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Файл:Теоретическая фонетика английского языка = English Theoretical Phonetics. Учебное пособие
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6.4. Tempo and Pauses
The most prominent and functionally more important is the nuclear
stress. Therefore the nuclear rhythmic unit is the most important in an
utterance. A rhythmic unit formed by full stress together with partial
stress can be dened as a complex rhythmic unit. Rhythmic units
formed by post-nuclear (partial) stress are regarded as weak.
The most frequent type of a rhythmic group includes 2–4 syllables,
one of them stressed, others unstressed. Most rhythmic groups are
simultaneously sense units. A rhythmic group may comprise a whole
phrase, e. g.: “I can’t do it”; or just one word, e. g.: “Unfortunately...” or
even a one-syllable word, e. g.: Well... ; Now... .
Rhythm performs important linguistic functions. It is the most
important organizing factor which makes for the exposure of exact sense
of speech and its maximum perceptibility. It unies smaller language
units into utterance, hyperutterance and text, and indicates relations
between them. It also performs a distinctive role due to the prosodic
characteristics of its units.
There are dierent rhythmic patterns in a language depending on the
number and types of stresses in an utterance and on the degree of prosodic
contrasts between its stressed and unstressed syllables. In the English
language prosodic contrasts between stressed and unstressed syllables
are sharper than in Russian and Belarusian.
It should be also noted that there are many factors which can disrupt
the potential rhythm of a phrase. The speaker may pause at some points
in the utterance, he may be interrupted, he may make false starts, repeat
a word, correct himself and allow other hesitation phenomena. The more
organized the speech is the more rhythmical it appears, poetry being
the most extreme example of this. Prose read aloud or delivered in the form
of a lecture is more rhythmic than colloquial speech. On the other hand
rhythm is also individual: a uent speaker may sound more rhythmical
than a person searching for the right word and rening the structure of
his phrase while actually pronouncing it.
6.4. Tempo and Pauses
The tempo of speech is the rate at which utterances and their smaller
units are pronounced. On the acoustic level tempo is measured by
the number of syllables per second. Tempo of speech may be determined
by dierent factors. It may vary depending on the size of audience,
71
Unit 6. Intonation in English
the acoustic qualities of the room, the individuality of the speaker and
other extralinguistic factors. By slowing down the tempo of speech we
can make an utterance or part of it more prominent, thus underlining
the semantic importance of it. By increasing the speed of utterance
prominence is diminished. Tempo can be used to express the speaker’s
attitude or emotion. For example, fast tempo may express excitement,
joy or anger. Slow tempo shows relaxation or calmness, reserved and
phlegmatic attitude on the part of the speaker.
Phoneticians generally distinguish normal tempo and two departures
from the norm: fast and slow.
The tempo of speech as the third component of intonation implies
the rate of the utterance and pausation.
Any stretch of speech can be split into smaller portions, i. e. phonetic
wholes, phrases, intonation groups by means of pauses.
The pause means a complete stop of phonation. It is sucient to
distinguish the following kinds of pauses:
y by duration:
– short pauses which may be used to separate intonation groups within
a phrase;
– longer pauses which normally manifest the end of the phrase;
– very long pauses, which are approximately twice as long as the rst
type, are used to separate phonetic wholes;
y functionally:
– syntactic pauses which separate phonopassages, phrases, intonation
groups;
– emphatic pauses which serve to make especially prominent certain
parts of the utterance, e. g.: She is the most ⌇charming girl I’ve ever seen;
– hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to
gain some time to think over what to say next. They may be silent or
lled, e. g.:
She is rather a ... (silent) good student.
– Where does she live? – Um (lled), not very far from here.
Our ear can also perceive a pause when there is no stop of phonation
at all, because it is not the only factor indicating an intonation unit
boundary. The rst and the main factor is a perceivable pitch change,
either stepping down or stepping up, depending on the direction of
nuclear tone movement. The other criterion is the presence of junctural
72
6.4. Tempo and Pauses
features at the end of each intonation group. This usually takes the form
of a pause but there are frequently accompanying segmental phonetic
modications (variations in tempo, aspiration, etc.) which reinforce this.
Eects that pauses have on speaking:
y to separate groups of words that belong together;
y avoid ambiguity;
y signal:
– that another idea is coming;
– they do not know what to say anymore;
– that they want to draw attention to a particular part;
– a change in topic;
– they are waiting for an answer or feedback;
– that the speaker has nished speaking on the topic;
y think about what partner has just been said;
y indicate:
– the speaker has nished a sentence;
– they want to give their audience time to think;
– to give a surprising twist to what was said before.
