The anatomy of English intonation.

General characteristics of intonation.

No language that we know of is spoken on a monotone; in all languages there are variations of pitch, though not all languages use these pitch variations in the same way. When we talk about English intonation we mean the pitch patterns of spoken English, the speech tunes or melodies, the musical features of English. All that is written here in this book – as indeed in any other book on intonation – is based on three major premises:

1. Intonation is significant. Utterances which are different only in respect to intonation may, as a result, differ from each other in meaning. The same phrase may be said in a downright, or reserved, or questioning tone of voice, amongst others.

2. Intonation is systematic. We do not invent the words that we use in speaking, nor do we invent the sounds of which they are composed; we learn them, mainly in childhood, and spend the rest of our lives using the same words and the same sounds. Similarly we do not invent tunes as we go along; we use tunes which we originally learned as children, and we do not choose them or use them at random. There is a limited number of pitch patterns in any language, and we use them to produce definite meaningful effects. It is therefore possible to describe frequently recurring patterns of pitch and to give rules for their use.

3. Intonation is characteristic. The pitch patterns or tunes of English are not necessarily the same in form as those of other languages, nor do they necessarily produce the same effect as they would in other languages, though there may be resemblances here and there. This being so, the pitch patterns of any other language may, and very often do, sound wrong if they are applied to English, and give rise to difficulties in communication. In the first place, the use of a tune which is not normally used in English will give a foreign accent to the speech and may make understanding difficult; secondly, and more serious, the use of a tune which is used in English but in different circumstances will lead to misunderstandings and possible embarrassment. As an example of this latter type of danger, the phrase Thank you may be said with one tune which makes it sound genuinely grateful, and with a different tune which makes it sound rather casual. Now if the foreign learner unintentionally uses the casual form when an English listener feels entitled to the other one, then the listener may get a very bad impression, since he will probably assume that the casual effect given by the tune was the one that the speaker deliberately set out to give. This is very important – English speakers are able to make a good deal of allowance for imperfect sound-making, but being for the most part unaware of the far-reaching effects of intonation in their own language, they are much less able to make the same allowance for mistakenly used tunes. The result is that they may hold the foreigner responsible for what his intonation seems to say – as they would rightly hold an Englishman responsible in a similar case – even though the tune does not faithfully reflect his intention.

The role of intonation.

Having seen that utterances differing only in tune may produce quite different reactions in the listener we can fairly conclude that the tune contributes considerably to the total meaning of an utterance. Yet pitch patterns do not, in English, change the basic meanings of words, the meanings we find defined in a dictionary. Whatever tune is used with the word Yes it remains the same affirmative. The contribution that intonation makes is to express, in addition to and beyond the bare words and grammatical constructions used, the speaker’s attitude to the situation in which he is placed. Clearly this is what the words and the constructions are also trying to express; but without intonation, as for instance in writing, they cannot do the whole job on their own; that is why different actors can give such widely varying interpretations of the same role in a play. We may regard the words as a rough guide to the meaning, and the intonation as giving greater precision and point, but this is not to say that intonation makes greater contribution to the whole than does the verbal structure; indeed the intonation without words would give a very vague impression of the total meaning. Nevertheless, it does provide important information which is not contained in any of the other features of utterances, and without this additional information there would be many more imprecisions and ambiguities in English speech than in fact there are.

To describe exactly the attitude which a given pitch pattern expresses is not always easy, for the very good reason that such attitudes are more often conveyed in tunes than in words, so that the words are not readily available. It is this difficulty that writers are constantly facing, and one measure of a writer’s success is his ability to solve the problem of suggesting the exact meaning he has in mind even though he has no direct method of conveying intonation. The English speaker learns by experience from earliest childhood what attitudes are linked with the various tunes he hears and uses, but he would be hard put to it to explain them. Our attempt to explain the attitudes, the meanings which the English tunes convey will be found in chapter II, but first we must show how the tunes of English are constructed and a method of symbolising the pitch treatment of English utterances.

Sense groups.

We neither think nor speak in single words; we express our thoughts in closely-knit groups of words which contribute to the situation in which we are placed at a given moment. Such groups of words are called sense groups. They are usually separated from each other by pauses, though on occasion these pauses may be suppressed; however, it will be simpler if we assume that the pauses are always present – as in most cases they are – and we shall mark them by means of a vertical bar.

E.g. - Good morning. How are you

- I’m very well, thank you. And you?

- Fine. The last time I saw you  you were just going to take your exam.

