Prosodic characteristics of English, German, Spanish, and French are compared and contrasted in this second of a series of articles on general phonetic characteristics of American English. Major attention is given to declarative intonation, place of logical stress in the word and sense group, nature of logical stress, variations in syllable weight, and internal juncture and syllabication. Nondeclarative intonation and the place and nature of emphatic stress are also discussed. For related documents see FL 000 781 and FL 000 784. (AF)