Questions
1. What is the dierence between the terms “intonation” and “pro-
sody”?
2. Why cannot we restrict the term “intonation” by pitch parameters
only?
3. What is intonation pattern? How is the term “intonation pattern”
related to the term “intonation group”?
4. What part of the intonation pattern has the greatest functional
value? Why? Which parts of it are optional?
5. What is nucleus? What other synonymic terms do you know?
6. What tones are called kinetic or moving? How do they dier from
static tones?
7. What are the characteristics of each of the nuclear tones in English?
What are their meanings? What do they express?
8. What are the characteristics of the level nuclear tone?
9. What other pitch parameters are important in modifying the contour
of the intonation pattern?
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Unit 6. Intonation in English
10. What are the components of the intonation pattern in English?
11. What are the types of heads and pre-heads?
12. What pitch ranges are distinguished?
13. What pitch levels are there in English?
14. What functions of intonation are distinguished by Belarusian
phoneticians?
15. How is the constitutive function of intonation realized?
16. What are the terms for the given and the new information?
17. In what way is intonation capable of transmitting feeling and
emotions?
18. How can you prove that intonation transmits feelings and /
or emotions?
19. How is the distinctive function of intonation realized?
20. What is the essence of identicatory function of intonation?
Pract i c al Tasks
1. Read the text and complete the table with dierent denitions
of intonation and prosody.
Table 18. Denitions of Intonation and Prosody
Author Denition
G. P. Torsuyev
D. Jones
J. O’Connor, G. Arnold
L. Hultzen
F. Danes
D. Chrystal
Most Soviet phoneticians, i. e. G.P. Torsuyev, dene intonation as
a complex unity of speech melody, sentence stress, tempo, rhythm and
voice timber, which enables the speaker to express his thoughts, emotions,
and attitudes towards the contents of the utterance and the hearer. Speech
melody, sentence stress, tempo, rhythm and timber are all components
of intonation. These are perceptible qualities of intonation.<…>
the denition of intonation given above is a broad denition. It reects
the actual interconnection and interaction of melody, stress, tempo,
rhythm and timber in speech.
A great number of phoneticians abroad, including D. Jones,
L. Armstrong and I. Ward, K. Pike, R. Kingdon, A. Gimson, J. O’Connor
74
6.4. Tempo and Pauses
and G. Arnold dene intonation as the variation of the pitch of the voice,
thus reducing it to one component – speech melody. This is a narrow
approach to the denition of intonation. Thus, D. Jones writes: “Intonation
may be dened as the variations which take place in the pitch of the voice
in connected speech, i. e. variations in the pitch of the musical note
produced by the variations of the vocal cords”.
Another example of the narrow approach to intonation is the denition
given by J. O’Connor and G. Arnold: “When we talk about English
intonation we mean the pitch patterns of spoken English the pitch tunes
or melodies, the musical features of English”.
Some foreign phoneticians give broader denitions of intonation.
Thus L. Hultzen includes the variations of pitch, loudness and duration,
F. Danes includes the variations of pitch and intensity, D. Crystal denes
prosodic features as “vocal eects constituted by variations along
the parameters of pitch, loudness, duration and silence”.
*
2. Work in groups. Study the texts and explain the function
of intonation as singled out by David Chrystal; Peter Roach;
M.A. Sokolova, K.P. Gintovt, I.S. Tikhonova, R.M. Tikhonova.
Present the information to other groups.
Group A
David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language oers
the following functions of intonation:
y emotional function’s most obvious role is to express attitudinal
meaning: sarcasm, surprise, reserve, impatience, delight, shock, anger,
interest, and thousands of other semantic nuances;
y grammatical function helps to identify a grammatical structure in
speech, performing a role similar to punctuation. Units such as clause
and sentence often depend on intonation for their spoken identity, and
several specic contrasts, such as question / statement, make systematic
use of it;
y informational function helps to draw attention to what meaning
is given and what is new in an utterance. The word carrying the most
prominent tone in a contour signals the part of an utterance that
the speaker is treating as new information;
* Борисова, Л.В. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка : учеб. пособие / Л.В. Борисова, А.А. Метлюк. Минск : Выш. шк., 1980. C. 69–70.
