Understanding English Intonation

Posted by on Jun 23, 2025 in Applied Francophone Studies | 0 comments

Key Concepts

Intonation: The melody of speech; the musical pattern of sounds.

Pitch: Variation in the voice’s frequency.

Stress: A combination of loudness, pitch, and duration applied to a syllable or word.

Tone: Differences in the pitch of the voice used to convey meaning or attitude.

High, mid, and low tones are produced by variations in vocal cord vibration.

English is not a tone language; it is an intonational one. Meaning is often conveyed not just by *what* you say, but by *how* you say it.

The Three

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Understanding Intonation and Rhythm in Speech

Posted by on Feb 13, 2025 in Applied Francophone Studies | 0 comments

Isochrony, Stress, and Intonation in Speech

Isochrony: It is the postulated rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language (syllable-timed, stress-timed).

Lexical Stress: This is a property of words.

Rhythmic Stress: Sentence Stress. Rhythmic beat. It varies according to the speaker’s communicative intentions.

These are the systems of choice available to a speaker when deciding on the intonation of a bit of speech (a text).

Intonation Components

  • Tonality (Chunking): How many intonation patterns.
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