22. What kinds of meaning can be differentiated by the opposition of terminal tones?

All kinds of meaning can be differentiated by the opposition of terminal tones: the syntactic type of sentences, attitudinal meaning and the actual meaning of the sentence.

According to the distinctive function of intonation, intonation can differentiate different kinds of meaning:

• the syntactic types (=communicative type) of sentences

Intonation can indicate whether the utterance is a statement, a question, a command or an exclamation.

e .g. Isn’t it ˏwonderful? (general question)

e .g. Isn’t it ˋwonderful! (exclamation)

e .g. Will you ˈstop ˎtalking? (command)

e .g. Will you ˈstop ˏtalking? (request)

So the change of the nuclear tone leads to the change of the syntactic type of sentence.

• attitudinal meaning

Intonation can express attitudes of the speakers. The same sentence can be pronounced in different ways & express different attitudinal meanings:

e.g. What did he ˋsay? (involved, interested)

e.g. What did he ˎsay? (detached, reserved) (спокойно)

e.g. What did he ̬say? (astonished, awed) (изумлённо)

Not only the nuclear tone, but the type of head and pre-head can differentiate attitudinal meaning:

e .g. It’s quite a ˈgood ˎlecture (uninvolved)

e.g. It’s ̌quite a ˈgood ˋlecture (impressed)

Of course the rate of utterance, loudness and voice quality influences attitudinal meaning.

• actual meaning of the utterance

Intonation can differentiate the meaning of the whole phrase. The change of meaning is achieved by the use of different terminal tones:

e .g. He’s an English ˎteacher (he comes from England)

e.g. He’s an ˎEnglish teacher (he teaches English)

23. The role of intonation in structuring the information content of the utterance.

Intonation is a language universal; it’s a very important component of communication because it is instrumental in conveying meanings, shades of meanings.

Intonation plays a very important role in structuring the discourse: it organizes words into a meaningful phrase.

Intonation highlights the most important information in an utterance which helps to distinguish which information is new and which is known to the listener.

The intonation in the message

( is divided into)

New information (the rheme) The speaker thinks the listener doesn’t know

Given information (the theme) The speaker thinks the listener already knows

New information - is the most important part of the message.

It’s concentrated in the information centre.

The information centre may consist of a single word or a number of words.

The nuclear tone marks the nucleus of the information centre → the information focus.

e.g. Nick went to ˎParis||

In most cases (80%) the last accented syllable (and, therefore) word is the most prominent in English.

This position of the nuclear tone is viewed as the basic, neutral, unmarked.

Marked position – when in actual speech the rheme and the nuclear tone is placed differently.

e.g. - Did Peter go to Paris?

-No, Mark went to Paris.

- What does the information content of an utterance depend on? = What determines the position of the nuclear tone (focus position)?

- Generally, it is the verbal context (the preceding text).