75
Unit 6. Intonation in English
y textual function helps larger units of meaning than the sentence to
contrast and cohere. In radio news reading, paragraphs of information
can be shaped through the use of pitch. In sports commentary, changes in
prosody reect the progress of the action;
y psychological function helps us to organize speech into units that
are easier to perceive and memorize. Most people would nd a sequence
of numbers, for example, dicult to recall. The task is made easier by
using intonation to chunk the sequence into two units;
y indexical function, along with other prosodic features, is an
important marker of personal or social identity. Lawyers, preachers,
newscasters, sports commentators, army sergeants, and several other
occupations are readily identied through their distinctive prosody.
Group B
M.A. Sokolova, K.P. Gintovt, I.S. Tikhonova and R.M. Tikhonova
determine that the communicative function of intonation is realized in
various ways. Intonation serves:
y to structure the information content of a textual unit so as to show
which information is new or cannot be taken for granted, as against
information which the listener assumed to possess or to be able to acquire
from the context, that is given information;
y determine the speech function of a phrase, i. e. to indicate whether
it is intended as a statement, question, command, etc;
y convey connotational meanings of attitude such as surprise,
annoyance, enthusiasm, involvement, etc. The written medium has very
limited resources for marking intonation, and the meanings conveyed by
it have to be shown, if at all, in other ways;
y structure a text. On the one hand, intonation delimitates texts into
smaller units, i. e. phonetic passages, phrases and intonation groups, on
the other hand, it integrates these smaller constituents forming a complete
text;
y dierentiate the meaning of textual units (i. e. intonation groups,
phrases and sometimes phonetic passages) of the same grammatical
structure and the same lexical composition, which is the distinctive or
phonological function of intonation;
y characterize a particular style or variety of oral speech which may
be called the stylistic function.
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6.4. Tempo and Pauses
No matter how many functions are named, all of them may be summed
up under a more general heading, that is the function of communication.
It should be pointed out that the structuring functions of intonation
(delimitating and integrating functions) should be viewed alongside with
other functions serving the purpose of communication.
Group C
Peter Roach summarizes the following functions of intonation most of
which are, on a closer look, overlapping with the above given ones:
y attitudinal: intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes
as we speak, and this adds a special kind of “meaning” to spoken
language;
y accentual: intonation helps to produce the eect of prominence
on syllables that need to be perceived as stressed, and in particular
the placing of tonic stress on a particular syllable marks out the word to
which it belongs as the most important in a tone unit;
y grammatical: the listener is better able to recognize the grammar
and the syntactic structure of what is being said by using the information
contained in the intonation, for example, such things as the placement
of boundaries between phrases, clauses and statements and the use of
grammatical subordination may be indicated;
y discourse: intonation can:
– signal to the listener what is to be taken as new information and
what is already given, can suggest when the speaker is indicating some
sort of contrast or link with material in another tone-unit;
– in conversation, convey to the listener what kind of response is
expected.
3. Provide the intonation groups with the necessary stress marks.
Break them into their constituents according to the example.
Example: He re’turned to his ˋoce.
Pre-head Head Nucleus Ta i l
He re 'turned to his ˋo ice
1. She pinched herself to see if she was alive. 2. Try to focus. 3. No
time for pity. 4. I made a better plan! 5. That brought me back to reality.
6. But it was ironic. 7. I looked into his eyes. 8. This was the land of
insanely growing jungles. 9. But Bill did nish the job!
77
Unit 6. Intonation in English
4. Dene the appropriate nuclear tone ( fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-
fall) in the sentences.
1. It’s possible. 2. It won’t hurt. 3. I phoned them right away (and they
agreed to come). 4. Red, brown, yellow or ... . 5. She was rst! 6. I’m
absolutely certain. 7. This is the end of the news. 8. You must write it again
(and this time get it right). 9. Will you lend it to me? 10. It’s disgusting!
5. Mark the nuclear tone you think is appropriate in the responses.
Table 19. Nuclear Tones
Verbal context Response utterance Nuclear tone
It looks nice for a swim
I've lost my ticket You're silly then ( stating the
You can't have an ice-cream Oh, please (pleading)
What times are the buses? Seven o'clock, seven thirty,
She won the competition She did! (impressed)
How much work have you
got to do?
Will you go? I might (uncertain)
It's rather cold (doubtful)
obvio us)
... (listing)
I've got to do the shopping (and
more things after that)
6. Analyze the speech of the visitors of London from
dierent countries. Listen closely to the pronunciation
of vowels and make a mark when they are louder and
longer. Compare your notes with the partner and state
the distinctive features of stress-timed and syllable-timed languages.
