Lecture 7.

Intonation.

Here at last we reached the biggest and probably the most interesting part of the course, where we will discuss the issue, related to intonation. It is not a secret, that intonation is very powerful and complicated phenomenon. Why powerful? Because it colours our speech, shapes our ideas, reflects our emotions. Why complicated?! And do you think can a simple thing fulfill the function mentioned above? It is complex, it includes certain components, it fulfills certain functions (not one or two), each component has its own function and further on. While studying the phenomenon you will definitely realize how complicated it is.

Intonation is a rhythmic and melodic feature of speech, which serves to distinguish syntactic meanings in the sentence as well as modal, emotional and expressive coulourings of the utterance.

Pierre Delatre in his work “The Distinctive function of intonation” claims: the Intonation is the salt of the utterance, without it, a statement often can be understood, but the message is tasteless, colourless. Incorrect uses of it can lead to embarrassing ambiguities.

As you probably know, intonation is defined as complex unity of such components as speech melody (pitch variation), sentence stress (accent), tempo, timbre (voice quality) and rhythm. This very unity enables the speaker to adequately communicate in speech his thoughts, emotions, attitudes toward the reality and the contents of the utterance.

Very often nowadays the term ‘prosody’ is used as a synonym of the term ‘intonation’. It is widely used in linguistic literature; it substitutes the term intonation and embraces the three prosodic components (pitch, loudness and tempo). Probably this term is more adequate, but not for the teaching process yet. If we follow Akhmanova we may define prosody in the following way: prosody is the science of principles and ways of speech division and combination or unity of the separated parts such as rising or lowering of the voice (melody), placing of more or less strong accents (dynamic), certain speeding of speech or making it slower (tempo), and complete stop of phonation (pausation).

From the course of practical phonetics you probably know, that very often intonation is applied to pitch variations (speech melody) alone or in conjunction with accent and pausation. This limitation exists in the British and American traditions as well.

Why do you think it happens? Why the variations in pitch are considered the most important, are dominating? The answer is simple and obvious. Because of the meaning, because of the communicative value of pitch changes, their linguistic relevance. D.Crystal in his book “Prosodic systems and intonation in English” underlines the value of the component, stating that the prosodic systems of tone and pitch range are he most linguistic compared to other prosodic features of pause, loudness, tempo, rythmicality and so on. About the melodic component of the intonation will speak in detail later. And now I would like to say some words about each component of the intonation.

Well.

The speech melody is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place in a syllable or in a sequence of syllables. It is one the most important means of intonation in different languages and within one language it fulfills almost all the functions, prescribed to intonation.

Stress (accent) means greater prominence given to a syllable (and therefore to a word) in a sentence. In English this prominence is achieved by means of pitch change, length and loudness. It means that the stressed syllable may be pronounced higher in comparison with unstressed, they are longer and of course louder. Now I would like to draw your attention to such phenomenon as sentence stress, the term was only mentioned at the very beginning in the definition of the intonation. Now I intend to deal with it in detail.

Sentence stress is the greater prominence with which one or more words in the sentence are pronounced in comparison with other words. Sentence stress serves to single out words in the sentence according to their relative semantic importance and together with speech melody it is the most important component of the intonation. And it’d no wonder, it is chiefly thanks to them that the meaning of the sentence can be expressed.

Sentence stress may vary in the degree. It may be full and partial. Full stress in its turn may be unemphatic and emphatic.

Unemphatic stress is a usual type of stress used in normal speech and it is marked by single stress mark placed above the line of print.

Emphatic stress is effected by greater force of utterance, greater force of exhalation and lengthening the sound. It is also accompanied by the changes in the direction of voice (changes in pitch) and the emphatically stressed syllables sound louder in comparison with the unemphatically stressed syllables. It is marked by double stress mark above the line of print.

Partial stress is marked by a single stress mark placed below the line of print. Usually in the connected speech notional words are partially stress.

Sentence stress has its own specific features in different languages. It is not a secret that some parts of speech tat are stressed in one language may be unstressed in the other. Thus the brightest example to that is the unstressed position of pronouns (personal, reflexive, relative) in English and stressed position of them in Russian. Words that are usually stressed in English unemphatic speech are the notional parts of speech, namely nouns, adj., numerals, notional verbs, adverbs, demonstrative, interrogative, emphasizing pronouns.

