Okay, now let's take a look at one syllable words. One syllable words are not stressed or unstressed by learning a melody. They are stressed or unstressed depending on what job they have to do, depending on their function. They can either have a meaning function, or they can have a grammatical function. The meaning function, also called the semantic function or the cognitive function. That is to say, nouns of one syllable, verbs of one syllable, adjectives of one syllable, adverbs of one syllable. That is, anything that has a meaning will be stressed. We will automatically raise the pitch of our voice in order to spotlight those words. So, the word torch will always be stressed no matter when you use it. If you use it as a noun, holding the torch. If you use it as a verb, I am going to torch this building. If you use it as an adjective? Sure, torch song. A torchlight so that the word torch will always be stressed. Why? Because it carries a meaning. It is a meaning function. And so, we automatically then raise the pitch of our voice when we have a meaning function, thereby [SOUND], turning on a little spotlight and saying, watch this. Raising the pitch of our voice, [SOUND] turns on a spotlight. The other linguistic function is called the grammatical function. And those are words whose job is to sort of aid and abet the meaning functions. The grammatical functions are, for example, there are four of them, are, are the articles. The word the, the word a, the word an, which hold a little sign saying, here comes a noun or a noun phrase. I want you to listen to the. And see right now, because we're holding the sign saying, here comes a noun or a noun phrase, it's going to be really easy in this very legato flow of syllables. It's going to be easier for us because now out brain will say here comes a noun function. Here comes a substantive. Here comes a thing word. I want you to listen to the rain as, I want you to listen to the way the rain so that a, the, an, the articles are just little sign holders. They don't need the spotlight. They're simply getting you ready for the thing in the spotlight. Secondly, we have the conjuctions and, but, yet, if or and so on. Words that are also holding signs saying this thing goes with this thing. and the things maybe Francisco and Esmeralda. so that we're joining two nouns with the conjunction. Or it could be, head for the beach and then sun yourself. and now, the and joins phrases. But it's still holding the sign saying, I'm here, not as my own thing, but I'm here in order to join this thing with this thing. Pay no attention to me, I'm just holding the sign. Thirdly, we get the prepositions. There are 181 of them in English. Some are multi-syllable. But, you know, prepositions like in, on, at into, before, after, these prepositions that simply have a a relational kind of kind of job. they show how things, how things are related. They're holding a little sign saying, pay no attention to me. I'm just here to show you the relationship between the more important things and I'm not that important because even though I, etc. They get a little bit persnickety sometimes. But there they are, especially in songwriting. I'm going to swim there in the bay. I'm going to swim there in the bay. There's in saying, hello, pay no attention to the sign. I'm in a spotlight. So that the preposition's actually sometimes rear up in song writing and say, I'm important. Look at me. And of course, that's something that you have to guard against, and we'll talk about that. Finally, the fourth category. We have the personal pronouns, I, you, he, she, it, they, us, them, etc., etc. The personal pronouns, generally speaking, are not stressed. Generally speaking, they are grammatical type functions. And the name itself shows why that's true. They're called pro-nouns. That is, they're professionals. They're pronouns. They don't need the spotlight. Anybody can use them. Anybody can use I, and I is perfectly conformable playing guitar for whoever asks for the session. so that so that, so that unless there is some kind of contrast involved. Well I understand this even though you don't, therefore, I and you will be stressed because there's a contrast. Throw the ball to me not at me. Then, to and at actually will be stressed. But this contrast thing is always clear. We always will be able to hear the stress on prepositions or, hey, he's not simply, oh man, he's the man. So, there will be context in which it's quite clear that these grammatical functions are going to be stressed. but typically, no. Think of it this way. That the grammatical functions, the articles, the conjunctions, the prepositions, and the personal pronouns are simply a black velvet cloth that is laid out in order to display the gems of our meaning. And the way that it does that is that the black velvet cloth is lower in pitch than the gems that we're displaying. And some of the gems, of course, are brighter than others. And that's where we get the difference between stress and emphasis, and we'll see a bit of that alter. So that we have here a legato language where everything moves one thing after another, that is all the sounds are tied together. And that in that legato language we are able to cope because we have this safety net, this ability to attend to, whether we do it consciously or not. And normally, we don't, to attend to the variations in pitches of the speaker. This variation in pitches will show us turn on beep, beep, beep, ping, ping, ping, these little spotlights that will then show us what to look at. So, any time we have now, two kinds of things that are different, stress syllables, unstress syllables. Lions, muskrats, any time we have two different kinds of things, we can start forming with them patterns. Lion, lion, muskrat, lion, lion, muskrat, lion, lion, muskrat, and our expectation is now that I'm going to continue with that pattern. We can do Ba, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and our expectation is that we'll continue that way. So, one of our jobs as a songwriter Is to organize our lines in rhythm. Organizing our lines in rhythm, then prepares our lines when we write lyric first. Prepares our lines for the marriage ceremony that's going to take place between them and the melodic rhythm. And we'll talk about that marriage in one of the next segments.
