Understanding English Intonation: Patterns and Functions
Tones in English Intonation
- Level: A level tone is used in certain restricted contexts. It conveys the feeling of saying something routine, uninteresting, or boring.
- Fall: A falling tone is usually regarded as neutral. When we use the falling tone, we understand that there is nothing more to be said, or it conveys the sense of completion.
- Rise: The rising tone gives the impression that something more is to follow. It is like an invitation to continue or to express readiness to give more information.
- Fall-Rise: The fall-rise tone is mainly used for expressing limited agreement or response with reservations. It is also used to express some hesitation or reservation.
- Rise-Fall: A rise-fall tone is used to express strong feelings of approval, disapproval, or surprise.
What is the Tonic Syllable?
The tonic syllable is the syllable that carries the tone in a tone unit. This tonic syllable is a syllable that has a certain degree of prominence.
Structure of the Tone Unit
Most tone units are of the type called simple; others are compound. The tonic syllable is an obligatory component of the tone unit. The head of the tone unit is the part of the tone unit that extends from the first stressed syllable up to the tonic syllable. The pre-head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone unit preceding the first stressed syllable. The syllables after the tonic syllable until the end of the tone unit are called the tail.
Main Functions of Intonation
Intonation makes it easier for the listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey. Among the most often proposed functions of intonation are:
- Attitudinal Function: Intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes as we speak, and this adds a special kind of meaning to spoken language. For example, the same sentence may be said in different ways, which might be labeled as happy, angry, sad, etc.
- Accentual Function: Intonation helps to produce the effect of prominence in syllables that need to be perceived as stressed. In particular, the placing of tonic stress on a particular syllable marks out the word to which it belongs as the most important in the tone unit. While word stress is independent of intonation, the placement of tonic stress is a function of intonation.
- Grammatical Function: The listener is better able to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is being said by using information contained in the intonation. For example, such things as the placement of boundaries between phrases, clauses, or sentences, the difference between questions and statements, and the use of grammatical subordination may be indicated.
- Discourse Function: Looking at the act of speaking in a broader way, we can see that intonation can signal to the listener what is to be taken as “new” information and what is already “given”. It can suggest when the speaker is indicating some sort of contrast or link with material in another tone unit and, in conversation, can convey to the listener what kind of response is expected.
Understanding Intonation: Key Issues
To understand intonation, we should pay attention to the form of intonation (which tone the speaker uses) and to the function of intonation (what the linguistic meaning carried by the tone is).
Linguistically Significant Pitch Characteristics
In order to be linguistically significant, the variations in the pitch of the voice must be perceptible and must be under the speaker’s control.
Definitions
- Utterance: An utterance is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear pause.
- Tone Language: Tone languages are languages in which the tones used can determine the meaning of the word. A change of tone changes the meaning of the word.
- Tone: Tone refers to the overall behavior of the pitch of the voice.
- Pitch: The pitch of the voice refers to an auditory sensation perceived by the hearer.