3. The Notion and Functions of Intonation

English intonation is a pretty complicated and varied phenomenon. There are dialectal and regional differences in intonation, for example, there is a noticeable difference between British and American intonation. Intonation may sound differently depending on whether the speakers have high or low voices, speak fast or slowly, loudly or quietly, energetically, emotionally, neutrally or listlessly. Men and women may have their own differences and preferences in intonation. Intonation is emotional, and therefore difficult to measure. For the purpose of grasping the most essential aspects of intonation we will restrict the use of the term ‘intonation’ to the fewest.

Intonation is based on such key components as: variation in direction of the pitch of the voice of the speaker and sentence stress. Other variable components, such as, loudness, tempo (or speed of speech and length of pauses), timbre (or variation in voice quality) and rhythm can be called ‘paralinguistic’ (those that do not refer to linguistics directly) and will be discussed separately.

Gillian Brown identifies several other paralinguistic features of intonation, such as, voice setting (unmarked, breathy, creaky) articulatory setting (unmarked, tense), articulatory precision (precise, slurred, unmarked), lip setting (pursed, smiling), timing (unmarked, extended), pause (unmarked, pause). All of these norms will clearly vary with each individual speaker but just as with vowels and consonants that are considered in their isolation from any linguistic context with the purpose of ideal pronunciation so will be with intonation. Ideally intoned sentence is that one pronounced aloud without any emotional attitude out of context, in isolation. Such intonation is called unmarked .Consider the following example:

1. ‘Hurry up then’ she said smiling.

2. ‘Hurry up then’ she said angrily.

3. ‘Hurry up then’ she said.

4. ‘Hurry up then’ she ordered.

It is quite clear that there is not any special attitude on the part of the speaker in number 3 sentence. It is not emotionally marked. So such intonation pattern of any pronounced sentence is called unmarked. In this and the following chapters the analysis of English intonation will be given on condition the speaker is speaking normally loudly, normally fast, within his normal voice range and with unmarked intonation pattern.

4. Sentence Stress

All words have their own stress in isolation (remember, such stress is called word stress), but when they are connected into a phrase or sentence, important changes take place: some words are stressed and other generally are not. Here we come to the notion of sentence stress that is observed in English phonetics. Sentence stress being one of the two basic components of intonation is what gives English its rhythm or ‘beat’.

In English there are words which are generally stressed and which are not. Here we come to the point of what is sentence stress. You remember that word stress is accent on one syllable within a word. Sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence, prominence of some words among the others. Sentence stress makes the utterance understandable to the listener by making the important words in the sentence stressed, clear and higher in pitch and by shortening and gliding over the unstressed words that are less important.

According to sentence stress there are two types of words: stressed and unstressed. Basically, stressed words are considered CONTENT WORDS. They are the key words of a sentence. They carry the meaning or sense of the utterance.

Non-stressed words are considered to be STRUCTURE or FUNCTION WORDS. They are not important, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form or structure. If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will, probably still understand the sense of the utterance. If you remove the content words from a sentence you will not understand the sense of the sentence. Let us prove it with an example. Imagine that you receive a message: water flowers not fade gone home

This sentence is not complete. It is not “grammatically correct”, but you, probably, understand it. These five words communicate very well: somebody (perhaps a colleague from work) wants you to water the flowers in order they might not fade because she has already gone home. So, we can add a few words. Water the flowers so that they might not fade. I have already gone home. The new words do not really add any more information, but they make the message correct grammatically. We can add even more words to make it more complete and polite, but information is basically the same: Will you water the flowers so that they might not fade because I have already gone home. If we remove content words from the same message one can hardly understand the utterance:

The so that they because I have already

In order to get information from English speech you should distinguish between content and structure words. In English unemotional speech all parts of speech can be divided into: semantically important content words and semantically unimportant structure words.

CONTENT WORDS STRUCTURE WORDS

Nouns Articles

Notional (principal) Verbs Prepositions

Adjectives Conjunctions

Adverbs Auxiliary Verbs

Numerals Modal Verbs

Interjections Linking Verbs

Interrogative Pronouns Personal Pronouns

Possessive Pronouns Possessive Pronouns

(Absolute form) (Dependant form)

Demonstrative Pronouns Relative Pronouns

Defining Pronouns Indefinite Pronouns

Negative Pronouns Reflexive Pronouns

Negative Particle NOT Particles (except too, sometimes

only and even)

The categories of modal, linking and auxiliary verbs refer to structure words. It means that in connected speech a native speaker glides over them pronouncing their weak (reduced) forms rather than strong ones. However these categories of verbs may be stressed giving the sense to the utterance if they are in certain positions in a sentence. So auxiliary, modal, linking verbs are stressed when they are:

1. at the beginning of an utterance: Can you swim? Did you speak to her? Are you sure?

2. at the end of an utterance: Yes, I can. Yes, I did. Sure I am.

3. in the contracted form with the negative particle NOT: You shouldn’t do it. I haven’t done it yet. He isn’t the right person.

4. auxiliary verb to do is stressed in emphatic sentences: I do like it!

5. ‘have to’ is stressed in the meaning of ‘must’: They have to leave now.

A personal pronoun can also be stressed when it is connected with a noun by the conjunction ‘and’ then they are both stressed: My sister and I

When the word ‘most’ does not express comparison, but it is an equivalent to ‘very’, ‘extremely’ it is not stressed: It is a most interesting book (very interesting). Compare: It is the most interesting I have ever read.

Prepositions are stressed when they consist of two or more syllables and are followed by an unstressed personal pronoun: I was standing before her, admiring her beauty. I ran after them.

Let us return to the beginning example to demonstrate how all these affects speech.

My first impressions of people are never wrong. (12 syllables)

If you thought it in the smallest point unjust, you should have written. (16syllables)

Even though the second sentence is approximately 25% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each sentence (the stressed words are underlined according to sentence stress in English). From this example, you can see that you needn’t worry about pronouncing each word clearly to be understood (the native speakers certainly don’t). You should, however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly. In this way sentence stress provides rhythm in connected speech.

Practice exercise

EXERCISE 1. Group the words below into content and structure words:

Spoke, with, done, interesting, next to, as long as, you, hard, seven, ought to, mine, your, thirsty, himself, some, violet, learning, all, nobody, not, anything, just, those, him, the, oh, so, every, such, must, quick, through, whole, while, what, above, absolute, between, fate, since, following.

EXERCISE 2. Take a look at the sentences and underline the words which should be stressed according to sentence stress.

1. He had finished breakfast before I arrived. 2) It was a cold windy November day. 3) I didn’t expect them to come so early. 4) Since his childhood he has not seen his father. 5) Our car is bigger than theirs. 6) All she knew was to care about her grandparents. 7) The sun was already above the horizon when they had climbed the mount. 8) What strange ideas come into your head! 9) Where did you put the key from that case? 10) Can you make me another cup of coffee? 11) Could you please be more distinct? 12) They will have to stay up late if they are going to finish their homework. 13) It must have been something in the air that caused Jack to shout. 14) The night was pitch-dark. It was most dangerous to drive. 15) You mustn’t mind her scolding you.