Tempo of speech is the speed with which a sentence or its parts are pronounced. It is determined by the rate at which sentences or their parts are uttered and by the number and length of pauses, i.e. words the term “tempo” implies the rate of the utterance and pausation. The tempo of speech can be normal, slow and fast. Tempo or rate of speaking is governed by the time available. In broadcasts, for instance, the speaker may have to speed up in order to finish in the time available: presenting the news, making announcements between the programmes, or giving the weather forecast. Speech rate can slow down if there is plenty of time available such as when the speaker has the floor to give a speech, a sermon or a lecture. Tempo has an obvious strategic use: it may single out important points of the utterance; it can reflect the importance attached to the utterances. Less important items, such as items in parenthesis – are skipped over quickly: he never did it before, strange as it may seem. Increased tempo may indicate impatience.

Any speech continuum may be divided into smaller parts or units, phonetic wholes, phrases, intonation groups by means of pauses. The term pause means the full stop of phonation. According to D.Bolinger and Kenneth Pike, there are two significant types of pauses: tentative pauses (׀) and final pauses (׀׀). They vary in length: tentative pauses are usually shorter in length that the final ones, but not necessarily so. Tentative pauses tend to occur any time when the speaker’s attitude includes uncertainty or non-finality, hesitation after all. The final pause occurs when the speaker’s attitude is one of finality. And for this reason occurs most often at the end of statements.

According to their length all the pauses may be divided into short, average and long.

Short pauses are used to separate intonation groups within a phrase.

Average pauses normally manifest the end of the phrase.

Long pauses, usually very long – twice as long as the first type, separate phonetic wholes.

Functionally all the pauses may be subdivided into syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses.

Syntactic pauses separate phonopassages, phrases, and intonation groups.

Emphatic pauses serve to make especially prominent certain parts of the utterances, etc.

Hesitation pauses are mainly used in the spontaneous speech. They may be filled and non-filled.

Timbre (voice quality) (one more synonym for that is tamber). It is a special colouring of the voice of a speaker, that superimposed on speech melody and show’s the speaker’s emotions, such as joy, sadness, irony, anger, indignation and so on. An individual may put on a wide range of “voices”, this process involves different modes of vibrations of the larynx or of the vocal tract. It is also known as “voice quality”. Voice quality is very important factor in recognizing a particular individual’s voice or even a regional accent.

Going back to the great number of voices which the speaker may put on. Indeed there is a norm of voice quality and is produced when the larynx is neither raised nor lowered, neither tensed nor laxed and the vocal folds vibrated efficiently. This norm is known as Modal Voice. This type of voice makes efficient use of the air passing through the glottis and can be easily heard. In reality people may use different variations of Modal voice. Thus high pitches may be produced by mans of Falsetto, and low pitches by Creak.

The first (falsetto) is useful for reaching high pitches which are difficult or impossible with modal voice, i.e. when you want to speak with high voice. Of course men also may use false to imitate women’s and children’s voices.

Voice quality may be viewed from the point of view of its tenseness. So it can be tense and lax, which is affected by the degree of tenseness in and above the larynx. Tense voice requires higher degree of tension and energy, as e result we may hear the voice that is perceived as louder and more penetrating than lax one. Sometimes a tense voice may sound emotionally negative, but not necessarily so. When you tense the voice to make your speech clearer (speaking to a deaf person, trying to explain something to a person that is rather far from you and so on) it probably does not carry any negative emotions.

One fact that deserves our attention in connection with the voice quality is whisper. Whisper is makes the voice blend in with the ambient noise. We use it when we want to conceal something from the third party, but it is also used in church or by the children talking in class, when the speaker doesn’t want to break the silence. It is interesting. To produce a whisper a V gap is left at the rear of vocal cords and the folds being held together forward of the gap. Air passing through the gap generates turbulence which recognized as whisper. It is an open secret that whisper is used often on stage in the theatres. And this type of whisper is produced a little bit differently in comparison with the process described above. It is produced by vibrating the front portion of vocal folds, as for modal voice, while simultaneously leaving the V gap at the back for the whisper.

One more thing that requires our attention in relation to voice quality is the use of such terms as “timbre” and “voice quality”. Different points of view, presented by the different linguists on timbre and its role and status are reflected in the usage of the terms as well. The terms may be used as synonyms in some cases and may possess different meanings in other cases.

Some linguists (Torsuev, Vasilyev) define the timbre as emotional colouring of the speech. But it is well know that emotional colouring is achieved through speech melody, loudness, and temporal characteristics. Antipova believes that the two terms (voice quality and timbre) should be used as synonyms.