- Yes. I failed, unfortunately.

- Oh, bad luck.

Sense groups may consist of a single word or a number of words. Their length may vary according to the situation and the kind of speech being used; for example, in reading aloud a piece of descriptive prose the sense groups will tend to be longer than those found in impromptu conversation. Also a slow rate of delivery will favour more and shorter sense groups as compared with a fast rate. Compare the following:

In April,  June,  September  and November  there are only thirty days.

In April, June, September and November,  there are only thirty days.

On the whole, however, there is very little choice of grouping in conversational speech, and students will have no difficulty in identifying sense groups and the possible variations relating to them. This is important because we shall be describing the tunes of English in relation, not to single words or sentences or paragraphs, but to sense groups.

Prominence and accent.

We have said that the sense group affects the situation; it is equally true that the sense group is affected by the situation in which it occurs. The same words in the same order will not have the same value in different situations: some words will make a greater a smaller contribution to the whole according to the context in which the sense group is uttered.

Consider the sentence It was an unusually dark night. As the beginning of, say, a story told on the radio the last three words would be all be particularly important. It is easy to show that the first three words play a minor part; suppose that the first three words were drowned by some outside noise and the last three heard clearly, ”… unusually dark night”. Then the listener would still get a pretty clear picture of the story’s setting. But suppose the reverse were the case and only the first three words were heard clearly and the remainder lost, “It was an …”. In this case there would be virtually no information gained at all. So in the situation we have imagined the last three words all help to paint a picture and to this extent they are important.

But if the same sentence were said in response to the question What sort of night was it? the word night in the reply would lose some of its force because the questioner is already in possession of the information that it might otherwise have given him. In this situation there are only two important words – unusually dark – and they could be used alone as a complete answer to the question. Going further still, in reply to the question Was it dark last night? the single word unusually would bear the major part of the information, and would in this sense be more important than all the others. The situation, then, largely decides which word or words of a sense group are important, and any word in any sense group may be important if the context makes it so.

In the written language the reader is generally left to make up his own mind which are the important words, helped to a greater or lesser extent by the style of the author and by such devices as italicisation, spacing and the like; but in speech these words are specifically pointed out, they are made prominent, so that the listener shall be left in no doubt. This prominence is achieved by means of what we shall call accent. The workings of accent, what it is and how it brings important words into prominence, will become clearer as we go on to analyse tunes.

Answer the following questions:

1. What are the general characteristics of intonation?

2. What is the role of intonation?

3. What is a sense group? What does the length of a sense group depend on? Give an example of your own.

4. Why is prominence so important? How does it affect the meaning of an utterance?

The tunes of single-syllable sense groups.

Up to this point we have used the term tune in a very general way; we shall now define it as the complete pitch treatment of a sense group. Tunes, like sense groups, may be long or short, but we shall start by dealing with the shortest possible tunes, those found in sense groups consisting of a single, monosyllabic word. Below are six examples showing different tunes for the word Two in different contexts.

1. PETER: Would you like one packet, or two?

JOHN: _\ Two.

2. PETER: How many shoes in a pair?

JOHN: ^\ Two.

PETER: Did you know Richard has two wives?

JOHN: ^Two!

3. PETER: How many cigarettes have you got?

JOHN: _/ Two.

4. PETER: I’ve only got two pounds.

JOHN: ^/ Two?

5. PETER: You’ve got one brother, haven’t you?

JOHN: ^{\ /} Two.

The six tunes are:

Low Fall: the voice falls during the word from a medium to a very low pitch.

High Fall: the voice falls during the word from a high to a very low pitch.

Rise-Fall: the voice first rises from a fairly low to a high pitch, and then quickly falls to a very low pitch.

Low Rise: the voice rises during the word from a low to a medium pitch or a little above.

High Rise: the voice rises during the word from a medium to a high pitch.

Fall-Rise: the voice first falls from a fairly high to rather low pitch, and then, still within the word, rises to a medium pitch.

The tunes of longer sense groups containing only one important word.

In the examples above, the word Two, being the only word in the sense group, must naturally be important (otherwise there would be no point in saying it) and therefore prominent. Now suppose that John’s response was not Two but Twenty. This is still a sense group of a single prominent word, but there are now two syllables instead of one. The first of these syllables is stressed, i.e. said with the greater general effort than the second, which is unstressed. Our six tunes will now be as follows (and here we use large dots to represent the stressed syllable and smaller ones to represent the unstressed syllable):

Low Fall: Twenty. High Fall: Twenty. Rise-Fall: Twenty. Twenty.

