18. Utterance stress, its types and problems of classification. The interrelation of word-stress and utterance-stress.

In a sentence or an intonation group some words are of greater importance than the others. Words which provide most of the information are called notional words. Content words are brought out in speech by means of sentence-stress(utterance stress). Utterance stress is a special prominence given to one or more words according to their relative importance in a sentence/utterance.

In all l-ges stress serves a obvious deictic function which is to signal important information for th listeners. General rule in all l-ges is that the most important information in a phrase or longer utterance will be highlighted, that is will receive prominence through some kind of accentuation of a particular word or group of words. This accentuation may involve a noticeable:

1. change in a pitch

2. increase in duration or length of a syllable

3. increase in loudness

4. combination of 1 -3

In English all three of the prosodic features occur together to signal prominence.Usually the content words (nouns, verbs, adj, adv) are accentuated, the function words (prep, art, pron) or affixes are de-emphasized or backgrounded. Function words can be emphasized when they are at the end of the sentence, used for emphasis, used for contrast. Because they are unstressed in the stream of speech, function words exhibit vatious forms of reduction. The main function of sentence stress is to single out the communicative centre of the sentence which introduces the information. The stressed word in a given sentence which the speaker wishes to highlight receives prominence and is referred to as the semantic centre. When a conversation begins, the semantic centre is usually on the last content word. Words in a sentence can express new or old information. Words that express old information are unstressed, words that express new information are spoken with strong stress. The speaker can give words focus to contrast information; words which are contrasted have contrastive stress. The speaker can place special emphasis on a particular element – emphatic stress. The element receiving emphatic stress usually communicates new information within the sentence. English has certain anaphoric words whose function is to repeat a given information in a different way. They are typically not accented. Anaphoric words: he, she, it, they, one, some, one, ones, so, not, there, then, do.

The function of sentence stress is different and more complicated than of word stress. Word stress indicates the strongest syllable in a word, when sentence stress indicates the end of the syntagm, indicates the important words in a syntagm.

19. Speech melody as a subsystem of intonation. Functions of its components. Nuclear tones in the system of English intonation.

Speech melody is the changes in the pitch of the voice in connected speech. It makes the pitch component of intonation. The most important suprasegmental effects in a l-ge are provided by it. It makes the core of the intonation system.

The pitch parameters consist of the distinct variations in:

-the direction of the pitch

-the pitch level

-the pitch range

THE PITCH DIRECTION. Not all the stressed syllables are of equal importance. One of the syllables has a greater prominence than the others and forms the nucleus or focal point of an intonation pattern. Formally the nucleus may be described as a strongly stressed syllable which is generally the last stressed syllable of an intonation pattern which marks a significant change of the pitch direction, i.e. where the pitch goes distinctly up or down.

The nuclear tone is obligatory and the most important part of the intonation pattern without which it cannot exist. Tone is a pitch contour that begins on an accented syllable and continues to the end of a tone group: that is, up to but not including the next stressed syllable. Simple tones move only in one direction: fall or rise. The number of nuclear tones varies from 2 to 16. According to R.Kingdon the most important nuclear tones are:

Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, Fall-Rise.

Roughly speaking the falling tone of any level and range expresses ‘certainty’, ‘completeness’, ‘independence’, it has an air of finality. A rising tone expresses ‘uncertainty’, ‘incompleteness’, ‘dependence’. A general question, for example, has a rising tone. Parenthetical and subsidiary information in a statement is also often spoken with a rising tone, or a mid-level tone, for this information is incomplete, being dependent for its full understanding on the main assertion. Encouraging or polite denials, commands, invitations, greetings, farewells are generally spoken with rising tone. A falling-rising tone may combine the falling tone’s meaning of assertion, certainty with the rising tone’s meaning of dependence, incompleteness. At the end of a phrase it often conveys the feeling of reservation. In the beginning or in the middle of a phrase it is a more forceful alternative to the rising tone, expressing the assertion of one point, together with the implication that another point is to follow. The falling-rising tone consists of a fall in pitch followed by a rise. If the nucleus is the last syllable of the intonation group the fall and rise both take place on one syllable – the nuclear syllable. Otherwise the rise occurs in the remainder of the tone unit.

THE PITCH RANGE AND LEVEL. Since every syllable is pronounced on a definite pitch level, the pitch movement can be defined as a succession of pitch levels. The interval between two pitch levels is called pitch range. There are 3 pitch levels: HIGH, MID, LOW. In highly emotional speech there may be EXTRA-HIGH and EXTRA-LOW levels. Pitch ranges may be normal, wide and narrow.