But alongside with this point of view, the term “voice quality” was used in the works of D.Crystal, J. Fry and others, who defined the phenomenon as individual voice characteristics of the speaker which help to identify him. Purposeful change of a voice quality or imitating should not be included in the term of “voice quality” according to Crystal. In this interpretation the term “voice quality”: should not be included in the definition of intonation, because in this very case the information about the speaker is presented (his age, wealth, sex and so on). Another point of view presented by Akmarov see the timbre in some broader, in this interpretation the idea of a “voice quality” is included into the term. The main function of a timbre is not only show the emotional colouring of the speech but also to convey certain contextual information.

Some representatives of St. Petersburg school believe that these two terms should be differentiated. The term timbre should be used to define qualitative changes between the sounds of speech and the term “voice quality” should determine such changes in the voice that may convey emotional and contextual information.

Rhythm. Rhythm is known as periodicity of such similar prosodic events as tones, pauses, tempo and voice quality variations. Rhythm is closely connected with tempo. Vasilyev defines rhythm as recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time. Rhythm and tempo together constitute the temporal component of intonation. The basic unit of rhythm is a rhythmic group – a phonetic unity of a stressed syllable with adjoining unstressed syllables.. A sense- group may consist of several rhythmic groups, which usually take approximately the same time to pronounce.

Rhythm has been attracting the attention of the linguists since the 15^th century. There were several approaches to the analysis of the rhythm, among which one may distinguish quantitative approach, temporal approach and accentual approach.

The first approach (quantitative) was used before the 18^th century, and was applied to the rhythmic groups of poetry. The main idea of the rhythm was included in to the reoccurrence of stressed and unstressed syllable and was based on the opposition long\short (long syllable was equal to two short ones) this approach was not valid enough and even at that time some English poetry did not suit this arithmetical approach.

Some time later the idea of temporal approach appeared. The key point of the approach is in the belief that similar phenomena occur in equal periods of time. In other words it is based on the reoccurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. This point of view is widely supported nowadays by foreign and native linguists (Cheremicina, Bondi, O’Connor, Gimson, Cruttenden, etc).

Accentual approach was developing in parallel with the temporal approach. This approach is based on the regular appearance and contrast of strong and weak syllables.

Historically the two approaches appeared as opponents but nowadays they are closely interrelated despite the fact that the linguists mainly belong to the temporal approach.

The components of intonation are said to form a unity because they always function altogether and none of them can be separated from the other in actual speech. We may of course single out certain components for the sake of the analysis.

Especially close the connection is between a speech melody and a sentence stress which are the most important and the most thoroughly investigated components of English intonation. But we can’t leave the other components without any attention, though they play an auxiliary part in performing this or that function of intonation.

You probably know that the basic unit of intonation is a tone-group (intonation group or sense group if considered not only from the pure intonational point of view but also from the point of view of grammar and semantics). Any tone-group may consist of a pre-head (unstressed syllables before the stressed one), head (or onset, the first stressed syllable, with or the following stressed and unstressed syllables except for the last one) and the terminal tone (or the nuclear tone the last stressed syllable in which the fluctuations of voice are observed). The last element of a group is tail or termination – the unstressed syllables or semi-stressed syllables after the nucleus.

According to David Crystal There is a general agreement about the internal structure of the tone unit.

It must consist of a syllable and this syllable must carry a glide of a particular kind. This is minimally. Maximally the tone unit should consist of the three elements: the head, the pre-head and the tail.

The head: the term is used in relation to the stretch of the utterance from the first stressed and up to, not including, nuclear tone.

The pre-head refers to any stretch (any part of the utterance) which precedes the first stressed syllable. There are two main types of pre-heads: low and high (pronounced sequently at low and high levels of voice pitch).

About the melodic component of intonation we will speak later in detail and we will discuss the components of the speech melody and their functions.

And right now I would like to say some words about the main functions of intonation.

If we will try express it in the most simple words and terms we may definitely say hat intonation helps a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey. The ways in which the intonation does this are very complex and there were many suggestions put forward by linguists to single out (isolate) different functions. The most often proposed are:

1. Intonation enables us to express our emotions and attitudes as we speak, and this adds a special kind of meaning to the spoken language. This is often called attitudinal function of intonation.

