Intonation. Manifestation of Intonation. Its Linguistic Functions

Successful communication greatly depends on such features of speech as variations in the pitch, loudness, tempo and timbre of the voice. These are prosodic, or non-segmental, features. They form a complex unity of properties commonly referred to as intonation. Intonation is an indispensable characteristic of connected speech and its basic unit – an utterance in particular since the information conveyed by an utterance is expressed not only by words and grammatical structures, but also by intonation.

The term intonation is used by different linguists in different ways. In its narrow meaning, intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when we are speaking. In the broad understanding of the term intonation implies a complex unity of such features as pitch, loudness, tempo and timbre of the voice.

Intonation forms utterances. Each utterance consists of one or more intonation groups. An intonation group is a minimal unit of intonation description. It means a word or a group of words characterized by a certain intonation pattern and is generally complete from the point of view of meaning, e.g. Tom’s not as tall as the rest of the family (one int. gr.). My Uncle Tom lives in Scotland, and my aunt Mary in Wales (two int.gr.).

There is another term used by linguists as the minimal unit of intonation description. It is a tone unit.

If considered not only from the intonation point of view, but also from the semantic and grammatical viewpoints, this unit is known as a sense-group.

The intonation pattern consists of one or more syllables of various pitch levels bearing a larger or smaller degree of prominence. Those intonation patterns that contain a number of syllables consist of the following parts: the pre-head, the head, the nucleus and the tail. These components form the structure of an intonation group/tone unit. The last stressed syllable in an intonation group is called a nucleus. This is the most prominent syllable of a tone unit. It bears a moving tone. The changes of pitch that take place in the nucleus are called nuclear tones.

The nucleus may be preceded and followed by stressed and unstressed syllables.

Stressed syllables preceding the nucleus together with the intervening unstressed syllables form the head of the contour.

Initial unstressed syllables make the pre-head.

Stressed and unstressed syllables following the nucleus are called the tail. The nucleus and the tail form the terminal tone.

Functions of Intonation

The best way to start to speak about the main functions of intonation would be to ask ourselves what would be lost if we were to speak without intonation: we would have to imagine speech delivered in monotone, with every syllable said on the same level pitch, with no pauses and no changes in speed or loudness. Then it would be difficult for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey.

According to R.Kingdon, “A foreigner who speaks a language with correct stressing and intonation but with incorrect sounds (within reasonable limits) will be better understood by natives than ones whose sounds are correct but whose stressing and intonation are poor.”

Intonation plays various functions. Among the most important are the following ones: