Word accent and intonation

Intonation.

Here at
last we reached the biggest and probably the most interesting part of
the course, where we will discuss the issue, related to intonation.
It is not a secret, that intonation is very powerful and complicated
phenomenon. Why powerful? Because it colours our speech, shapes our
ideas, reflects our emotions. Why complicated?! And do you think can
a simple thing fulfill the function mentioned above? It is complex,
it includes certain components, it fulfills certain functions (not
one or two), each component has its own function and further on.
While studying the phenomenon you will definitely realize how
complicated it is.

Intonation is a rhythmic and
melodic feature of speech, which serves to distinguish syntactic
meanings in the sentence as well as modal, emotional and expressive
coulourings of the utterance.

Pierre
Delatre in his work “The Distinctive function of intonation”
claims: the
Intonation is the salt of the utterance, without it, a statement
often can be understood, but the message is tasteless, colourless.
Incorrect uses of it can lead to embarrassing ambiguities.

As you
probably know, intonation
is defined as complex unity of such components as speech melody
(pitch variation), sentence stress (accent), tempo, timbre (voice
quality) and rhythm. This very unity enables the speaker to
adequately communicate in speech his thoughts, emotions, attitudes
toward the reality and the contents of the utterance.

Very often
nowadays the term ‘prosody’ is used as a synonym of the term
‘intonation’. It is widely used in linguistic literature; it
substitutes the term intonation and embraces the three prosodic
components (pitch, loudness and tempo). Probably this term is more
adequate, but not for the teaching process yet. If we follow
Akhmanova we may define prosody in the following way: prosody
is the science of principles and ways of speech division and
combination or unity of the separated parts such as rising or
lowering of the voice (melody), placing of more or less strong
accents (dynamic), certain speeding of speech or making it slower
(tempo), and complete stop of phonation (pausation).

From the course of practical
phonetics you probably know, that very often intonation is applied to
pitch variations (speech melody) alone or in conjunction with accent
and pausation. This limitation exists in the British and American
traditions as well.

Why do you think it happens?
Why the variations in pitch are considered the most important, are
dominating? The answer is simple and obvious. Because of the meaning,
because of the communicative value of pitch changes, their linguistic
relevance. D.Crystal in his book “Prosodic systems and intonation
in English” underlines the value of the component, stating that the
prosodic systems of tone and pitch range are he most linguistic
compared to other prosodic features of pause, loudness, tempo,
rythmicality and so on. About the melodic component of the intonation
will speak in detail later. And now I would like to say some words
about each component of the intonation.

Well.

The
speech melody
is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place in a
syllable or in a sequence of syllables. It is one the most important
means of intonation in different languages and within one language it
fulfills almost all the functions, prescribed to intonation.

Stress
(accent) means
greater prominence given to a syllable (and therefore to a word) in a
sentence. In English this prominence is achieved by means of pitch
change, length and loudness. It means that the stressed syllable may
be pronounced higher in comparison with unstressed, they are longer
and of course louder. Now I would like to draw your attention to such
phenomenon as sentence
stress,
the term was only mentioned at the very beginning in the definition
of the intonation. Now I intend to deal with it in detail.

Sentence
stress
is the greater prominence with which one or more words in the
sentence are pronounced in comparison with other words. Sentence
stress serves to single out words in the sentence according to their
relative semantic importance and together with speech melody it is
the most important component of the intonation. And it’d no wonder,
it is chiefly thanks to them that the meaning of the sentence can be
expressed.

Sentence
stress may vary in the degree. It may be full
and partial.
Full stress in its turn may be unemphatic
and emphatic.

Unemphatic stress is a usual
type of stress used in normal speech and it is marked by single
stress mark placed above the line of print.

Emphatic stress is effected by
greater force of utterance, greater force of exhalation and
lengthening the sound. It is also accompanied by the changes in the
direction of voice (changes in pitch) and the emphatically stressed
syllables sound louder in comparison with the unemphatically stressed
syllables. It is marked by double stress mark above the line of
print.

Partial stress is marked by a
single stress mark placed below the line of print. Usually in the
connected speech notional words are partially stress.

Sentence stress has its own
specific features in different languages. It is not a secret that
some parts of speech tat are stressed in one language may be
unstressed in the other. Thus the brightest example to that is the
unstressed position of pronouns (personal, reflexive, relative) in
English and stressed position of them in Russian. Words that are
usually stressed in English unemphatic speech are the notional parts
of speech, namely nouns, adj., numerals, notional verbs, adverbs,
demonstrative, interrogative, emphasizing pronouns.

Tempo
of
speech is
the speed with which a sentence or its parts are pronounced. It is
determined by the rate at which sentences or their parts are uttered
and by the number and length of pauses, i.e. words the term “tempo”
implies the rate of the utterance and pausation. The tempo of speech
can be normal,
slow and fast.
Tempo or rate of speaking is governed by the time available. In
broadcasts, for instance, the speaker may have to speed up in order
to finish in the time available: presenting the news, making
announcements between the programmes, or giving the weather forecast.
Speech rate can slow down if there is plenty of time available such
as when the speaker has the floor to give a speech, a sermon or a
lecture. Tempo has an obvious strategic use: it may single out
important points of the utterance; it can reflect the importance
attached to the utterances. Less important items, such as items in
parenthesis – are skipped over quickly: he
never did it before, strange as it may seem. Increased
tempo may indicate impatience.

Any speech
continuum may be divided into smaller parts or units, phonetic
wholes, phrases, intonation groups by means of pauses. The term pause
means the full stop of phonation. According to D.Bolinger and Kenneth
Pike, there are two significant types of pauses: tentative
pauses (׀)
and final
pauses (׀׀).
They vary in length: tentative pauses are usually shorter in length
that the final ones, but not necessarily so. Tentative pauses tend to
occur any time when the speaker’s attitude includes uncertainty or
non-finality, hesitation after all. The final pause occurs when the
speaker’s attitude is one of finality. And for this reason occurs
most often at the end of statements.

According
to their length all the pauses may be divided into short,
average
and
long.

Short
pauses
are used to separate intonation groups within a phrase.

Average
pauses
normally manifest the end of the phrase.

Long
pauses,
usually very long – twice as long as the first type, separate
phonetic wholes.

Functionally
all the pauses may be subdivided into syntactic,
emphatic and
hesitation
pauses.

Syntactic
pauses separate phonopassages, phrases, and intonation groups.

Emphatic
pauses serve to make especially prominent certain parts of the
utterances, etc.

Hesitation
pauses are mainly used in the spontaneous speech. They may be filled
and non-filled.

Timbre
(voice quality) (one
more synonym for that is tamber). It is a special colouring of the
voice of a speaker, that superimposed on speech melody and show’s
the speaker’s emotions, such as joy, sadness, irony, anger,
indignation and so on. An individual may put on a wide range of
“voices”, this process involves different modes of vibrations of
the larynx or of the vocal tract. It is also known as “voice
quality”. Voice quality is very important factor in recognizing a
particular individual’s voice or even a regional accent.

Going back
to the great number of voices which the speaker may put on. Indeed
there is a norm of voice quality and is produced when the larynx is
neither raised nor lowered, neither tensed nor laxed and the vocal
folds vibrated efficiently. This norm is known as Modal
Voice.
This type of voice makes efficient use of the air passing through the
glottis and can be easily heard. In reality people may use different
variations of Modal voice. Thus high pitches may be produced by mans
of Falsetto,
and low pitches by Creak.

The first (falsetto) is useful
for reaching high pitches which are difficult or impossible with
modal voice, i.e. when you want to speak with high voice. Of course
men also may use false to imitate women’s and children’s voices.

Voice quality may be viewed
from the point of view of its tenseness. So it can be tense and lax,
which is affected by the degree of tenseness in and above the larynx.
Tense voice requires higher degree of tension and energy, as e result
we may hear the voice that is perceived as louder and more
penetrating than lax one. Sometimes a tense voice may sound
emotionally negative, but not necessarily so. When you tense the
voice to make your speech clearer (speaking to a deaf person, trying
to explain something to a person that is rather far from you and so
on) it probably does not carry any negative emotions.

One fact
that deserves our attention in connection with the voice quality is
whisper.
Whisper is makes the voice blend in with the ambient noise. We use it
when we want to conceal something from the third party, but it is
also used in church or by the children talking in class, when the
speaker doesn’t want to break the silence. It is interesting. To
produce a whisper a V gap is left at the rear of vocal cords and the
folds being held together forward of the gap. Air passing through the
gap generates turbulence which recognized as whisper. It is an open
secret that whisper is used often on stage in the theatres. And this
type of whisper is produced a little bit differently in comparison
with the process described above. It is produced by vibrating the
front portion of vocal folds, as for modal voice, while
simultaneously leaving the V gap at the back for the whisper.

