4. Read and transcribe the following sentences.

1. As soon as the girl noticed Peter she decided to increase her speed as she didn't want him to catch up with her.

2. As the bridge across the river was under repair and the woman was going to cross it, I began crying to her to stop but it was too late.

3. Jane's grandmother had become an old woman and it was difficult for her to work.

4. My friend suggested that we should go to the Crimea where he had some acquaintances who could help us to start a new life.

5. I decided to take a bicycle and to see all the places where I had spent my childhood.

6. Without a moment's hesitation the man jumped into the water as he wanted to save the woman.

7. The current under the bridge was very strong and the man had to swim against it.

8. My sons don't like to read books, but they prefer to play football.

9. As my sister was eager to find a job, she tried to read all the advertisements in the newspapers and to send many applications to doctors who wanted to have an assistant.

10. She wanted to have a job very much, but by the end of the first week and of the second, she had received no answers to her applications.

Module 2 basics of intonation

Theoretical Material

Intonation is a complex unity of speech melody, sentence stress (accent), rhythm, voice qualities (timbre) and speech tempo which enables the speaker to adequately communicate in speech his thoughts, will, emotions and attitude towards reality and the contents of the utterance.

Speech melody is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place when voiced sounds, especially vowels and sonorants, are pronounced in connected speech. The pitch of speech sounds is produced by the vibrations of the vocal cords.

Sentence stress is the greater prominence given to some words in a sentence as compared with the other words of the same sentence. In English the greater prominence is achieved by uttering the stressed words with greater force of exhalation and muscular tension than the unstressed words, as well as by a change in the pitch and by an increase in the length of stressed syllables of words in the sentence.

Voice timbre is the ‘colour’ or ‘tonal quality’ of voice depending on the physiological properties and psychological state of a person.

Pitch range is the interval within the upper and lower level of voice variation.

Tempo of speech is the relative speed or slowness of utterance which is measured by the rate of syllable succession, and the number and duration of pauses in a sentence.

Rhythm is a regular flow of speech in which stressed and unstressed syllables occur at definite intervals.

Tempo of speech and rhythm constitute the temporal component of intonation.

Pause is an act of stopping in the flow of speech.

The components of intonation form a unity, because they always function all together, and none of them can be separated from any other in actual speech.

Functions of Intonation:

1. Constitutive. Intonation forms sentences.

2. Distinctive. Intonation serves to distinguish communicative types of sentences.

In each language there exist certain intonation patterns. They form a phonetic aspect of a sense-group.

A sense-group is a word or a group of words making up the shortest possible unit in regard to its meaning, grammatical structure and intonation.