Low Rise: Twenty. High Rise: Twenty. Fall-Rise: Twenty.

The similarities with the treatment of Two are obvious, but there are some differences which must be noticed. In the two rising tunes the stressed syllable is level in pitch and there is no upward glide as there was in Two, but rather a jump from the pitch of the stressed to that of the unstressed syllable; in other words the rise is not complete before the end of the sense group. In the same way the Fall-Rise is spread over the two syllables and not completed on the first. Whether or not, in the falling tunes, the fall is completed within the stressed syllable depends on the structure of that syllable: if the stressed vowel is short and followed by a voiceless sound (having no vocal cord vibration and therefore no pitch) there is often not time to complete the fall within the stressed syllable, and the effect is of a jump from the higher to the lower pitch level.

E.g. Fifty. Sixty.

If, on the other hand, the stressed syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, or short vowel followed by a voiced sound, then the fall is usually completed within that syllable.

E.g. Forty. Eighty. Twenty.

The Rise-Fall may be said in either of the two ways shown above.

Below are six more examples, this time of sense groups containing one prominent word followed by other words which are not prominent.

1. PETER: Will you have one packet, or two?

JOHN: Two, Peter.

2. PETER: How many shoes in a pair?

JOHN: Two, you silly chap.

3. PETER: Did you know Richard has two wives?

JOHN: Two, indeed! Two, indeed!

4. PETER: How many cigarettes have you got?

JOHN: Two, I think.

5. PETER: I’ve only got two pounds.

JOHN: Two, did you say?

6. PETER: You’ve got one brother, haven’t you?

JOHN: Two, you mean.

These examples show that when the single prominent word is followed by other words which are not prominent, the pitch patterns remain very similar to the patterns in the examples Two and Twenty. In the Low Fall and High Fall the fall of the voice to the lowest pitch level takes place during the stressed syllable of the prominent word or from that syllable to the next, whether in the same word or not, and any subsequent syllables are all on the same low level. The Rise-Fall is spread over either two or three syllables, as shown above, both patterns being commonly heard; once the voice has reached the low pitch, on either the second or third syllable, it continues on this pitch during any other following syllables. In the Low Rise and High Rise the stressed syllable of the prominent word does not itself rise in pitch, but each of the following syllables is a step higher than the previous one, and the final pitch, medium in the case of the Low Rise and high in the case of the High Rise, is reached on the last syllable of the sense group. So whereas in the Low and High Fall the fall must be completed not later than the syllable immediately following the stressed syllable of the prominent word, in the Low and High Rise the rise is not complete until the end of the sense group. It may be noticed too that in the rising tunes, when the final syllable of the sense group is stressed (and only then), there is a tendency to slide upwards in pitch during the syllable, whereas there is no parallel tendency in the falling tunes. In the Fall-Rise the fall takes place during the stressed syllable of the prominent word (or from that syllable to the next) and the rise takes place on or from the last stressed syllable of the sense group.

E.g. I don’t want it.

If there is no stressed syllable following the fall, then the rise takes place between the last two syllables.

E.g. Fortunately.

Nucleus and tail.

The case we have just been discussing are important because all tunes, and not merely those with a single prominent word, must end in one of the ways described above. No matter how long or how short the sense group is, no matter how many or how few prominent words it contains, the pattern of its tune from the stressed syllable of the last prominent word onwards will correspond to one or other of the six general patterns. In the examples below all the prominent words are italicized and it can be seen that, although the tunes differ in various ways, the ending conform to the patterns already laid down.

Low Fall ending: I want to be absolutely sure about it.

High Fall ending: What on earth did you do that for, Peter?

Rise-Fall ending: I quite agree with you, my dear chap.

Low Rise ending: Would you like to come to the theatre with us?

High Rise ending: It’s not fair, did you say?

Fall Rise ending: I doubt whether that would be any good.

If, then, we know in general terms what tune we wish to use in saying any sense group, and if we can identify the stressed syllable of the last prominent word, we now know the exact pattern of the tune’s ending. Clearly the stressed syllable of the last prominent word is a landmark of the highest importance, and it is on this syllable that the whole tune centres. This syllable is called the nucleus of the tune, and syllables following the nucleus are called the tail. In our last example above the nucleus is that and the tail contains all the words would be any good.

The rises and falls which take place on the nucleus or start from it are known as nuclear tones, of which there are six, corresponding to the six tune endings already described. By definition there can be no prominent word in the tail, but the tail may contain stressed words; stress alone therefore, after the nucleus, does not imply accent. The last prominent word is accented, that is, made to stand out, not by stress alone, but by combination of stress and pitch features.

So far, in order to give a fairly complete picture of the intonation of our examples, we have used a graphic method of large and small dots. It is more convenient in practice to use a shorter and more economical method of marking the intonation. This consists of placing a single symbol immediately before the nucleus to indicate the nuclear tone; this symbol tells us, by its position and its shape, which syllable is the nucleus of the tune and which of the six main endings is to be used.

Low fall:	\ Two.	\ Twenty.	\ Seventy.
High Fall:	\ Two.	\ Twenty.	\ Seventy.
Rise-Fall:	^Two.	^Twenty.	^Seventy.
Low Rise:	/ Two.	/ Twenty.	/ Seventy.
High Rise:	/ Two.	/ Twenty.	/ Seventy.
Fall-Rise:	\ / Two.	\ / Twenty.	\ / Seventy.

Unstressed syllables in the tail have no separate symbol, but stressed syllables are marked, not because they make any difference to the intonation, but because they contribute to the rhythmical pattern of the sense group. The symbol [ _ ] is placed immediately before each stressed syllable on, or beginning on, the lowest pitch level, and the symbol [ ˙ ] before any stressed syllable which is higher than the lowest pitch.

Low Fall:	\Two, ıPeter.
High fall:	\ Two, you ısilly ıchap.
Rise-Fall:	^Two, inıdeed!
Low Rise:	/Two, I ·think.
High Rise:	/Two, did you ·say?
Fall-Rise:	\ / Two, you ımean.

Pre-nuclear patterns.

We know the main endings that tunes may have, but up to now we have considered only sense groups with a single prominent word right at the beginning of the group. Now we must consider sense groups containing words and syllables before the nucleus. It is convenient to divide the pre-nuclear pattern (i.e. that part of the tune preceding the nucleus) into two parts, the head and the pre-head. The head begins with the stressed syllable of the first prominent word (before the nucleus) and ends with the syllable immediately preceding the nucleus; the pre-head consists of any syllables before the stressed syllable of the first prominent word. In the examples below, prominent words are italicised.

| It was an un|usually dark | night.|

Pre-head Head Nucleus

The head begins with the stressed syllable of unusually, that is, the second syllable, and ends with dark, the last syllable before the nucleus, which is night. Notice that the first (unstressed) syllable of unusually belongs to the pre-head, together with the first three words of the sense group which are all unstressed.

|Where’s | John? |

Head Nucleus

Here the head consists of a single syllable and there is no pre-head, since there are no syllables before the head.

| I could have | kicked | myself.|

Pre-head Nucleus Tail

In this case there is no head since there is only one prominent word, and that must of course be nucleus. So the pre-head and the head may occur together or separately, or they may not be present at all if the nucleus is the first syllable of a sense group; but the nucleus is always present in every complete tune.

Heads.

There are three different types of head, the low head, the stepping head and the sliding head.

The Low Head.

In the usual form of the low head, all the syllables contained in it are said on the same, rather low pitch. Before a low-falling nucleus this pitch is a little higher than the pitch of any tail.

E.g. Don’t be so impatient, then.

Before the low-rising nucleus the low head must be at the same pitch as the beginning of the rise.

E.g. No one’s going to hurt you.

Before the high-falling nucleus, the low head most often starts on a low pitch but rises gradually, syllable by syllable, to end just below the starting pitch of the nucleus.

E.g. How did you manage to do that?

In the low head, the important words are singled out for attention – or accented – by means of stress alone, with no help from pitch features of the kind mentioned in dealing with the accentuation of the nuclear word. Words which are not prominent do not bear stress.

E.g. Don’t upset yourself about that.

In this example the stresses which might be heard in other circumstances on the second syllables of yourself and about are suppressed, and the four consecutive unstressed syllables are all said more quickly as a result.

The low head is symbolised by placing the mark [ _ıı ] before the stressed syllable of each prominent word in it. Unstressed syllables are left unmarked. The examples quoted in this section thus read as follows:

_ıı Don’t be so im_\ patient, _ıthen.

_ıı No one’s going to _/ hurt you.

_ıı How did you _ıımanage to do ^\ that?

_ıı Don’t up_ııset yourself about _/ that.

The Stepping Head.

In the stepping head, the stressed syllable of the first important word is on a high, level pitch; that of the second important word is a step lower; that of the third a step lower still, and so on until the nucleus is reached.

E.g. Why did you tell me you couldn’t come?

Accent in the stepping head is indicated by stress and pitch combined: a step down in pitch at the stressed syllable marks the word concerned as important. Unstressed syllables are said on the same pitch as the previous accented syllable. If a stress occurs in this head without a downward step in pitch, the word concerned is not accented.

E.g. Are you coming back again on Sunday?

The stresses on the words coming and again do not accent those words because there is no change of pitch accompanying them. Usually the stress in such words is weakened if not altogether suppressed.

If the head contains only one prominent word, the accented syllable of that word is high in pitch and there is of course no step downward because the only other accented syllable is the nucleus.

E.g.

How do you do?

Come over here a minute.

Apart from this case, each accented syllable is a step lower in pitch than the previous syllable; the exact pitch interval of the downward steps will vary in two ways:

1. The more accented syllables in the sense group, the smaller the downward step. In a head containing only two prominent words the whole available range can be devoted to the single step down.

E.g. Come and see me tomorrow.

When there are, say, five accented syllables in the head, the available pitch range must be divided between the four steps.

E.g. Why did you tell me that Regent’s Park was quite close?

2. Before a Low fall or a High Rise the stepping head must end slightly higher in pitch than the beginning of the fall or rise; the interval available for the total fall in pitch within the head is therefore less than it is before the High Fall or the Low Rise.

E.g. Tell him to go away. Tell him to go away.

Tell him to go away? Tell him to go away.

The stepping head is symbolised by placing the symbol [ ^ ] immediately before each accented syllable. The syllable which is stressed but not accented has the symbol [ ˙ ] placed before it. The examples quoted in this section are completely marked up as follows:

^Why did you ^tell me you ^couldn’t _\ come?

^Are you ˙coming ^back a˙gain on _/ Sunday?

^How do you ^\ do?

^Come over _/ here a ˙minute.

^How _\ stupid!

^Come and ^see me to_\ morrow.

^Why did you ^tell me ^Regent’s ^Park was ^quite _\ close?

^Tell him to ^go a_\ way.

The Sliding Head.

This is similar to the stepping head, as will be seen from the following example:

Everyone’s bound to see it sometime.

The pattern of the accented syllables is exactly that found in the stepping head, the first high, the second lower, and so on, but the accented syllables are treated differently: instead of being said on the same pitch as the previous accented syllable they form a descending sequence, the first lower than the accented syllable, the second lower still, and so on. The last syllable of such a sequence may be on a very low pitch indeed but in any case it will always be lower in pitch than the starting pitch of the following accented syllable. If the structure of the sense group is such that there are no unaccented syllables between successive accented ones, then the accented syllables themselves may perform the downward slide, each successive slide beginning a step lower than the preceding one. This is quite different from anything found in the stepping head.

E.g. You can’t just leave it.

Accent is again marked in this head by a combination of stress and pitch features: a stressed syllable which is at the beginning of one of the downward slides or which itself slides downwards, as in the last example, is accented. Stressed syllables in words which are not prominent conform to the pitch pattern of unstressed syllables.

E.g. No-one’s likely to notice.

The stressed syllable of likely continues the downward slide and is not a step higher than the previous unstressed syllable; the word is therefore not accented.

To symbolise the sliding head the mark [ ^ ] is placed immediately before each accented syllable; any stressed but unaccented syllable is preceded by [ ˙ ]. The examples quoted in this section are fully marked as follows:

^Everyone’s ^bound to ^see it ^\/sometime.

You ^can’t ^just ^\/ leave it.

^No-one’s ˙likely to ^\/notice.

Pre-heads.

The pre-head of a tune consists of the unaccented syllables before the first accented one, whether the latter is the nucleus or the beginning of the head. There are two types of pre-head, the low pre-head and the high pre-head.

The Low Pre-head.

All the syllables in the low pre-head are said on the same rather low pitch.

E.g. It was an unusually dark night.

The pitch (like that of the low head) is not usually so low as that of a final fall, but it must never be higher than the starting pitch of the first accented syllable. Before the two falls, the Rise-Fall, the High Rise and the Fall Rise it must be lower than the starting pitch of the nucleus; and before the stepping head and the sliding head it must be lower than the initial pitch of the head.

E.g. You’re a fool. I was at school.

Oh, do you, indeed? Did you see him?

You’ll be late. He can be absolutely infuriating.

It was an expensive oversight.

Before the Low Rise and the low head, the low pre-head is on the same pitch level as the start of the rise or the head.

E.g. I believe so. You’re looking very smart.

Before the stepping and sliding heads the low pre-head may contain stressed syllables, but these are not to be considered accented.

E.g. The man was perfectly right.

The address is reasonably clear.

It is usual for such stresses to be weakened if not wholly suppressed.

Unstressed syllables in the low pre-head are not marked at all; any unmarked syllables at the beginning of a sense group are therefore taken to belong to the low pre-head. Stressed syllables in the low pre-head, if they occur, are marked by placing the symbol [ ˙ ] immediately before them. The following examples are thus completely marked:

I was at ^\school.

It was an ex^pensive ^\/over_sight.

The ˙man was ^perfectly _\right.

The High Pre-head.

In the high pre-head all syllables are said on the same relatively high pitch.

E.g. But you can’t do that.

The high pre-head never contains stressed syllables since these, on a high pitch, would immediately become accented; nor is the high pre-head ever very long, rarely containing more than two or three syllables. It is also very much less common than the low pre-head. The high pre-head before a High Fall is said on the same pitch as the beginning of the fall.

E.g. You didn’t! It was amazing.

Before any other nuclear tone or any head the high pre-head is said on a pitch higher than the beginning of the following accented syllable.

E.g. Low Fall: The brute! Rise-Fall: It was amazing!

Low Rise: Hullo. High Rise: At eleven?

Fall-Rise: It wasn’t. Low Head: It’s an extraordinary thing.

Stepping Head: I can’t be bothered.

Sliding Head: He’s the queerest chap.

The symbol [ ¯ ] is used to denote the high pre-head and it is placed before the first word of the sense group. All syllables following this symbol and preceding the next tone mark are taken to belong to the high pre-head. The examples given above are completely marked as follows:

¯But you _ııcan’t do _/that.

¯You ^\didn’t!

¯It was a^\mazing!

¯The _\brute!

¯It was a^mazing!

¯Hul_/lo.

¯At e^/leven?

¯It ^\/wasn’t.

¯It’s an ex _ııtraordinary _/thing.

¯I ^can’t be _\bothered.

¯He’s the ^queerest ^\/chap.

Compound tunes.

All the tunes we have dealt with up to now have contained only one nuclear tone; these are called simple tunes, and the majority of tunes in English are of this kind. However, there are tunes which contain more than one nuclear tone, and these are called compound tunes.

Compound tunes may be formed by omission of a pause between what would otherwise be separate sense groups with simple tunes:

E.g. Do you take sugar? ^\No, I ^\don’t.

You were here yesterday. ^\No, I _/wasn’t.

This omission of pause is rather common in conversational speech, since the shape of the tunes is usually sufficient to delimit the sense groups without pause. We have preferred in such cases to put pause marks in rather than leave them out, since the meaning of such compound tunes is merely the sum of the meaning of the two consecutive simple tunes, and the interpretation of compounds of this kind presents no difficulties beyond those connected with simple tunes.

There are two other types of compound tunes which are important for the foreign student:

High Fall(s) followed by a High Fall or Fall-Rise.

E.g.

You ^\simply ^\can’t i^\magine how _ıdull it _ıwas

I could ^\hardly ^\bear to ^\shake his ^\hand.

You know ^\perfectly ^\well I ^\never al^\low it.

You can ^\have it if you ^\/like.

I’m ^\absolutely ^\certain I ^\/brought it.

In these examples the last important word is marked by either a High Falling tone or a Fall-Rising tone; all the other important words are marked by a High Fall. Compare the first example with the following:

You ^simply ^can’t i^\magine how _ıdull it _ıwas.

The prominence given to the words simply can’t by the Stepping Head is less than that given by the two High Falls, but otherwise the effect of the tunes is much the same. The function of the High Falls is simply to provide a greater degree of accent for the words on which they occur, and this is true of all the above examples.

High Fall followed by Low Rise.

E.g.

I ^\like _/chocolate.

You can ^leave them ^\all if you _/like.

I’d ^like a^\nother if you _ııdon’t _/mind.