7. Provide the rhythmic groups with the stress marks. Mind
that only content words are stressed. Complelete the table with
the rhythmic groups according to their structure patterns.
Table 20. Rhythmic Groups
nucleus proclitics + nucleus nucleus + enclitics proclitics + nucleus + enclitics
And tomorrow; in the future; laughed at him; to become; ground;
published; he had asked; changed; when he was seven; in November; to
be able; shadowed them.
78
6.4. Tempo and Pauses
8. Provide the intonation groups with the necessary stress marks
and break them into rhythmic groups according to the example.
Dene the structure of the rhythmic groups.
Example: The ˈtransport was ˋloaded.
Rhythmic group 1 Rhythmic group 2 Rhythmic group 3 Rhythmic group 4
The 'transport
proclitics +
nucleus + enclitics
was ˋloaded
proclitics +
nucleus + enclitics
– –
1. We were ready to leave at midnight. 2. He was still a kid inside.
3. His voice sounded uncertain. 4. She pretended to be tense once in
a while. 5. Johnny realised he was alone. 6. It was too steep for climbing
with a bike. 7. They could barely see the others. 8. The stranger stopped
and ushed guiltily. 9. It's perfectly preserved.
9. A. Listen to Thomas Wilson and his granddaughter talking.
Listen to the moments when the speaker does not actually speak and
decide what eect the pauses have on communication.
The Busy Life of a Retired Man
P – Philippa
T – Thomas
P: How long have you been retired now, grandpa?
T: Oh, let me see. Uh, it’s four years. Yes, I’ve been retired
nearly four years now. I suppose I’m used to it after all this time. But,
you know, I worked for Courtauld’s for over forty years. Can you believe
that? Forty years.
P: One job for forty years. Incredible! I remember when you retired
and they gave you that gold watch. Do you like being retired I’d get bored,
I’m sure I would. Don’t you get bored?
T: Well, I’m lucky. I’ve got my health so I can do a lot. I can get out
a lot. I’ve just taken up golf, you know. It’s a wonderful sport for an old
man like me ‘cos it’s not really a sport at all, at least not the way your
Grandpa plays it! It’s just a good excuse for a walk, and I need an excuse
since Rover died. I – miss good old Rover; he and I were great friends…
but I don’t think I want another dog at my age. I go to the golf club twice
a week. I’ve made some good friends there, you know. Have you met Ted
and Marjorie? They’re my age. They’re a – oh, they’re a lovely couple.
79
Unit 6. Intonation in English
P: Er, no… I don’t think I’ve met them, but didn’t you go on holiday
with them?
T: Yes, that’s right. We went to Wales together last Easter. Oh, and
we had a lovely time, lovely time. I do appreciate company since your
grandma died… you know I really miss your grandma. 35 years we were
married, 35 years and still as much in love as the day we met. She was
a wonderful lady, your grandma.
P: Oh, I know that, Grandpa. We all miss her so much. We all loved
her so much.
T: So I like to keep busy. I’ve been on all sorts of special holidays,
y’know. Package holidays for senior citizens, and I’ve done a bit of …
P: Well, I know you went to visit Uncle Keith in Australia. And you’ve
just come back from a cruise round the Caribbean. You’re so brown.
T: I know. My word, that was an experience. I loved every minute of it!
When you’re older I’ll tell you about the American widow I met! … Miriam,
she was called. Oh, just a baby of fty-ve, but she seemed to like me.
P: Grandpa!
T: And yes, of course, Keith. I saw him two years ago. You’ve not met
your Australian cousins yet, have you? Oh, you’d love the baby, Kylie,
she’s beautiful. Looks just like your grandma. But you know, I’ve also
been to Spain, and Morocco, and Turkey. These package holidays are so
good for people like me.
P: Grandpa, next time, please think of me. Don’t you want a companion? Can I come with you? I’d love a suntan like yours! We never go
anywhere interesting.
T: Oh, Philippa, you know your mum and dad wouldn’t let me. Not
until you’ve nished your exams. Helen says I’m bad inuence on you.
P: Well, I thin k you have more fun than I do! All I have to look for wa rd
to is exams and more exams, and then years and years of work!
T: Oh, Philippa. Don’t wish your life away. Just enjoy it all. You only
get one go at it!
B. Discuss what eect pauses have on speaking.
C. Listen to the dialogue once again, mark the pauses, identify
their lengths ( | – short pauses, || – longer pauses, ||| – very long pauses).
D. Find the examples of syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses
in the dialogue.
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