One more
thing that requires our attention in relation to voice quality is the
use of such terms as “timbre”
and “voice quality”.
Different points of view, presented by the different linguists on
timbre and its role and status are reflected in the usage of the
terms as well. The terms may be used as synonyms in some cases and
may possess different meanings in other cases.

Some linguists (Torsuev,
Vasilyev) define the timbre as emotional colouring of the speech. But
it is well know that emotional colouring is achieved through speech
melody, loudness, and temporal characteristics. Antipova believes
that the two terms (voice quality and timbre) should be used as
synonyms.

But alongside with this point
of view, the term “voice quality” was used in the works of
D.Crystal, J. Fry and others, who defined the phenomenon as
individual voice characteristics of the speaker which help to
identify him. Purposeful change of a voice quality or imitating
should not be included in the term of “voice quality” according
to Crystal. In this interpretation the term “voice quality”:
should not be included in the definition of intonation, because in
this very case the information about the speaker is presented (his
age, wealth, sex and so on). Another point of view presented by
Akmarov see the timbre in some broader, in this interpretation the
idea of a “voice quality” is included into the term. The main
function of a timbre is not only show the emotional colouring of the
speech but also to convey certain contextual information.

Some representatives of St.
Petersburg school believe that these two terms should be
differentiated. The term timbre should be used to define qualitative
changes between the sounds of speech and the term “voice quality”
should determine such changes in the voice that may convey emotional
and contextual information.

Rhythm.
Rhythm
is known as periodicity of such similar prosodic events as tones,
pauses, tempo and voice quality variations.
Rhythm
is closely connected with tempo. Vasilyev defines rhythm as
recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of
time. Rhythm and tempo together constitute the temporal component of
intonation. The basic unit of rhythm is a rhythmic
group – a phonetic
unity of a stressed syllable with adjoining unstressed syllables.. A
sense- group may consist of several rhythmic groups, which usually
take approximately the same time to pronounce.

Rhythm has
been attracting the attention of the linguists since the 15^th
century. There were several approaches to the analysis of the rhythm,
among which one may distinguish quantitative
approach, temporal approach and accentual approach.

The first
approach (quantitative)
was used before the 18^th
century, and was applied to the rhythmic groups of poetry. The main
idea of the rhythm was included in to the reoccurrence of stressed
and unstressed syllable and was based on the opposition longshort
(long syllable was equal to two short ones) this approach was not
valid enough and even at that time some English poetry did not suit
this arithmetical approach.

Some time
later the idea of temporal
approach appeared. The key point of the approach is in the belief
that similar phenomena occur in equal periods of time. In other words
it is based on the reoccurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables.
This point of view is widely supported nowadays by foreign and native
linguists (Cheremicina, Bondi, O’Connor, Gimson, Cruttenden, etc).

Accentual
approach
was developing in parallel with the temporal approach. This approach
is based on the regular appearance and contrast of strong and weak
syllables.

Historically the two
approaches appeared as opponents but nowadays they are closely
interrelated despite the fact that the linguists mainly belong to the
temporal approach.

The components of intonation
are said to form a unity because they always function altogether and
none of them can be separated from the other in actual speech. We may
of course single out certain components for the sake of the analysis.

Especially close the
connection is between a speech melody and a sentence stress which are
the most important and the most thoroughly investigated components of
English intonation. But we can’t leave the other components without
any attention, though they play an auxiliary part in performing this
or that function of intonation.

You
probably know that the basic unit
of intonation
is a tone-group
(intonation group or sense group if considered not only from the pure
intonational point of view but also from the point of view of grammar
and semantics). Any tone-group may consist of a pre-head
(unstressed syllables before the stressed one), head
(or onset, the first stressed syllable, with or the following
stressed and unstressed syllables except for the last one) and the
terminal
tone
(or the nuclear tone the last stressed syllable in which the
fluctuations of voice are observed). The last element of a group is
tail
or termination
– the unstressed syllables or semi-stressed syllables after the
nucleus.

According
to David Crystal There is a general agreement about the internal
structure of the tone unit.

It must consist of a syllable
and this syllable must carry a glide of a particular kind. This is
minimally. Maximally the tone unit should consist of the three
elements: the head, the pre-head and the tail.

The
head:
the term is used in relation to the stretch of the utterance from the
first stressed and up to, not including, nuclear tone.

The
pre-head
refers to any stretch (any part of the utterance) which precedes the
first stressed syllable. There are two main types of pre-heads: low
and high (pronounced sequently at low and high levels of voice
pitch).

About the melodic component of
intonation we will speak later in detail and we will discuss the
components of the speech melody and their functions.

And right
now I would like to say some words about the main functions
of intonation.

If we will try express it in
the most simple words and terms we may definitely say hat intonation
helps a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey.
The ways in which the intonation does this are very complex and there
were many suggestions put forward by linguists to single out
(isolate) different functions. The most often proposed are:

1. Intonation
   enables us to express our emotions and attitudes as we speak, and
   this adds a special kind of meaning to the spoken language. This is
   often called attitudinal
   function of intonation.

2. Intonation
   helps to single out the syllables in the phrase that should be
   stressed and places a tonic stress on a particular syllable that
   marks the word as the most important in the utterance, makes it an
   important tone-unit. This has been called the accentual
   function
   of intonation.

3. It’s an
   open secret that intonation enables the speaker to understand the
   meaning and recognize the grammar and the syntactic structure of the
   utterance. The examples to it are the pauses between the phrases,
   clauses and sentences, the difference between questions and
   statements. This has been called the grammatical
   function
   of intonation.

4. Looking at
   the act of communication in a broader sense we may see that
   intonation signals to the listener what is to be percepted as “new”
   information and what is already “given”, can convey to the
   listener what kind of response is expected from him, can suggest
   when the speaker is indicating some contrast or link between the
   tone-units in conversation. Such functions are examples of
   intonation’s discourse
   function.

From the very beginning I
would like to mention that attitudinal function and discourse
function overlap considerably.

Now about each function a
little bit more detailed.

The
attitudinal function.

Many
writers have expressed the view that intonation is used to convey our
feelings and attitudes. Thus one and the same sentence may be said in
different ways, which may be labeled “angry” (why have you come).
“happy”, ‘bored’, ‘surprised and with a tinge of
irritation’ (high rise). It has also been observed that the form of
intonation is different in different languages: e.g. the intonation
of languages such as Swedish, Italian or Russian is instantly
recognized as different from that of English. That is why many claim
that foreign learners of English need to learn English intonation,
some of them go even further saying that wrong use of intonation may
lead to offence, though unintentional. Thus for example one may use
intonation expressing boredom and discontent while what is needed is
gratitude and affection. Expressing feelings and emotions is a
complex phenomenon itself. Firstly
an emotion may be expressed involuntarily and voluntarily: I say
something in a happy way because I am happy or I want to convey the
impression that I am happy. Secondly,
the
attitude that is expressed may be an attitude to the listener (say
something in a friendly was), towards what is being said (I can say
something in a sceptical or dubious way) or towards some external
event or situation (when I may sound regretful or disapproving). But
of course there is one more very important point to be mentioned. To
understand it you should pronounce the sentence in a number of
different ways (I wan to buy a car God help me to pass the exam on
theoretical phonetics): pleading, angry, sad, happy, proud and so on.
You will definitely notice that at least some of your performances
will be different. More that that you will definitely use variations
in loudness and tempo, almost certainly you will use variations in
voice qualities; different pitch ranges (диапазон)
or if not ranges then different keys (регистры).
It is very likely that you will use different facial
expressions and
even
gestures and body movements.
These factors, mentioned above are also of great importance in
conveying attitudes and emotions, yet the traditional books on
English pronunciation have almost completely ignored them.

The
accentual function of intonation. The
term accentual is derived from
the word “accent”. A word used by some writers to refer to
what
in our course we called stress. When some writers say that intonation
has accentual function they imply that the placement of stress is
something that is determined by intonation. It is possible to argue
against this point of view. It is said that intonation
is carried
entirely
by the stressed syllables of a tone-unit.
This means that the placing of stress is entirely independent of and
prior to the choice of intonation. However one particular aspect of
stress could be regarded as part of intonation: this is the placement
of the tonic stress within tone-unit. It is wise to suggest that
while word stress is independent of intonation, the placement of
tonic stress was a function (accentual function) of intonation. The
location of the tonic syllable is of great linguistic importance. The
most common position of it is on the last lexical word of the
tone-unit. For contrastive purpose however any word may become the
tonic syllable. I would like to give the example of pairs of
sentences – the first represents the normal placement and the
second – contrastive.

