1. Intonation and Its Components The Structure of a Tone-unit

Intonation is a complex unity of variations in pitch, stress (accent), tempo and timbre.

The pitch component represents changes in the height of the voice in connected speech. The pitch range comprises three main levels: high, mid and low.

Stress is a greater prominence placed on a word for the sake of rhythm. Accent can be defined as stress plus importance. Speakers choose to accent certain words because of the particular meaning they wish to convey in a particular situation. Every accented word carries a stress.

Tempo is a relative speed with which words and /or sentences are pronounced in connected speech.

Speech timbre (voice quality) is a special colouring of the voice which shows the speaker’s emotions.

Intonation serves: 1) to form sentences and tone-units; 2) to define communicative types of sentences (statements, questions, commands, exclamations); 3) to express the speaker’s thoughts and attitudes.

All utterances are subdivided into tone-units. This division in the first place depends on the meaning of the sentence and its grammatical structure.

A tone-unit is a speech unit between pauses with its own features and structure. Each syllable of a tone-unit has a certain pitch and different degrees of prominence. A tone-unit normally consists of a prehead, head, nucleus and tail.

Prehead Head Nucleus Tail

It was a 'very 'sunny ‘day yesterday.

The prehead comprises unstressed and stressed syllables preceding the first accented syllable.

The head is a part of a tone-unit that extends from the first accented syllable up to (but not including) the last accented syllable called the nucleus.

The nucleus is the most important part of the tone-unit as it carries the most significant information in a message and defines the communicative type of the sentence. It is the last stressed syllable of the last accented word in a tone-unit. A tone-unit may be deprived of all other elements but the nucleus is always present.

The tail comprises unstressed and stressed syllables that follow the nucleus.

Basic Nuclear Tones.

The High Rise The High Fall The Low Rise

The Low Fall The High Mid Low Level

The Fall-Rise The Rise-Fall The Rise-Fall-Rise

The tone carried by the most and last important word in a tone-unit is called the nuclear tone.

In written English, the reader identifies tone-units with the help of punctuation: commas, full stops, capital letters and paragraphs. In spoken English, the most common signals are pauses and pitch change. The end of each sentence is characterized by a relatively long pause: ||. Pauses between tone-units are shorter and vary in length: | or ¦. High pitch generally marks the beginning of a new idea, while low pitch and a long pause mark the end of an idea.

Two sentences written the same way may have a different meaning. Forming tone-units clearly helps to distinguish the difference in meaning, e.g. If you ‚finish, | 'quickly 'leave the ‘room. If you 'finish ‚quickly, | 'leave the ‘room.