1. What are intonation unit, tone and intonation?

An 'intonation unit' is a piece of utterance, a continuous stream of sounds, bounded by a fairly perceptible pause. Pausing in some sense is a way of packaging the information such that the lexical items put together in an intonation unit form certain psychological and lexic~grammatical realities. Typical examples would be the inclusion of subordinate clauses and prepositional phrases in intonation units.

It is proposed here that any feature of intonation should be analyzed and discussed against a background of this phenomenon: tonic stress placement, choke of tones and keys are applicable to almost all intonation units. Closely related with the notion of pausing is that a change of meaning may be brought about; certain pauses in a stream of speech can have significant meaning variations in the message to be conveyed. Consider the example below, in which slashes correspond to pauses:

• Those who sold quickly / made a profit (A profit is made by those who sold quickly.)

• Those who sold / quickly made a profit (A profit was quickly made by those who sold.)

A unit of speech bounded by pauses has movement, of music and rhythm, associated with the pitch of voice. This certain pattern of voice movement is called 'tone'. A tone is a certain pattern, not an arbitrary one, because it is meaningful in discourse. By means of tones, speakers signal whether to refer, proclaim, agree, disagree, question or hesitate, or indicate completion and continuation of turn-taking, in speech.

Pointing to extensive variations in the taxonomy of English tones, Cruttenden rightly notes that “This is an area where almost every analyst varies in his judgement of what constitutes a 'major difference of meaning' and hence in the number of nuclear tones which are set up.” He adds: “...intonational meanings are often so intangible and nebulous ... (that) it is difficult to see how a wholly convincing case for any one set of nuclear tones...” (parenthetical statement is mine). Crystal (1969) and Ladefoged (1982) identify four basic tones (fall, rise-fall, rise, and fail-rise) while O'Connor and Arnold (1973) distinguish only two (rise and fall). Brazil et al. (1980) and Roach (1983) endorse five tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level) whereas Cruttenden (1986) recognizes seven tones (high-fall, low-fall, high-rise, low-rise, fall-rise, rise-fall, and mid-level).

It appeared in the author's teaching experience that only four types of tones can be efficiently taught to non-native speakers of English: fall, low-rise, high-rise, and fall-rise.

What makes a tone a rising or falling or any other type of tone is the direction of the pitch movement on the last stressed (tonic) syllable. If the tonic syllable is in non-final position, the glide continues over the rest of the syllables. A fall in pitch on the tonic syllable renders the tone as 'fall'. A 'rise' tone is one in which the tonic syllable is the start of an upward glide of pitch. This glide is of two kinds; if the upward movement is higher, then it is 'high rise'; if it is lower, then it is 'low rise'. 'Fall-rise' has first a pitch fall and then a rise.

Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation (also known as prosody or suprasegmentals) we study how the pitch of the voice rises and falls, and how speakers use this pitch variation to convey linguistic and pragmatic meaning. It also involves the study of the rhythm of speech, and (in English, at any rate) the study of how the interplay of accented, stressed and unstressed syllables functions as a framework onto which the intonation patterns attached.

If we had no intonation, our speech would be – in the literal sense of the word – monotonous. Either it would all remain on one pitch throughout, or every utterance would employ exactly the same stereotyped tune at all times. But speakers do neither of those things: they make the pitch of their voice rise, fall, jump and swoop, in all sorts of different ways. Even the most boring speaker has access to a considerable repertoire of tunes (intonation patterns) – though may be some speakers are better than others at exploiting this. Lively speakers typically make good use of the wide repertoire of possible intonation patterns that English offers.

This is true both for the broadcaster, lecturer, preacher, politician, or businessman addressing a public audience and for the participant in an ordinary everyday conversational interchange or informal chat.

Why is the study of English intonation useful for the student of English? The linguistic study of any language is of course academically valuable in itself. But for the learner of English there is also a very practical reason for the making some attempt to acquire a command, both active and passive, of its intonation.

If they study pronunciation at all, learners of English usually concentrate on the segmental phonetics – the 'sounds' of the language (known technically as the segments). It is indeed important to learn to recognize and reproduce the consonant sounds and vowel sounds of English and the differences between them. Every learner of English should be taught to make the th-sounds of thick and this, the vowel sound of nurse, and the differences in sound between leave and live, bet and bat. Most learners also learn about word stress. They know that happy is stressed on the first syllable, but regret on the second. But intonation is mostly neglected. The teacher fails to teach it, and the learner fails to learn it. Like other elements of language, some gifted learners will pick it up more or less unconsciously; but many will not.

The problem is this: native speakers of English know that learners have difficulty with vowels and consonants. When interacting with someone who is not a native speaker of English, they make allowances for segmental errors, but they do not make allowances for errors of intonation. This is probably because they do not realize that intonation can be erroneous.

After all, almost any intonation pattern is possible in English; but different intonation patterns have different meanings. The difficulty is that the pattern the learner uses may not have the meaning he or she intends. Speakers of English assume that – when it comes to intonation – you mean that you say. This may not be the same as what you think you are saying.