This compound tune consists in its simplest form of a High Fall on one word and a Low Rise on a following word any intervening syllables being low in pitch. The resulting pattern may be very similar to some forms of the simple tune containing the Fall-Rise nuclear tone. They differ a great deal, however, in their meanings, so it is necessary to keep them separate. The compound tune is basically a combination of a simple tune ending in a Low Rise. Compare the following:

1. By the ^time he ar_/rived | he was com^pletely ex^\hausted.

2. He was com^pletely ex^\hausted by the _ııtime he ar_/rived.

In a) the adverbial clause precedes the main clause and is given a separate rising tune, but in b), where the main clause comes first, the two tunes are, as it were, welded together into one. The fall is still on the word exhausted and the rise on the word arrived, but there is no longer any pause and the word time is said on a low rather than a high pitch. Suppose that the last example was said with the simple Fall-Rise tune:

He was com^pletely ex^\/ hausted by the _ıtime he ar_ırived.

The differences between this and the compound Fall plus Rise are as follows:

1. In the simple tune the Sliding Head is used; in the compound tune the Stepping Head.

2. The fall in pitch on exhausted is from a higher level in the compound tune than in the simple.

3. The fall in pitch may be to a lower level in the compound tune than in the simple.

4. In the simple tune the syllables after the fall may gradually rise one after the other; in the compound they are always at the lowest level until the final Low Rise.

5. In the simple tune the stresses after the fall may be weakened or suppressed; in the compound this is never so.

If all this differences are operating, the patterns of pitch and stress will be as follows:

He was com^pletely ex^\hausted by the _ııtime he ar_/rived.

He was com^pletely ex^\/hausted by the _ıtime he ar_ırived.

However, all these differences may not be operating; there may be no head needed in the tune, and there may be no distinction between the final pitch of the fall, the stressing of syllables after the fall, and the way the syllables reach the terminal pitch. All that is left then is the height of the fall, and this is not always a reliable enough guide. So it is perfectly possible for the following to be regarded as either a simple Fall-Rise or a compound Fall plus Rise:

I like chocolate.

Yet because the simple and the compound tunes express very different attitudes on the part of the speaker it is helpful, even in such cases, to distinguish the two tunes in notation.

E.g. Simple tune: I ^\/like _chocolate.

Compound tune: I ^\like _/chocolate.

Compare also the following pairs, which may be indistinguishable in form:

I ^\/hope you’ll be _able to _come.

I ^\hope you’ll be _ııable to _/come.

^\/Try not to be _later than _six.

^\Try not to be _ıılater than _/six.

One other point is worth remembering: because the Fall plus Rise is a compound, the fall and the rise always occur on separate words. Therefore if both the fall and the rise occur on one word, the pattern must be an example of the simple Fall-Rise.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is a tune? What are the six tunes of single-syllable sense groups?

2. What are the peculiarities of longer sense groups?

3. What is the nucleus? What is the tail? How do we know where they separate from one another? What are the nuclear tones?

4. What are the possible items of a pre-nuclear pattern?

5. What types of head can you name?

6. What types of pre-head can you name?

7. What is the difference between simple tunes and compound tunes?

Find and mark the possible items of the following intonation patterns. Use the example to help you.

Ex. | I could have | ^\ kicked | my_self.|

Pre-head Nucleus Tail

1. They ^oughtn’t to have ^\ told you.

2. What a ^terrible _\ rail di_saster!

3. ¯When ^\ will you be _giving _up, d’you _think?

4. Jack’s _ııstill in the ^\ bath.

5. It’s ^no use ˙asking ^{\ /}Philip.

6. ¯Would you ^mind ^handing me that _/brush?

7. _/Did you ˙call him a ˙liar?

8. I’m a^fraid we’ve ˙finished your ^\ whisky.

9. ^Malcolm ˙isn’t _\coming.

10. _ııWhy don’t they _ııwork in the ^\ evenings?

11. ˙Thank you ^very ^much in_\ deed.

12. It’s ^\ Ann’s _turn, you _know.

Tunes and Tone Groups.

A simple tune may have a low pre-head, a high pre-head or no pre-head at all; it may have one of the three different kinds of head or no head at all; and it will have one of the six nuclear tones (with or without the appropriate tail). If every one of these parts of a tune can be combined with every other part, the total number of basic pitch patterns will be seventy-two, without even considering compound tunes. But it is not necessary to deal with seventy-two or more different units for two reasons:

1. Some of the patterns occur very much more frequently and with a much wider usefulness than others; attention must be concentrated, at least for a time, on the commonest ones.