A) I want to know where his
travelling to

I want to
know where his travelling to (I
don’t want to know where he is travelling from)

B) She’s wearing a red
dress

She’s
wearing a red dress (not
a green one)

Similarly for the sake of
emphasis we may place the tonic stress in other positions. The same
pairs of examples – the first is non-emphatic an dte second is
emphatic.

A) It was very boring : : It
was very boring

B)
You mustn’t talk so loudly : : You mustn’t talk so loudly

But it is incorrect to claim
that we may replace the tonic syllable from the last lexical word
only for the sake of emphasis. There are some cases when it is quite
natural to shift the stress for the sake of meaning. A well know
example is “I have plans to leave”. Compare:

I have
plans to leave
(I
want to leave, to go away)

I have the
plans
to leave (I have some plans, drawings, diagrams that I have to leave)

The second example couldn’t
be described as contrastive to emphatic. It has just different
meaning. And there are a lot of other examples. And it once again
proves that placement of a tonic stress is important and is closely
linked to intonation.

The
grammatical function. The
word “grammatical” is used here in a loose sense. It is usual to
illustrate the grammatical function of intonation by inventing
sentences which when in written are ambiguous and whose ambiguity can
only be removed by using different intonation. A typical example is
the sentence “those who sold quickly…” it may be pronounced at
least in two different ways:

Those who
sold ٧quickly
| made a profit

Those who
٧sold
| quickly made a profit

It can be
easily seen from the examples that the difference in the placement of
tonic stresses gives the possibility to interpret the sentences
differently. In the first sentence the profit was made by those who
sold quickly but in the second those who sold, quickly made the
profit.

Let’s go further and see the
role of tone-unit boundaries and the link between the tone-units and
units of grammar. There is a strong tendency fro tone unit boundaries
to occur between the grammar unit boundaries:

I won’t have any /tea, I do
not like it.

It is
extremely common to find a tone-unit boundary at a sentence boundary.
The same can be observed within the sentences with more complex
structure, where tone-unit boundaries are often found at phrases and
clause boundaries.

In ٧France,
| where ֽfarms
ֽtend
to be ٧smaller,
| the sub’sidiaries are ‘more important||.

It is very
unusual to find a tone-unit boundary at a place where the only
grammatical boundary is between words. It would be odd to have a
tone- unit boundary between an article and a noun, following it, or
between an auxiliary and a notional verb.

Another component of
intonation that can be said to have grammatical significance is the
choice of tone on the tonic syllable. The brightest example that is
very familiar is the use of rising tone with questions. Many
languages have the possibility of changing a statement into a
question simply by changing the tone from falling into rising. The
thing may happen in English as well but we must still bare in mind
that in English question more often that not grammatically marked.
And of course it is by no means true that only rising tone is used in
English questions. You probably are well aware of the fact that
falling tone is used in “wh-questions”. Compare:

Did you park the /car?

Where did you park the car?

Though, strange as it may
seem, fall is not obligatory and rise very often heard in these
questions.

The intonation of
question-tags may be falling and rising depending on the meaning you
are going to convey.

They are
coming on Thursday, aren’t they? (You
are sure of the answer)

They are
coming on Thursday, /aren’t they? (you
are waiting for the answer)

The difference illustrated
here is surly more attitudinal than grammatical but certainly there
is an overlap between these two types of function.

The
discourse function.
A comparatively new area of study is becoming increasingly important
in the description of natural speech. If we consider how intonation
may be studied in relation to discourse, we can identify two main
areas: one of them is the
use of intonation to focus the listener’s attention on aspects of
the
message that are most important,
and the other is concerned with the
regulation
of
conversational behaviour.

Let’s view them in turn. The
first case, idea has already been described. The key point of it is
the placing of a tonic stress on particular word of a tone-unit. In
many cases it is to demonstrate that the tonic stress is placed on
the word that is in some sense the “most important”. It may shift
for the sake of emphasis. We’ve discussed that. What deserves our
attention in relation to this is that tonic stress may be placed on
the most predictable word in a phrase. The predictable a word’s
occurrence is in the given context, the lower its information context
and the tonic stress will tend to be placed on words with high
information context. What I mean will become clear from the following
example:

‘I’ve
ֽgot
to ֽtake
the dog for a ֽwalk

‘I’ve
ֽgot
to ֽtake
the ֽdog
to the vet

The word “vet” is less
predictable (has higher information context) than “walk”.

However we
still may find many cases when it is difficult to explain to placing
of he tonic syllables in the terms of “importance of information”.
For example in such examples as: Your
coat is on fire, The radio’s gone wrong. The
wing’s
breaking up, Your uncle’s dead:
probably the majority of Englishmen will put the tonic stress on a
subject noun, though it is difficult to see how it is less important
than the last lexical word. Another use of intonation connected with
the focusing attention is intonation
subordination: we
can single that a particular tone-unit is of comparatively low
importance and as a result give greater importance to adjacent
tone-units.

As I
expected you’ve heard,
| they’re only admitting emergency cases||

The
Japan٧ese
| for
some reason or /other
| drive on the left |like
us||.

The parts
in italic are of lower importance and they are intonationally
subordinated.

Now some
words about the second area of intonation discourse function, i.e.
the
regulation of conversational behaviour.
I won’t open you a secret if I say that intonation is important in
the conversational interaction of two or more speakers. Most of the
research in this area has been made in a restricted area of human
intercourse: conversation between doctors and patients, teacher and
pupil. In such material it is comparatively easy to identify what the
speaker is actually doing in speaking – questioning, challenging,
advising, encouraging and so on. In a more general way, it can be
seen that speakers use various prosodic components to indicate the
others that they have finished speaking, that another person is
expected to speak, that a particular type of response is required and
so on.

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When you speak with a specific speech pattern, is it because of your intonation or your accent? Throughout my career as a communications trainer, I have met a lot of people who use intonation and accent interchangeably.

Most of the time, my trainees tell me that they need to focus on their accent because their intonation is inconsistent. It is understandable how many people confuse these words. At the same time, how are these words different from one another?

Intonation vs Accent: What’s the Difference?

In linguistics, intonation and accent are two distinct components of spoken language and are rarely interchangeable. Intonation is the rise and fall of the voice in speaking while accent is the distinctive manner of pronouncing a language associated with a particular region, social group, etc, whether of a native speaker or a foreign speaker, or the phonetic and phonological aspects of a dialect.

Intonation vs Accent: How Do They Affect Communication?

Intonation serves several pragmatical functions in a spoken language: it can tell us the difference between a statement and a question, express emphasis, and to convey surprise or irony. For example, in the English language, a rising intonation distinguishes a yes-no question from a WH question and a statement.

It also helps the speaker focus on certain words of the message to give emphasis. For example: I saw a ↘man in the garden answers “Whom did you see?” or “What happened?” while I ↘saw a man in the garden answers “Did you hear a man in the garden?”

Accent, on the other hand, is the distinct mode of pronunciation. Accents typically differ in quality of the voice, pronunciation and distinction of vowels and consonants, stress, and prosody. Although grammar, semantics, vocabulary, and other language characteristics often vary concurrently with accent, the word accent may refer specifically to the differences in pronunciation.

Take for example the word water. It is pronounced differently in Standard American (/ˈwɑː.t̬ɚr/) and Received British English (/ˈwɔː.tə/). Now, imagine all the other words that are pronounced differently between these dialects of English when used all together is speech. Of course that would make a two discrete speech patterns, and that is what we call accent.

Going back to the question, what do people refer to when they point out your speech pattern? When it is caused by the rise and fall of your voice, it is your intonation; and when it is caused by your pronunciation, that is your accent.

                                Contents:

Introduction……………………………………………………………………….4

Chapter 1.      Intonation: definition and
approaches…………………………..7

              1.1     Functions of
the intonation………………………………………11

Chapter  2.   Components of intonation and
the structure of English tone-group………………………………………………………………………………14

Chapter  3.      The phonological aspect of
intonation…………………………23

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..29

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………31

                                    Introduction

Intonation is a language universal. There are no languages which
are spoken as a monotone, i.e. without any change of prosodic parameters. But
intonation functions in various lan­guages in a different way.

What is the role intonation plays in the language? The further our
interests move towards some notion of com­municative competence and away from
the lesser ability to pro­duce and understand grammatical sentences, the
greater is the pressure one feels to take proper account of how intonation con­tributes
to the communicative value of the act of speech.

We are beginning to realize more and more that engagement with
intonation is not merely a «cosmetic» or «decorative» exer­cise,
comparatively unimportant, but that in fact it leads one to a consideration of
some quite fundamental aspects of the commu­nicative process. Unfortunately
many teachers have preferred to concentrate their attention upon the study of
sounds with the re­sult that the study of intonation is- tended to lag behind.
One rea­son for this state of affairs is that a very special skill is required
in the recognition of intonation variations. This skill is more diffi­cult to
acquire than the ability to recognize strange sounds for  two reasons. Intonation
is used by native speakers even more unconsciously than are sounds, and — apart
from an occasional random hint thrown out by a punctuation mark or by italics —
no attempt is made in print to convey intonation, whereas even in a language so
abominably spelt as English the orthography continually reminds the reader of
the sounds he must produce. The second reason is that we have at our disposal a
far more de­tailed analysis of the sounds of English than of its intonation.

It happened so because early phoneticians were preoccupied with
segmental phonemes rather more than with intonation.

The term intonation
refers to a means for conveying information in speech which is independent of
the words and their sounds. Central to intonation is the modulation of pitch, and
intonation is often thought of as the use of pitch over the domain of the
utterance.

However, the patterning
of pitch in speech is so closely bound to patterns of timing and loudness, and
sometimes voice quality, that we cannot consider pitch in isolation from these other
dimensions. The interaction of intonation and stress — the patterns of relative
prominence which characterise an utterance — is particularly close in many
languages, including English. For those who prefer to reserve ‘intonation’ for
pitch effects in speech, the word ‘prosody’ is convenient as a more general
term to include patterns of pitch, timing, loudness, and (sometimes) voice
quality. In this Chapter, however, intonation will be used to refer to the
collaboration of all these dimensions, and, where necessary, the term ‘melody’ will
be used to refer specifically to the pitch-based component.

Intonation is used to
carry a variety of different kinds of information. It signals grammatical
structure, though not in a one-to-one way; whilst the end of a complete intonation
pattern will normally coincide with the end of a grammatical structure such as
a sentence or clause, even quite major grammatical boundaries may lack
intonational marking, particularly if the speech is fast. Intonation can
reflect the information structure of an utterance, highlighting constituents of
importance. Intonation can indicate discourse function; for instance most
people are aware that saying ‘This is the Leeds train’ with one intonation constitutes
a statement, but, with another, a question. Intonation can be used by a speaker
to convey an attitude such as friendliness, enthusiasm, or hostility; and
listeners can use intonation-related phenomena in the voice to make inferences
about a speaker’s state, including excitement, depression, and tiredness.
Intonation can also, for instance, help to regulate turn-taking in
conversation, since there are intonational mechanisms speakers can use to
indicate that they have had their say, or, conversely, that they are in full
flow and don’t want to be interrupted.

Intonation is not the
only linguistic device for which pitch is recruited by languages; many
languages use pitch to distinguish words. In languages around the world as
diverse as Thai, Hausa (Nigeria), and Mixtec (Mexico), words are distinguished
not only by vowels and consonants but also by the use of one of a limited set
of distinctive pitch patterns or heights on each syllable. Such languages are
called tone languages. A number of other languages, such as Swedish and
Japanese, make a more limited use of pitch to distinguish words. These languages
might best be called lexical accent languages. All tone languages and lexical accent
languages also have intonation, but in general the greater a language’s use of
pitch for distinguishing words, the less scope it has to develop an elaborate
intonation system. English, on the other hand, is not a tone language or
lexical accent language, and is generally agreed to have relatively complex
intonation.

Intonation performs several
important functions in English. The first function is uniting separate words
into sentences in oral speech. The second function of intonation is
distinguishing between types of sentences: statements, questions, commands,
requests, exclamations, etc. Also, intonation allows us to express emotions:
finality, confidence, interest, surprise, doubt, joy, pain, irony, etc.  

It is very important to
understand that intonation patterns themselves have meaning. One and the same
word or phrase pronounced with different types of intonation will convey
different meanings and will be understood differently, for example: No. — No? —
No! Change of standard patterns of intonation also has meaning, for example,
rising intonation makes a command more polite, more like a request.      

                                             
Chapter 1.

Intonation:
approaches and  definitions

Intonation is a language
universal. There are no languages which are spoken without any change of
prosodic parameters but intonation functions in various languages in a
different way.

There are two main
approaches to the problem of intonation in Great Britain. One is known as a contour
analysis and the other may be called grammatical.

The first is represented
by a large group of phoneticians: H. Sweet, D. Jones, G. Palmer, L. Armstrong,
I. Ward, R. Kingdon, J. O’Connor, A. Gimson and others. It is traditional and
widely used. According to this approach the smallest unit to which linguistic
meaning can be attached is a tone-group (sense-group). Their theory is
based on the assumption that intonation consists of basic functional
«blocks». They pay much attention to these «blocks» but not
to the way they are connected. Intonation is treated by them as a layer that is
superimposed on the lexico-grammatical structure. In fact the aim of
communication determines the intonation structure, not vice versa.

The grammatical approach
to the study of intonation was worked out by M. Halliday. The main unit of
intonation is a clause. Intonation is a complex of three systemic variables:
tonality, tonicity and tone, which are connected with grammatical categories.
Tonality marks the beginning and the end of a tone-group. Tonicity marks the
focal point of each tone-group. Tone is the third unit in Halliday’s system.
Tones can be primary and secondary. They convey the attitude of the speaker.
Hallyday’s theory is based on the syntactical function of intonation.

The founder of the
American school of intonation K. Pike in his book «The Intonation of American
English» considers «pitch phonemes» and «contours» to be the main units of
intonation. He describes different contours and their meanings, but the word «meaning»
stands apart from communicative function of intonation.

There is wide agreement
among Russian linguists that on perception level intonation is a complex, a
whole, formed by significant variations of pitch, loudness and tempo closely
related. Some Russian linguists regard speech timbre as the fourth component of
intonation. Neither its material form nor its linguistic function has been
thoroughly described. Though speech timbre definitely conveys certain shades of
attitudinal or emotional meaning there is no good reason to consider it
alongside with the three prosodic components of intonation, i.e. pitch,
loudness and tempo.

M. Sokolova and others
write that the term prosody embraces the three prosodic components and
substitutes the term intonation. It is widely used in linguistic literature, it
causes no misunderstanding and, consequently, it is more adequate. They feel
strongly that this term would be more suitable for their book too, but,
unfortunately, it has not been accepted in the teaching process yet.

Many foreign scholars (A.
Gimson, R. Kingdon) restrict the formal definition of intonation to pitch
movement alone, though occasionally allowing in variations of loudness as well.
According to D. Crystal, the most important prosodic effects are those conveyed
by the linguistic use of pitch movement, or melody. It is clearly not possible
to restrict the term intonation by the pitch parameters only because generally
all the three prosodic parameters function as a whole though in many cases the
priority of the pitch parameter is quite evident.

There is no general agreement about either
the number or the headings of the functions of intonation which can be
illustrated by the difference in the approach to the subject by some prominent
Russian phoneticians. T.M. Nikolayeva names three functions of intonation:
delimitating, integrating and semantic. L.K. Tseplitis suggests the semantic,
syntactic and stylistic functions the former being the primary and the two
latter being the secondary functions. N.V. Cheremisina singles out the
following main functions of intonation: communicative, distinctive (or
phonological), delimitating, expressive, appellative, aesthetic, integrating.
Other Russian and foreign phoneticians also display some difference in heading
the linguistic functions of intonation. An
intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or
unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus. The
boundaries of an intonation pattern may be marked by stops of phonation, that
is temporal pauses.

The examples of
intonation patterns unless otherwise stated, a variety of pronunciation which
has sometimes been termed ‘standard Southern British English’ (SBE) – the
prestige variety of the south east of England which also serves in varying
degrees as a prestige norm elsewhere in the British Isles. However the patterns
used for examples will be similar to patterns in General American, and so the
examples should be accessible not only to the large number of speakers of those
two varieties but also to the much larger population of English speakers who
have passive knowledge of those pronunciations.