2. Intonation helps to single out the syllables in the phrase that should be stressed and places a tonic stress on a particular syllable that marks the word as the most important in the utterance, makes it an important tone-unit. This has been called the accentual function of intonation.

3. It’s an open secret that intonation enables the speaker to understand the meaning and recognize the grammar and the syntactic structure of the utterance. The examples to it are the pauses between the phrases, clauses and sentences, the difference between questions and statements. This has been called the grammatical function of intonation.

4. Looking at the act of communication in a broader sense we may see that intonation signals to the listener what is to be percepted as “new” information and what is already “given”, can convey to the listener what kind of response is expected from him, can suggest when the speaker is indicating some contrast or link between the tone-units in conversation. Such functions are examples of intonation’s discourse function.

From the very beginning I would like to mention that attitudinal function and discourse function overlap considerably.

Now about each function a little bit more detailed.

The attitudinal function.

Many writers have expressed the view that intonation is used to convey our feelings and attitudes. Thus one and the same sentence may be said in different ways, which may be labeled “angry” (why have you come). “happy”, ‘bored’, ‘surprised and with a tinge of irritation’ (high rise). It has also been observed that the form of intonation is different in different languages: e.g. the intonation of languages such as Swedish, Italian or Russian is instantly recognized as different from that of English. That is why many claim that foreign learners of English need to learn English intonation, some of them go even further saying that wrong use of intonation may lead to offence, though unintentional. Thus for example one may use intonation expressing boredom and discontent while what is needed is gratitude and affection. Expressing feelings and emotions is a complex phenomenon itself. Firstly an emotion may be expressed involuntarily and voluntarily: I say something in a happy way because I am happy or I want to convey the impression that I am happy. Secondly, the attitude that is expressed may be an attitude to the listener (say something in a friendly was), towards what is being said (I can say something in a sceptical or dubious way) or towards some external event or situation (when I may sound regretful or disapproving). But of course there is one more very important point to be mentioned. To understand it you should pronounce the sentence in a number of different ways (I wan to buy a car God help me to pass the exam on theoretical phonetics): pleading, angry, sad, happy, proud and so on. You will definitely notice that at least some of your performances will be different. More that that you will definitely use variations in loudness and tempo, almost certainly you will use variations in voice qualities; different pitch ranges (диапазон) or if not ranges then different keys (регистры). It is very likely that you will use different facial expressions and even gestures and body movements. These factors, mentioned above are also of great importance in conveying attitudes and emotions, yet the traditional books on English pronunciation have almost completely ignored them.

The accentual function of intonation. The term accentual is derived from the word “accent”. A word used by some writers to refer to what in our course we called stress. When some writers say that intonation has accentual function they imply that the placement of stress is something that is determined by intonation. It is possible to argue against this point of view. It is said that intonation is carried entirely by the stressed syllables of a tone-unit. This means that the placing of stress is entirely independent of and prior to the choice of intonation. However one particular aspect of stress could be regarded as part of intonation: this is the placement of the tonic stress within tone-unit. It is wise to suggest that while word stress is independent of intonation, the placement of tonic stress was a function (accentual function) of intonation. The location of the tonic syllable is of great linguistic importance. The most common position of it is on the last lexical word of the tone-unit. For contrastive purpose however any word may become the tonic syllable. I would like to give the example of pairs of sentences – the first represents the normal placement and the second – contrastive.

A) I want to know where his \travelling to

I want to know where his travelling \to (I don’t want to know where he is travelling from)

B) She’s wearing a red \dress

She’s wearing a \red dress (not a green one)

Similarly for the sake of emphasis we may place the tonic stress in other positions. The same pairs of examples – the first is non-emphatic an dte second is emphatic.

A) It was very \boring : : It was \very boring

B) You mustn’t talk so \loudly : : You \mustn’t talk so loudly

But it is incorrect to claim that we may replace the tonic syllable from the last lexical word only for the sake of emphasis. There are some cases when it is quite natural to shift the stress for the sake of meaning. A well know example is “I have plans to leave”. Compare:

I have plans to \leave (I want to leave, to go away)

I have the \plans to leave (I have some plans, drawings, diagrams that I have to leave)

The second example couldn’t be described as contrastive to emphatic. It has just different meaning. And there are a lot of other examples. And it once again proves that placement of a tonic stress is important and is closely linked to intonation.