2. Some patterns which are different have differences of meaning so slight that they would be very difficult to define in any very helpful way. Indeed some patterns which are different have exactly the same meaning, so far as the intonation is concerned. This is the case with the two examples below:

^John was ^\ late.

But ^John was ^\ late.

The difference between the two tunes is certainly very slight – a low pitched unstressed syllable at the beginning of the second example which is absent in the first – but even so the actual patterns of pitch are not identical. Yet the meaning, or at any rate that part of it which the intonation gives, is exactly the same in both cases; and as it is meaning which is the really important factor, we can usefully group together any tunes which mean substantially the same. These groups of tunes all conveying the same attitude on the part of the speaker are called Tone Groups. The tunes within each tone group have pitch features in common which distinguish them from tunes belonging to any other tone group. Below are listed ten tone groups with a specification of all the features found in the tunes of each tone group. Items enclosed in brackets may be present or absent; unbracketed items must be present. Tails are not mentioned since their presence or absence never affects the intonation meaning.

Tone Group I: (Low Pre-Head +) (Low Head +) Low Fall.

E.g. _\No. _\Nobody. Im_\possible.

It’s ri_\diculous. I _ııcan’t be _\bothered.

_ııDon’t _\mention it. _ııJohn’s about _\thirty.

Tone Group II: (Low Pre-Head +) Stepping Head + Low Fall or High Pre-Head + Low Fall.

E.g. ^Sit _\down. ^What a _\pity!

What a ^perfectly ^awful ^thing to _\happen!

He expected ^everyone ^else to ^think as _\he did.

¯The _\brute! ¯Good _\morning. ¯It was ap_\palling.

Tone Group III: (Low Pre-Head +) (Low Head +) High Fall.

E.g. ^\No. ^\Nonsense. It’s ab^\surd.

_ııWhy did you ^\do it?

I could _ııhardly be_ıılieve my ^\eyes.

Tone Group IV: (Low Pre-Head +) Stepping Head + High Fall or (Low Pre-Head +) High Fall(s) + High Fall or High Pre-Head + High Fall.

E.g. ^What’s ^\that? I ^can’t be^\lieve it.

I ^can’t i^magine ^why he ^\ did it.

^\When did you ^\order it? I ^\don’t want ^\anything.

¯Why ^\me? ¯By ^\all means _ıask him.

Tone Group V: (Low Pre-Head +) (Stepping Head +) Rise Fall.

E.g. ^Yes. ^Certainly. ^Lot’s of _ıpeople _ıdo it.

It’s ri^diculous. I can i^magine.

I can ^hardly ^wait to ^hear about it.

Tone Group VI: (Low Pre-Head +) (Low Head +) Low Rise.

E.g. _/No. _/That ^·won’t ^·matter.

It’s _ııall _/right.

_ııNobody’s going to _ııtake it a_/way from you.

Tone Group VII: (Low Pre-Head +) Stepping Head + Low Rise or High Pre-Head + Low Rise.

E.g. ^What’s _/that? ^Try not to be _/late.

^Will you be ^staying to _/lunch?

¯Is _/John ^·coming? ¯Hul_/lo.

Tone Group VIII: (Low Pre-Head +) (Stepping Head +) High Rise.

E.g. ^/Sugar? Is ^/this the ^·one?

You ^think I’ll en^/joy it?

^What’s ^/that did you ^·say?

Tone Group IX: (Low Pre-Head +) (Sliding Head +) Fall-Rise or (Low Pre-Head +) (High Fall(s) +) Fall-Rise.

E.g. ^\/Possibly. ^\/Some people can ^·do it.

You can ^\/try.

^Nobody ^·wants to ^\/force you to ^·do it.

It ^isn’t ^·only a ^question of ^\/money.

It’s ^\not my ^\/brother’s ^·fault.

I ^\don’t think you ^\/ought to ^·go.

Tone Group X: (Low Pre-Head +) (Stepping Head +) High Fall + Low Rise.

E.g. ^\That’s _/John. ^\That’s the _ııone I _/wanted.

I should ^\like one of _/those.

I ^shouldn’t be sur^prised if it was ^\over by the _ııtime we _/get there.

The High Pre-Head, which is mentioned only in Tone Group II, IV and VII above, also occurs instead of the Low Pre-Head in other cases. These cases and the contribution which the High Pre-Head makes to the meaning of utterances will be dealt with at the end of the next chapter.

Answer the following questions:

1. Why do we mark out only 10 main pitch patterns not dealing with all the variety of them?

2. What is the definition of a tone group?

II