is vitally important that you learn how to recognize when clauses begin and end and also to be able to determine what kind of clause you are dealing with.

It is important to identify participles because they are extremely important in Greek, but function differently in Greek than in English at times. The easiest way to recognize participles in English is the -ing words. Participles contain a verbal idea and sometimes in English, they can appear to be an independent clause. However, in Greek they are not independent clauses, but independent clauses. Thus, it is very important to recognize a participle in English as a dependent clause.

Any clause, independent or dependent, can have a variety of modifiers. Adjectives modify a noun. Adverbs modify a verb. Prepositional phrases can modify either, though they usually modify the verb. A clause which contains a modifiers is always a dependent clause.
Conjunctions – "and," "but," "therefore," "so," "if"

Sentence Phrasing Analysis Principles & Process

- Identify the main independent clause
- Identify subordinate (dependent) clause
- dentify the modifiers & conjunctions

Believe it or not there are only three basic principles of making a mechanical layout. The rest of the material is merely refining the process. They are simply these:
- Begin independent clauses at the left margin.
- Follow the order of the English text.
- Show grammatical relationships by means of indentation and arrows.

Obviously before you begin making your sentence phrasing analysis you need to identify the independent and dependent clauses. This can be done easily on a computer by simply hitting the return key at the end of every clause. In English all the words that belong to a clause are placed together.

2. Follow the order of the English text.This principle needs a little more explanation. As you read an English sentence modifiers can be placed either before or after the word they modify. When the modifier is placed before the word that it is modifying they are placed above the line. When the modifier is found after the word it modifies then it is placed on the line below. Let me give you an example. At this point I only want you to be concerned about the placement of the modifier above or below the line.

Now we have said that one principle of the mechanical layout is that we follow the order of the English text. There are a couple of important modifications to that rule that I want to introduce at this time. Occasionally words need to be removed from the order in which they occur in the text. When that happens (and we will explain when in a few minutes) then use elipsis points (. . .) to mark the original location in the text and use a caret (^) preceding the words that have been moved out of order.

3. Show grammatical relationships by indentation & arrowsThe dependent clause or prepositional phrase or adjective or adverb should be indented under the word it modifies with an arrow pointing to the word it modifies. By using both the indentation and the arrow, you ensure that when you return to the passage you will recall which word it modifies (the word before or after).

The word "that" is often important in our mechanical layouts. In Greek, "That" can indicate direct or indirect discourse. Direct discourse is simply recorded speech. If we quote a person word for word then that is direct discourse. "John said, `I am hungry.'" If we quote the essence of a person's words then we use indirect discourse. "John said that he was hungry."



Definitions of 'phrasing'
(frā́zĭng)
Dictionary.com · The American Heritage® Dictionary - (14 definitions)
(noun)

The act of making phrases.
The manner in which an expression is phrased.
Music The manner in which a phrase is rendered or interpreted.
Definitions of 'phrase'
(frāz)
Dictionary.com · The American Heritage® Dictionary
[Latin phrasis, diction, from Greek, speech, diction, phrase, from phrazein, to point out, show.]
(noun)
A sequence of words intended to have meaning.

A characteristic way or mode of expression.
A brief, apt, and cogent expression.
A word or group of words read or spoken as a unit and separated by pauses or other junctures.
Grammar Two or more words in sequence that form a syntactic unit that is less than a complete sentence.
Music A short passage or segment, often consisting of four measures or forming part of a larger unit.
A series of dance movements forming a unit in a choreographic pattern.
(verb: phrased, phras·ing, phras·es.)
(transitive verb)
To express orally or in writing: The speaker phrased several opinions.
To pace or mark off (something read aloud or spoken) by pauses.
Music
To divide (a passage) into phrases.
To combine (notes) in a phrase.
(intransitive verb)
To make or render phrases, as in reading aloud.
Music To perform a passage with the correct phrasing.

INTONATION
In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. (Compare tone.) Intonation and stress are two main elements of linguistic prosody.
All languages use pitch semantically, that is, as intonation, for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Tonal languages such as Chinese and Hausa use pitch to distinguish words in addition to intonation.
Rising intonation means the pitch of the voice increases over time; falling intonation means that the pitch decreases with time. A dipping intonation falls and then rises, whereas a peaking intonation rises and then falls.
The classic example of intonation is the question-statement distinction. For example, northeastern American English, like very many languages (Hirst & DiCristo, eds. 1998), has a rising intonation for echo or declarative questions (He found it on the street?), and a falling intonation for wh- questions (Where did he find it?) and statements (He found it on the street.). Yes or no questions (Did he find it on the street?) often have a rising end, but not always. The Chickasaw language has the opposite pattern, rising for statements and falling with questions.
Dialects of British and Irish English vary substantially,[1] with rises on many statements in urban Belfast, and falls on most questions in urban Leeds.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, "global" rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-to-right [↗] and falling left-to-right [↘], respectively. These may be written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a broader scope:
He found it on the street?
[ hiː ˈfaʊnd ɪt ɒn ðə ↗ˈstɹiːt ‖ ]
In the previous example, the global rise symbol is placed between the transcriptions for the words "the" and "street".
Yes, he found it on the street.
[↘ˈjɛs ‖ hi ˈfaʊnd ɪt ɒn ðə ↘ˈstɹiːt ‖ ]
In that example, the symbol for a global fall was placed before the transcription for the word "yes," as well as between the transcriptions for the words "the" and "street".
How did you ever escape?
[↗ˈhaʊ dɪdjuː ˈɛvɚ ɨ↘ˈskeɪp ‖ ]
Here, the global rise symbol is place before the transcription for the word "how" and the global fall symbol is placed between the two syllables in "escape".