Intonation

1. The concept of intonation in our country and abroad

2. Anatomy (тщательный анализ) of an English intonation group (pattern)

3. Functional approach to intonation

Prosody – просодия

Optional – необязательный

Attitude

Timbre – тембр голоса

Nuclear – ядерный

To emphasize – подчёркивать, ударять

Descending – нисходящий

Ascending – восходящий

To imply – подразумевать, означать

To fulfil - осуществлять

To interpret – интерпретировать

As is known, the information conveyed by a sentence is expressed not only by proper word and grammatical structure, but also by intonation. No sentence can exist without intonation. As Allan says “Sounds constitute the body of words. Words give only a rough guide to meaning, while intonation is the soul of speech”. Different phoneticians define intonation differently.

Soviet phoneticians stayed that intonation is the complex unit of 3 components, formed by variations of voice pitch, loudness (the descendent stress) and tempo (the rate of speech with pausation). Some linguists regard speech timbre as the fourth component of intonation. But up to now timbre hasn’t been sufficiently investigated. Moscow phoneticians speak of three prosodic components of the intonation. The word “prosody” substitute the term intonation. This complex unit together with the grammatical structure and the lexical composition of the sentence serve to express the speaker’s ideas or thought, his emotions, feelings and attitude, towards the contents of the sentence or reality.

Foreign linguists have another approach to intonation. In the British tradition intonation is associated only with a pitch variation (melody) only. They think it has an important function of conveying a message. Armstrong and Ward: “By intonation we mean the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice when we speak”. Daniel Jones: “Intonation may be defined as the variations that take place in the pitch of the voice in connected speech”. Later he had to admit “there are, however, important relations between intonation and stress in English”. Jimson also interprets intonation as “variation of pitch – rises and falls in pitch level, emphasizing the fact that various degrees of accentuation in an utterance may be signaled by means of intonation”. American phoneticians do not consider stress as a component of intonation, although they also regard voice pitch and stress closely connected with each other. As is known, each syllable is pronounced with a definite voice pitch, each syllable also bears a certain stress; together with tempo they form an intonation pattern (group).

Parts, the intonation pattern consist of:

1. The nuclear tone (ядерный тон) is the most important and imphonic part

Kingdom (a famous British linguist) singles out 7 nuclear tones – low fall, high fall, low rise, high rise, fall rise, rise fall, rise fall rise. First 5 are obligatory, while rise fall and rise fall rise are optional and can be substituted by fall rise.

2. “The tail” (заядерный тон) that follows the nuclear tone, but is not independent. It follows the direction of the nuclear tone and together with the nuclear tone it forms the so-called “terminal tone” (терминальный, конечный тон)