EXAMPLE. It is on reason and common sense, backed by principles of justice, confirmed by the experience of a century, thut I have formed my opinion; an opinion which no argument or authority can shake: (not even the eloquence of the right honourable gentleman). Sometimes a parenthetical addition will re-open the sense of a sentence which it concludes; in that case the added clause will be marked with the ascending cadence. EXAMPLES. Her strictness in regard to truth, and her fidelity to her friends, were astonishing—considering the temptations of her position, and the flattery of her admirers. The advice you gave her was sound, and might have saved her had she chosen to follow it. But you will observe this is not strictly a parenthesis, but a sort of cata-thesis, a conditional addition to the sentence, qualifying an affirmative proposition. In order to familiarise the pupil's ear to a discrimination between the ascending and descending cadences, let her be practised in the following table of the elemental sounds, on an ascending and descending scale: the first utterance of each word to be as if it were put interrogatively (all?); the second, as if it were in answer, affirmatively (all) : EMPHASIS. Emphasis is the great power in reading and in speech. It points the meaning in a sentence, or any part of it by an impulse of sound, or, as it is popularly called, stress, upon the particular word carrying the point, or gist, of the question, affirmation, or negation, as the case may be. This is what may be called ABSOLUTE, OR NECESSARY EMPHASIS ; that is, emphasis absolutely necessary to convey the meaning intended: and the word on which such emphasis is to be made is called the emphatic word. Now as all emphasis must fall, or be struck, upon the accented syllable of the emphatic word, emphasis and accent go together and are nearly allied; now accent is either acute, that is sharp, or high in pitch; or it is grave, that is flat, or low in pitch and whether it shall be the one or the other depends on this whether the sense of the sentence or of the member of the sentence in which this absolute or necessary emphasis occurs, require the ascending, or descending cadence, according to the rules previously laid down; if the ascending cadence be required, the absolute or necessary emphasis and accent will be acute, sharp, and the pitch high; if the descending cadence, then the emphasis and accent will be grave, or flat, and the pitch low, on the emphatic word. The following is an interrogative sentence, requiring the upward or ascending cadence: Did you believe all she said? Asked indifferently without any particular point in the question, it will have no absolute or necessary emphasis; but the point of the question will depend on the particular information desired; and the absolute or necessary emphasis will be fixed on the emphatic word conveying that particular point of inquiry, and the emphasis and accent will be acute or sharp, and high in pitch on that particular word, because the sentence requires an upward or ascending cadence. Thus, varying the absolute emphasis according to the variation of the point or gist of the inquiry, I put the emphatic word in italics, and prefix the sign of a sharp # in music to it: # Did you believe all she said? that is, did you really; are you in earnest when you say you did ? Did # you believe all she said? that , though others might believe it, did you, too; thus supposing some special reason why you should have doubted. Did you # believe all she said? that is, you heard all she said perhaps without contradiction, but did you really believe it? Did you believe # all she said? (the meaning of which is obvious :) Did you believe all # she said? that is, all that a person so unreliable as she said. that is, did you believe her words when her actions contradicted them? So, if the sentence were an affirmative one, requiring, as we have seen, a downward or descending cadence, the emphasis and accent would be grave or flat b, and the pitch low: thus, b He believes all she says. He b believes all she says. He believes ball she says. He believes all b she says, (meaning that he is so credulous that he believes all that even she says) and so on. So negative sense, as we have seen, requiring upward or ascending cadence, will require, for absolute or necessary emphasis, the acute accent and high pitch on the emphatic word: as I don't believe all she says. I don't # (though I did) believe all she says. I don't believe all # she says. I don't believe all she # says. So, in absolute or necessary emphasis, the accent on the emphatic word shall be grave or acute, and the pitch high or low, as the cadence due to the sense shall be descending or ascending. There is another kind of emphasis which we will call ARBITRARY EMPHASIS; that is, an emphasis not demanded by the meaning, but dictated and enforced by the will of the speaker, |