The grammatical function. The word “grammatical” is used here in a loose sense. It is usual to illustrate the grammatical function of intonation by inventing sentences which when in written are ambiguous and whose ambiguity can only be removed by using different intonation. A typical example is the sentence “those who sold quickly…” it may be pronounced at least in two different ways:

Those who sold ٧quickly | made a \profit

Those who ٧sold | quickly made a \profit

It can be easily seen from the examples that the difference in the placement of tonic stresses gives the possibility to interpret the sentences differently. In the first sentence the profit was made by those who sold quickly but in the second those who sold, quickly made the profit.

Let’s go further and see the role of tone-unit boundaries and the link between the tone-units and units of grammar. There is a strong tendency fro tone unit boundaries to occur between the grammar unit boundaries:

I won’t have any /tea, I do not \like it.

It is extremely common to find a tone-unit boundary at a sentence boundary. The same can be observed within the sentences with more complex structure, where tone-unit boundaries are often found at phrases and clause boundaries.

In ٧France, | where ֽfarms ֽtend to be ٧smaller, | the sub'sidiaries are 'more im\portant||.

It is very unusual to find a tone-unit boundary at a place where the only grammatical boundary is between words. It would be odd to have a tone- unit boundary between an article and a noun, following it, or between an auxiliary and a notional verb.

Another component of intonation that can be said to have grammatical significance is the choice of tone on the tonic syllable. The brightest example that is very familiar is the use of rising tone with questions. Many languages have the possibility of changing a statement into a question simply by changing the tone from falling into rising. The thing may happen in English as well but we must still bare in mind that in English question more often that not grammatically marked. And of course it is by no means true that only rising tone is used in English questions. You probably are well aware of the fact that falling tone is used in “wh-questions”. Compare:

Did you park the /car?

Where did you park the \car?

Though, strange as it may seem, fall is not obligatory and rise very often heard in these questions.

The intonation of question-tags may be falling and rising depending on the meaning you are going to convey.

They are coming on \Thursday, \aren’t they? (You are sure of the answer)

They are coming on \Thursday, /aren’t they? (you are waiting for the answer)

The difference illustrated here is surly more attitudinal than grammatical but certainly there is an overlap between these two types of function.

The discourse function. A comparatively new area of study is becoming increasingly important in the description of natural speech. If we consider how intonation may be studied in relation to discourse, we can identify two main areas: one of them is the use of intonation to focus the listener’s attention on aspects of the message that are most important, and the other is concerned with the regulation of conversational behaviour.

Let’s view them in turn. The first case, idea has already been described. The key point of it is the placing of a tonic stress on particular word of a tone-unit. In many cases it is to demonstrate that the tonic stress is placed on the word that is in some sense the “most important”. It may shift for the sake of emphasis. We’ve discussed that. What deserves our attention in relation to this is that tonic stress may be placed on the most predictable word in a phrase. The predictable a word’s occurrence is in the given context, the lower its information context and the tonic stress will tend to be placed on words with high information context. What I mean will become clear from the following example:

'I’ve ֽgot to ֽtake the \dog for a ֽwalk

'I’ve ֽgot to ֽtake the ֽdog to the \vet

The word “vet” is less predictable (has higher information context) than “walk”.

However we still may find many cases when it is difficult to explain to placing of he tonic syllables in the terms of “importance of information”. For example in such examples as: Your coat is on fire, The radio’s gone wrong. The wing’s breaking up, Your uncle’s dead: probably the majority of Englishmen will put the tonic stress on a subject noun, though it is difficult to see how it is less important than the last lexical word. Another use of intonation connected with the focusing attention is intonation subordination: we can single that a particular tone-unit is of comparatively low importance and as a result give greater importance to adjacent tone-units.

As I expected you’ve\ heard, | they’re only admitting emergency \cases||

The Japan٧ese | for some reason or /other | drive on the \left |like \us||.

The parts in italic are of lower importance and they are intonationally subordinated.

Now some words about the second area of intonation discourse function, i.e. the regulation of conversational behaviour. I won’t open you a secret if I say that intonation is important in the conversational interaction of two or more speakers. Most of the research in this area has been made in a restricted area of human intercourse: conversation between doctors and patients, teacher and pupil. In such material it is comparatively easy to identify what the speaker is actually doing in speaking – questioning, challenging, advising, encouraging and so on. In a more general way, it can be seen that speakers use various prosodic components to indicate the others that they have finished speaking, that another person is expected to speak, that a particular type of response is required and so on.