English is the official
language of nearly 50 different countries and is currently spoken as a first
language by over 300 million people. Among the numerous dialects of English
spoken throughout the world, two, usually referred to as (Standard) American
English and (Standard) British English, have a rather special status in that
they are considered distinct standards for the teaching of English as a foreign
language. Both dialects of English are spoken with a number of different
accents.

For British English, one
particular accent: “Received Pronunciation”, or “RP”, traditionally defined as
the accent of those educated in public schools, is generally presented as a
model for foreign learners as well as a standard for BBC newsreaders. It has
been estimated that the proportion of the population of England
who actually speak RP is as small as 3% (Hughes and Trudgill 1979). It has been
suggested that RP today should be given a wider interpretation to include all
speakers of “educated Southern English”. It does seem fairly safe to assume
that the intonation system of RP is common to a rather wider section of the
native population of (particularly Southern) Britain and it is to this system
to which we shall refer below as “British English Intonation” but considerably
more research into the intonation of other accents.

British English  will obviously be necessary before we
shall be in a position to claim, as Palmer did, that we are describing: that
system of intonation which is used by most of the natives of England.

Intonation is a language
universal. There are no languages which are spoken as a monotone, i.e. without
any change of prosodic parametres. On perceptional level intonation is a
complex, a whole, formed by significant variations of pitch, loudness and tempo
closely related. Some linguists regard speech timber as the fourth component of
intonation. Though it certainly conveys some shades of attitudinal or emotional
meaning there’s no reason to consider it alongside with the 3 prosodic
components of intonation (pitch, loudness and tempo). Nowadays the term
“prosody” substitutes the term “intonation”.

On the acoustic level
pitch correlates with the fundamental frequency of the vibrations of the vocal
cords; loudness correlates with the amplitude of vibrations; tempo is a correlate
of time during which a speech unit lasts.

The auditory  level is
very important for teachers of foreign languages. Each syllable of the speech
chain has a special pitch colouring. Some of the syllables have significant
moves of tone up and down. Each syllable bears a definite amount of loudness.
Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness. Together with the
tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of
intonation.

An intonation pattern contains one nucleus
and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or
following the nucleus. The boundaries of an intonation pattern may be marked by
stops of phonation, that is temporal pauses.

Intonation patterns serve to actualize
syntagms in oral speech. The syntagm is a group of words which are semantically
and syntactically complete. In phonetics they are called intonation groups. The
intonation group is a stretch of speech which may have the length of the whole
phrase. But the phrase often contains more than one intonation group. The
number of them depends on the length of phrase and the degree of semantic
impotence or emphasis given to various parts of it. The position of intonation
groups may affect the meaning.

Intonation patterns serve to actualize
syntagms in oral speech. The syntagm is a group of words which are semantically
and syntactically complete. In phonetics they are called intonation groups. The
intonation group is a stretch of speech which may have the length of the whole
phrase. But the phrase often contains more than one intonation group. The
number of them depends on the length of phrase and the degree of semantic
impotence or emphasis given to various parts of it. The position of intonation
groups may affect the meaning.

               1.1  Functions of the
intonation

After considering the system of English segmental phonemes, the
syllabic structure and the accentual structure of English words we are to focus
on the topic of particular theoretical and practical interest, i.e. intonation.

In this chapter our general aims will be: first, to present a con­cise,
simple, yet adequate definition of intonation; second, to de­scribe the main
structural components of the intonation pattern; third, to present methods for
transcribing intonation, that is a suit­able way of notation; and fourth, to
explore the function of into­nation in various textual units, looking
particularly at examples in which intonation resolves grammatical and lexical
ambiguity.

Intonation is a language universal. There are no languages which
are spoken as a monotone, i.e. without any change of prosodic parameters. But
intonation functions in various lan­guages in a different way. What is the role
intonation plays in the language? The further our interests move towards some
notion of com­municative competence and away from the lesser ability to pro­duce
and understand grammatical sentences, the greater is the pressure one feels to
take proper account of how intonation con­tributes to the communicative value
of the act of speech.

We are beginning to realize more and more that engagement with
intonation is not merely a «cosmetic» or «decorative» exer­cise,
comparatively unimportant, but that in fact it leads one to a consideration of
some quite fundamental aspects of the commu­nicative process. Unfortunately
many teachers have preferred to concentrate their attention upon the study of
sounds with the re­sult that the study of intonation is- tended to lag behind.
One rea­son for this state of affairs is that a very special skill is required
in the recognition of intonation variations. This skill is more diffi­cult to
acquire than the ability to recognize strange sounds for  two reasons.
Intonation is used by native speakers even more unconsciously than are sounds,
and — apart from an occasional random hint thrown out by a punctuation mark or
by italics — no attempt is made in print to convey intonation, whereas even in
a language so abominably spelt as English the orthography continually reminds
the reader of the sounds he must produce. The second reason is that we have at
our disposal a far more de­tailed analysis of the sounds of English than of its
intonation.

It happened so because early phoneticians were preoccupied with
segmental phonemes rather more than with intonation.

We would like to start with the description of intonation on the
auditory and acoustic levels and then pass over to its linguis­tic function.

It is quite impossible to describe intonation in a word or two.
Sometimes the ups and downs of pitch and loudness are com­pared to the waves of
the ocean. «The surface of the ocean re­sponds to the forces that act upon
it in movements resembling the ups and downs of the human voice» [47, p.
19].

There is wide agreement among Soviet linguists that on per­ception
level intonation is a complex, a whole, formed by signifi­cant variations of pitch,
loudness and tempo (i.e. the rate of speech and pausation) closely
related. Some Soviet linguists re­gard speech timbre as the fourth component of
intonation. As a matter of fact, up to now timbre has not been sufficiently
investi­gated yet. Neither its material form nor its linguistic function have
been thoroughly described. Though speech timbre definitely con­veys certain
shades of attitudinal or emotional meaning there is no good reason to consider
it alongside with the three prosodic components of intonation, i.e. pitch,
loudness and tempo.

Nowadays there is another term «prosody» which
embraces the three prosodic components and substitutes the term «intona­tion».
It is widely used in linguistic literature, it causes no misun­derstanding and,
consequently, it is more adequate. We feel strongly that this term would be
more suitable for our book too, but, unfortunately, it has not been accepted’in
the teaching process yet.

D. Crystal distinguishes
the following functions of intonation.

• Emotional function’s
most obvious role is to express attitudinal meaning -sarcasm,   surprise,  
reserve,   impatience,   delight,   shock,   anger,   interest,   and thousands
of other semantic nuances.

• Grammatical function
helps to identify grammatical structure in speech, performing a role similar to
punctuation. Units such as clause and sentence often depend on intonation for
their spoken identity, and several specific contrasts, such as
question/statement, make systematic use of it.

• Informational function
helps draw attention to what meaning is given and what is new in an utterance.
The word carrying the most prominent tone in a contour signals the part of an
utterance that the speaker is treating as new information.

• Textual function helps
larger units of meaning than the sentence to contrast and cohere. In radio
news-reading, paragraphs of information can be shaped through the use of pitch.
In sports commentary, changes in prosody reflect the progress of the action.

• Psychological function
helps us to organize speech into units that are easier to perceive and
memorize. Most people would find a sequence of numbers, for example, difficult
to recall. The task is made easier by using intonation to chunk the sequence
into two units.

• Indexical function,
along with other prosodic features, is an important marker of personal or
social identity. Lawyers, preachers, newscasters, sports commentators, army
sergeants, and several other occupations are readily identified through their
distinctive prosody.

                                       
Chapter 2.

Components of intonation
and the structure of English intonation group.

Let us consider the
components of intonation. Intonation is based on several key components, such
as pitch, sentence stress and rhythm. 

Pitch is the degree of
height of our voice in speech. Normal speaking pitch is at midlevel. Intonation
is formed by certain pitch changes, characteristic of a given language, for
example, falling intonation is formed by pitch changes from high to low, and
rising intonation is formed by pitch changes from low to high.   

Sentence stress makes the
utterance understandable to the listener by making the important words in the
sentence stressed, clear and higher in pitch and by shortening and obscuring
the unstressed words. Sentence stress provides rhythm in connected speech. All
words have their own stress in isolation, but when they are connected into a
sentence, important changes take place: content words are stressed and function
words aren’t; thought groups (i.e. logically connected groups of words) are
singled out by pauses and intonation; the stressed syllables occur at regular
intervals and are usually higher in pitch than the unstressed syllables; the
unstressed syllables are blended into a stream of sounds between the stressed
syllables; emphatic stress may be used in the sentence to single out the most
important word; the last stressed word in the sentence gets the strongest
stress with the help of falling or rising intonation. Developing the ability to
hear, understand and reproduce sentence stress is the main prerequisite to
mastering English intonation.       

In the pitch component we
may consider the distinct variations in the direction of pitch, pitch level and
pitch range.

Intonation performs
several important functions in English. The first function is uniting separate
words into sentences in oral speech. The second function of intonation is
distinguishing between types of sentences: statements, questions, commands,
requests, exclamations, etc. Also, intonation allows us to express emotions:
finality, confidence, interest, surprise, doubt, joy, pain, irony, etc.  

It is very important to
understand that intonation patterns themselves have meaning. One and the same
word or phrase pronounced with different types of intonation will convey
different meanings and will be understood differently, for example: No. — No? —
No! Change of standard patterns of intonation also has meaning, for example,
rising intonation makes a command more polite, more like a request.      

English intonation is
very different from Russian intonation. Both languages use falling and rising
intonation, but they are not the same in English and Russian. It’s very
important not to bring Russian intonation into English because intonation
patterns from Russian may convey a different meaning in English and cause
misunderstanding and even produce an unfavorable impression of you.

It is necessary to study
English intonation together with your study of grammar and vocabulary as soon
as you start studying English, because it will be difficult to get rid of the
Russian accent later on. The best way to study English intonation is by
listening and repeating. Marking stress, pauses, falling and rising intonation
and other phonetic phenomena in the written copy of the recording that you are
listening to helps to understand and memorize intonation patterns.       

It is also very useful to
record your reading of the text transcript and compare your result with the
audio file you have studied. The next step may be watching a film in English
and listening for the intonation patterns that you have studied and started to
use and so on.  

Working on pronunciation
and intonation is hard work that requires patience and perseverance, and
intonation patterns are especially difficult to master. A good ear helps a lot,
so train your skills by listening and repeating, reciting poems and singing in
English as often as you can.

According to R. Kingdon
the most important nuclear tones in English are: Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise,
High Rise, and Fall-Rise.

The meanings of the
nuclear tones are difficult to specify in general terms. Roughly speaking the
falling tone of any level and range expresses certainty, completeness, and
independence. A rising tone on the contrary expresses uncertainty,
incompleteness or dependence. A falling-rising tone may combine the falling
tone’s meaning of assertion, certainty with the rising tone’s meaning of
dependence, incompleteness. At the end of a phrase it often conveys a feeling
of reservation; that is, it asserts something and at the same time suggests
that there is something else to be said. At the beginning or in the middle of a
phrase it is a more forceful alternative to the rising tone, expressing the
assertion of one point, together with the implication that another point is to
follow. The falling-rising tone, as its name suggests, consists of a fall in
pitch followed by a rise. If the nucleus is the last syllable of the intonation
group the fall and rise both take place on one syllable. In English there is
often clear evidence of an intonation-group boundary, but no audible nuclear
tone movement preceding. In such a circumstance two courses are open: either one
may classify the phenomenon as a further kind of head or one may consider it to
be the level nuclear tone. Low Level tone is very characteristic of reading
poetry. Mid-Level tone is particularly common in spontaneous speech
functionally replacing the rising tone. There are two more nuclear tones in
English: Rise-Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise. But adding refinement to speech they are
not absolutely essential tones for the foreign learner to acquire. Rise-Fall
can always be replaced by High Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise by Fall-Rise without
making nonsense of the utterance.

According to D. Crystal,
there are nine ways of saying Yes as an answer to the question Will
you marry me?

1. Low fall. The most
neutral tone; a detached, unemotional statement of fact.

2. Full fall. Emotionally
involved; the higher the onset of the tone, the more involved the speaker;
choice of emotion (surprise, excitement, irritation) depends on the speaker’s
facial expression.

3.  Mid fall. Routine,
uncommitted comment; detached and unexcited.

4.  Low rise. Facial
expression important; with a ‘happy’ face, the tone is sympathetic and
friendly; with a ‘grim’ face, it is guarded and ominous.

5. Full rise. Emotionally
involved, often «disbelief or shock, the extent of the emotion depending on the
width of the tone.

6. High rise. Mild query
or puzzlement; often used in echoing what has just been said.

7.  Level. Bored,
sarcastic, ironic.

8. Fall-rise. A strongly
emotional tone; a straight or ‘negative’ face conveys uncertainty, doubt, or
tentativeness; a positive face conveys encouragement or urgency.

9. Rise-fall. Strong
emotional involvement; depending on the face, the attitude might be delighted,
challenging, or complacent.

Falling Intonation       

Falling intonation is the
most common type of standard unemphatic intonation in English. It is used on
the last stressed syllable of the sentence in statements (declarative
sentences), special questions, commands (imperative sentences), exclamatory
sentences and in the last part of alternative questions (after “or”).
(Different types of sentences are described in the file Basic Word Order in the
section Grammar.) Standard falling intonation in English falls stronger and
deeper than standard falling intonation in Russian.

Statements

We live in MOScow.    

She is ten years OLD.   

He doesn’t have a CAR.

I don’t want to CALL her.     

They left for London YESterday.    

I’d like a sandwich and a cup of COFfee, please.

Special questions

Where do you LIVE?   

When did you CALL him?     

How much IS it? 

What time does he get UP?    

Commands

STOP it! Sit DOWN.  

Close your books and LISten.

Exclamatory sentences

How NICE of you!       

HelLO! Good MORNing!     

What a wonderful surPRISE! 

Alternative questions    

Do you want /TEA or COFfee?       

Did he visit /BELgium or FRANCE last year?    

Would you like to go for a /WALK or would you rather
stay HOME?       

Falling intonation is
used for asking and giving information in normal, quiet, unemphatic style. At
the same time, falling intonation conveys certain emotions, such as completion,
finality, confidence. Falling intonation sounds more categorical, confident and
convincing than rising intonation. Compare the use of the falling and rising
tones in tag questions

Rising Intonation

Rising intonation in
English is a pretty complicated phenomenon. It can express a number of various
emotions, such as non-finality, incompleteness, surprise, doubt, interest,
suggestion, politeness, readiness to continue the conversation, lack of
confidence and even insecurity. Rising intonation in English is very different
from rising intonation in Russian. Standard rising intonation in English first
goes down a little and then up, and doesn’t go as high as the rise in Russian
does.      

Rising intonation is
quite difficult to describe in words. When we speak, our voices do much more
than rise or fall. The sentence may start higher or lower; stressed syllables
may be stronger or weaker, higher or lower, louder or quieter, quicker or
slower; the unstressed syllables may remain at the same level as the stressed
syllable before them, or go higher or lower. And the voices themselves are
different, too. All these factors interact in intonation.   

For the purpose of
studying, we can say that rising intonation is used for the emotions mentioned
above, but you should understand that rising intonation in different situations
may sound differently, for example, the rising tone expressing surprise may
sound a little different from the rising tone expressing polite interest or the
rising tone asking to repeat. This material will help you understand what
rising intonation means and where it is used, but you will need a lot of
listening practice to master rising intonation.        

Standard patterns       

Rising intonation is used
in general questions, in dependent or introductory parts of sentences, in the
first part of alternative questions (before “or”), in direct address and in
enumerating items in a list.     

General questions        

Do you go there /OFten?

Was she glad to /SEE him?     

Have you read this /BOOK?   

Are you ready to /START?     

Would you please pass the /PEPper?

Dependent parts of sentences

If he /CALLS, ask him to COME.   

When I was walking in the /PARK, I saw a couple of
interesting BIRDS.  

According to his /WORDS, he met that girl at the
TENnis club.      

All of a /SUDden, the girl started to CRY. 

Alternative questions   

Would you like an /APple or a PEAR?      

Does he speak /ENGlish or GERman?      

Did you go to a /CONcert or did you stay HOME
yesterday? 

Direct address    

/TOM, could you /HELP me, please?

/SIR, you dropped your NOTEbook.

Mr. /SMITH, your papers are READy.      

Note: If direct address is at the end of the sentence,
it may be pronounced with a rise or just a stress on it: 

Good MORNing, /JANE.      

Good MORNing, Jane. 

Good-BYE, Tom.

Two more pitch parameters
are pitch ranges and pitch levels. Three pitch ranges are generally
distinguished: normal, wide, and narrow. Pitch levels may be high, medium, and
low.

Loudness is used in a
variety of ways. Gross differences of meaning (such as anger, menace, and
excitement) can be conveyed by using an overall loudness level.

The tempo of speech is
the third component of intonation. The term tempo implies the rate of the
utterance and pausation. The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. The
parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower.
Unimportant parts are commonly pronounced at a greater speed than normal.

Any stretch of speech can
be split into smaller portions, i.e. phonetic wholes, phrases, intonation
groups by means of pauses. By ‘pause’ here we mean a complete stop of
phonation. We may distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:

1.  Short pauses which
may be used to separate intonation groups within a
phrase.                                                    .

2. Longer pauses which
normally manifest the end of the phrase.

3.  Very long pauses,
which are approximately twice as long as the first type, are used to separate
phonetic wholes.

Functionally, there may
be distinguished syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses.

Syntactic pauses separate
phonopassages, phrases, and intonation groups. Emphatic pauses serve to make
especially prominent certain parts of the utterance. Hesitation pauses are
mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain some time to think over what to say
next. They may be silent or filled.

Each syllable of the
speech chain has a special pitch colouring. Some of the syllables have
significant moves of tone up and down. Each syllable bears a definite amount of
loudness. Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness. Together
with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic
unit of intonation. An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain
other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus.
The boundaries of an intonation pattern may be marked by stops of phonation
that is temporal pauses.

Intonation patterns serve
to actualize syntagms in oral speech. It may be well to remind you here that
the syntagm is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete.
In phonetics actualized syntagms are called intonation groups (sense-groups,
tone-groups). Each intonation group may consist of one or more potential
syntagms, e.g. the sentence / think he is coming soon has two potential
syntagms: / think and he is coming soon. In oral speech it is
normally actualized as one intonation group.

The intonation group is a
stretch of speech which may have the length of the whole phrase. But the phrase
often contains more than one intonation group. The number of intonation groups
depends on the length of the phrase and the degree of semantic importance or
emphasis given to various parts of it:

This bed was not’ slept, 
in— ,This
be  was not’ slept   in

An additional terminal
tone on this bed expresses an emphasis on this bed in contrast
to other beds.

Not all stressed
syllables are of equal importance. One of the syllables has the greater
prominence than the others and forms the nucleus, or focal point of an intonation
pattern. The tone of a nucleus determines the pitch of the rest of the
intonation pattern following it which is called the tail. Thus after a falling
tone, the rest of the intonation pattern is at a low pitch. After a rising tone
the rest of the intonation pattern moves in an upward pitch direction:

No, Mary —  Well, Mary.

The nucleus and the tail
form what is called terminal tone. The two other sections of the intonation
pattern are the head and the pre-head which form the pre-nuclear part of the
intonation pattern and, like the tail, they may be looked upon as optional
elements:

àLake District  is one of the
loveliest ‘parts of, Britain.

The pre-nuclear part can
take a variety of pitch patterns. Variation within the prе-nucleus does not usually
affect the grammatical meaning of the utterance, though it often conveys
meanings associated with attitude or phonetic styles. There are three common
types of prе-nucleus:
a descending type in which the pitch gradually descends (often in
«steps») to the nucleus; an ascending type in which the
syllables form an ascending sequence and a level type when all the syllables
stay more or less on the same level.

The meaning of the
intonation group is the combination of the «meaning» of the terminal tone and
the pre-nuclear part combined with the «meaning» of pitch range and pitch
level. The parts of the intonation pattern can be combined in various ways
manifesting changes in meaning, cf.: the High Head combined with Low Fall, High
Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, Fall-Rise in the phrase Not at all.

—>Not at  all (reserved, calm).

—>Not at  all) (surprised, concerned).

—>Not at  all (encouraging, friendly).

—> Not at  all (questioning).

—> Not at  all (intensely encouraging,
protesting).

The more the height of
the pitch contrasts within the intonation pattern the more emphatic the intonation
group sounds, cf.:

He’s won.   Fan tastic.

Fan tastic.

The changes of pitch,
loudness and tempo are not haphazard variations. The rules of change are highly
organized. No matter how variable the individual variations of these prosodic
components are they tend to become formalized or standardized, so that all
speakers of the language use them in similar ways under similar circumstances.
These abstracted characteristics of intonation structures may be called
intonation patterns which form the prosodic system of English.

Some intonation patterns
may be completely colourless in meaning: they give to the listener no
implication of the speaker’s attitude or feeling. They serve a mechanical
function — they provide a mold into which all sentences may be poured so that
they achieve utterance. Such intonation patterns represent the intonational
minimum of speech. The number of possible combinations is more than a hundred
but not all of them ate equally important. Some of them do not differ much in
meaning, others are very rarely used. That is why in teaching it is necessary
to deal only with a very limited number of intonation patterns, which are the
result of a careful choice.

                                       
Chapter 3.

                  The
phonological aspect of intonation.

Phonology has a special
branch, intonology, whose domain is the larger units of connected speech:
intonation groups, phrases and even phonetic passages or blocks of discourse.

The descriptions of
intonation show that phonological facts of intonation system are much more open
to question than in the field of segmental phonology. Descriptions differ
according to the kind of meaning they regard intonation is carrying and also
according to the significance they attach to different parts of the tone-unit.
J.D. O’Connor and G.F. Arnold assert that a major function of intonation is to
express the speaker’s attitude to the situation he/she is placed in, and they
attach these meanings not to pre-head, head and nucleus separately, but to each
of ten ‘tone-unit types’ *as they combine with each of four sentence types,
statement, question, command and exclamation.

M. Halliday supposes that
English intonation contrasts are grammatical. He argues first that there is a
neutral or unmarked tone choice and then explains all other choices as
meaningful by contrast. Thus if one takes the statement I don’t know the
suggested intonational meanings are: Low Fall — neutral. Low Rise — non-committal,
High Rise — contradictory, Fall-Rise — with reservation, Rise-Fall — with
commitment. Unlike J.D. O’Connor and G.F. Arnold, M. Halliday attributes separate
significance to the prе-nuclear choices,
again taking one choice as neutral and the other(s) as meaningful by contrast. Using
the term ‘phonology’ with respect to intonation implies that there are
discrete, contrastive linguistic units underlying the continuously variable
melody of speech, and that these units do not have meaning (any more than a
phoneme has a meaning), but can function in context, singly and in combination,
to convey meaning. These implications are now widely accepted.

The intonational elements
are shown by the diacritics before the stressed syllables of words (the symbols
used vary from author to author, but the ones chosen here illustrate the
general point). Before ‘near’, for instance, there is a sloping line which
indicates a fall. The fall is specifically the nucleus, that is, the
accent which occurs last and often constitutes the most salient point of the
utterance. The stressed syllable of ‘Melanie’ initiates a pre-nuclear rise,
represented by the diagonal up-arrow.

These may be separated by
pauses, but more often in fluent speech the end of an intonational phrase will be
marked (if at all) only by a degree of slowing (pre-boundary lengthening), and
the real essence of an intonational phrase is its internal coherence in terms
of intonation pattern (rather in the way that we don’t expect to find a gap
between syllables, but rely for their demarcation on their internal coherence
in terms of lawful combinations of sounds). AM models assume that an
intonational phrase boundary may (or in most versions must) have a boundary
tone associated with it. We can illustrate this if we imagine a reply to
‘But Melanie’s never been near the manuscript’ consisting of an incredulous
‘Never?!’ with an overall falling-rising contour. Phenomena like this suggest
that intonational equivalence is captured more transparently  through the use
of boundary tones.

It is still impossible to
classify, in any practical analysis of intonation, all the fine shades of
feeling and attitude which can be conveyed by slight changes in pitch, by lengthening
or shortening tones, by increasing or decreasing the loudness of the voice, by
changing its quality, and in various other ways. On the other hand it is quite
possible to make a broad classification of intonation patterns which are so
different in their nature that they materially: change the meaning of the
utterance and to make different pitches and degrees of loudness in each of
them. Such an analysis resembles the phonetic analysis of sounds of a language
whereby phoneticians establish the number of significant sounds it uses.

The distinctive function
of intonation is realized in the opposition of the same word sequences which
differ in certain parameters of the intonation pattern. Intonation patterns
make their distinctive contribution at intonation group, phrase and text
levels. Thus in the phrases:

If  Mary, comes  let me à know at   once (a few
people are expected to come but it is Mary who interests the speaker)

If —>Mary comes  let
me à  know at   once (no one else but Mary is expected to come)

the intonation patterns
of the first intonation groups are opposed. In the opposition I enjoyed it —
I enjoyed it the pitch pattern operates over the whole phrase adding in the
second phrase the notion that the speaker has reservations (implying a continuation
something like ‘but it could have been a lot better’).

Any section of the
intonation pattern, any of its three constituents can perform the distinctive
function thus being phonological units. These units form a complex
system of intonemes, tonemes, accentemes, chronemes, etc. These phonological
units like phonemes consist of a number of variants. The terminal tonemes, for
instance, consist of a number of allotones, which are mutually non-distinctive.
The principal allotone is realized in the nucleus alone. The subsidiary
allotones are realized not only in the nucleus, but also in the pre-head and in
the tail, if there are any, cf.:

No. No, Tom. Oh, no,
Mary.

The most powerful
phonological unit is the terminal tone. The opposition of terminal tones
distinguishes different types of sentence. The same sequence of words may be
interpreted as a different syntactical type, i.e. a statement or a question, a
question or an exclamation being pronounced with different terminal tones,
e.g.:

Tom saw it (statement) — Tom saw
it? (general question)

Didn’t you enjoy it? (general question) — Didn’t
you enjoy it? (exclamation)

Will you be quiet? (request) — Will you
be quiet? (command).

The number of terminal
tones indicates the number of intonation groups. Sometimes the number of
intonation groups may be important for meaning. For example, the sentence My
sister, who lives in the South, has just arrived may mean two different
things. In oral speech it is marked by using two or three intonation groups. If
the meaning is: ‘my only sister who happens to live in the South’, then the
division would be into three intonation groups: My sister,   who lives in
the South,   has just arrived. On the other hand, if the meaning is ‘that
one of my two sisters, who lives in the South’, the division is into two
intonation groups.

Together with the
increase of loudness terminal tones serve to single out the semantic centre of
the utterance. By semantic centre we mean the information centre which may
simultaneously concentrate the expression of attitudes and feelings. The words
in an utterance do not necessarily all contribute an equal amount of
information, some are more important to the meaning than others. This largely
depends on the context or situation in which the intonation group or a phrase
is said. Some words are predisposed by their function in the language to be
stressed. In English lexical (content) words are generally accented while
grammatical (form) words are more likely to be unaccented although words
belonging to both of these groups may be unaccented or accented if the meaning
requires it.

Let us consider the
sentence It was an unusually rainy day. As the beginning of, say, a
story told on the radio the last three words would be particularly important,
they form the semantic centre with the nucleus on the word day. The
first three words play a minor part. The listener would get a pretty clear
picture of the story’s setting if the first three words were not heard and the
last three were heard clearly. If the last three words which form the semantic
centre were lost there would be virtually no information gained at all.

The same sentences may be
said in response to the question What sort of day was it? In this case
the word day in the reply would lose some of its force because the
questioner already possesses the information that it might otherwise have given
him. In this situation there are only two important words — unusually rainy —
and they would be sufficient as a complete answer to the question. The nucleus
will be on the word rainy. Going further still, in reply to the question
Did it rain yesterday? the single word unusually would bear the
major part of the information, would be, in this sense, more important than all
the others and consequently would be the nucleus of the intonation pattern.

Grammatical words may be
also important to the meaning if the context makes them so. The word was, for
instance, has had little value in the previous examples, but if the sentences
were said as a contradiction in the reply to It wasn ‘t a rainy day
yesterday, was it?, then was would be the most important word of all
and indeed, the reply might simply be It was, omitting the following
words as no longer worth saying. In this phrase the word was is the
nucleus of the semantic centre.

These variations of the
accentuation achieved by shifting the position of the terminal tone serve a
striking example of how the opposition of the distribution of terminal tones is
fulfilling the distinctive function.

All the other sections of
the intonation pattern differentiate only attitudinal or emotional meaning,
e.g.: being pronounced with the high рге-head, Hello sounds more friendly than
when pronounced with the low pre-head, cf.:

à He llo!  — O He llo!

More commonly, however,
different kinds of pre-heads, heads, the same as pitch ranges and levels fulfil
their distinctive function not alone but in the combination with other prosodic
constituents.

We have been concerned
with the relationship between intonation, grammatical patterns and lexical
composition. Usually the speaker’s intonation is in balance with the words and
structures he chooses. If he says something nice, his intonation usually
reflects the same characteristic. All types of questions, for instance, express
a certain amount of interest which is generally expressed in their grammatical
structure and a special interrogative intonation. However, there are cases when
intonation is in contradiction with the syntactic structure and the lexical
content of the utterance neutralizing and compensating them, e.g.: a statement
may sound questioning, interested. In this case intonation neutralizes its
grammatical structure. It compensates the grammatical means of expressing this
kind of meaning: Do you know what I’m here for? — No (questioning)

There are cases when
intonation neutralizes or compensates the lexical content of the utterance as
it happens, for instance, in the command Phone him at once, please, when
the meaning of the word please is neutralized by intonation.

Lack of balance between
intonation and word content, or intonation and the grammatical structure of the
utterance may serve special speech effects. A highly forceful or exciting
statement said with a very matter-of-fact intonation may, by its lack of
balance, produce a type of irony; if one says something very complimentary, but
with an intonation of contempt, the result is an insult.

                                            
Conclusion

Every language has its
own intonation, or speech melody. Intonation helps to recognize the language
that you hear in the same way as the melody of a song helps to recognize the
song that you hear. If you change the melody of a song, your listener will have
a hard time recognizing and understanding the song you are singing. The same
about intonation: if you speak English with Russian intonation, your listener
will have a problem understanding what you are saying.

English intonation is a
pretty complicated and varied phenomenon. There are dialectal and regional
differences in intonation, for example, there is a noticeable difference
between British and American intonation. Intonation may sound differently
depending on whether the speakers have high or low voices, speak fast or
slowly, loudly or quietly, energetically, emotionally, neutrally or listlessly.
Men and women may have their own differences and preferences in intonation. For
the purpose of studying, this variety may be described in several intonation
patterns that are characteristic of English speech.    

This study has argued for
the inclusion of intonational features of English in the syllabuses designed
for the teaching of English as a second/foreign language, and provided a
practical framework of English intonation, which is based on the present author’s
experiences. Intonation, the non-grammatical, non-lexical component of
communication, is an inseparable component of utterances. Speech without
intonational features is no more than a machine output. Intonation is a
paralinguistic device in vocal communication. It reveals many facets of the
communication process taking into consideration all factors present in the
discourse context. Therefore, it is an indispensable part of speech. Tones are
important discourse strategies to communicate effectively; simply, it is not
what you say, it is how you say it. Therefore, a proficiency in intonation is a
requirement for non-native learners of English for a better communicative
discourse with native or non-native speakers of English.

In general, linguists
distinguish several main types of English intonation, where falling intonation
and rising intonation are the two basic types. Other main types of intonation
include high fall, low fall, fall-rise, high rise, midlevel rise, low rise.
They are variations of the two basic types of intonation. Language learners
should master the typical patterns of standard falling and rising intonation
before studying their variations. 

Intonation is based on
several key components, such as pitch, sentence stress and rhythm.        

Pitch is the degree of
height of our voice in speech. Normal speaking pitch is at midlevel. Intonation
is formed by certain pitch changes, characteristic of a given language, for
example, falling intonation is formed by pitch changes from high to low, and
rising intonation is formed by pitch changes from low to high.   

Sentence stress makes the
utterance understandable to the listener by making the important words in the
sentence stressed, clear and higher in pitch and by shortening and obscuring
the unstressed words. Sentence stress provides rhythm in connected speech. All
words have their own stress in isolation, but when they are connected into a
sentence, important changes take place: content words are stressed and function
words aren’t; thought groups (i.e. logically connected groups of words) are
singled out by pauses and intonation; the stressed syllables occur at regular
intervals and are usually higher in pitch than the unstressed syllables; the
unstressed syllables are blended into a stream of sounds between the stressed
syllables; emphatic stress may be used in the sentence to single out the most
important word; the last stressed word in the sentence gets the strongest
stress with the help of falling or rising intonation. Developing the ability to
hear, understand and reproduce sentence stress is the main prerequisite to
mastering English intonation.       

                                           
Bibliography

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4.       Coulthard, M. 1977. An introduction
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5.       Cruttenden, A. 1986. lntonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6.       Crystal, D, 1969. Prosodic Systems
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7.       Dickerson, W. B. 1989. Stress in the
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8.       Halliday, M. A. K. 1967. Intonation
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Roach, P. 1983.
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13.     
Underhill, A.
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