INTONATION

Key words: complex / compound / simple nuclear tones, emphatic / hesitation / syntactic pause, focal point (focus), fundamental frequency, head,
intensity, intonation contour, intonation pattern, loudness, nucleus, pausation, pitch, pitch level (key, register), pitch range, pre-head, prosody, syntagm, tail, tempo, timbre (tamber), time (duration), tune (melody), tone
(intonation) group, vocal gestures, voice quality.

Questions:
1. What branch of Phonetics studies intonation?
2. Justify the existence of various approaches to the description of intonation.
3. What is intonation on the perception level?
4. Comment on the British, American and Russian approaches to intonation.
5. What is prosody?
6. What are the acoustic correlates of pitch, loudness and tempo?
7. Speak about each component of intonation as a system.
8. What types of pauses are distinguished according to their length and
function?
9. Give the denition of the intonation pattern. What are its constituents?
10. What is the intonation group?
11. Speak about dierent points of views on the classications of nuclear
tones. Whose conception do you support?
12. Is it possible to specify the meanings of nuclear tones? Illustrate your
answer with your own examples.
13. Comment on the other components of the intonation pattern, their
structure, types and function.
14. What is the meaning of the intonation group derived from? Illustrate
your answer with your own examples.
15. Comment on dierent types of representing intonation in the text.
16. Which method of intonation notation do you prefer? Justify your
choice.

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***
Any stretch of continuous conversation will consist of a number of
tone groups. There are some criteria which would allow us to place boundaries between adjacent tone groups. We may use grammatical, semantic
and phonetic criteria to delimit tone groups.
Tone group boundaries tend to occur at major grammatical boundaries, for example those between phrases.
There are two tone groups in each of the following examples. In the
rst example the boundary falls between the two clauses, while in the second it falls between phrases but not in the middle of them. The tone groups
coincide with grammatical constituents, and also have meaning. If the
boundary were to fall between alligator and eyed, then the tone group
would cut across grammatical constituents, and produce a tone group
which was semantically anomalous. This tendency for tone group boundaries to coincide with major grammatical boundaries gives tone groups
both grammatical and semantic coherence.
It was only yesterday | that I decided not to go.
The large evil alligator | eyed the spectators.
Kuiper, Koenraad, Allan W.Scott. An Introduction to English Language. Sound, Word and Sentence. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
pp. 106107.

1. What is a tone group and what are the criteria for their delimitation?
Give your own examples for each criterion.

***
One possible phonetic marker of tone group boundaries is the pause.
Furthermore, pauses may coincide with major phrase boundaries. The
occurrence of a pause at a major phrase boundary suggests strongly that
this is also the location of a tone group boundary. However, not all units
that are bounded by pauses are tone groups. As tone groups must contain
a tonic syllable, which is always stressed, then any unstressed syllable
bounded by pauses cannot be a tone group.
Furthermore, it is also the case that an intonation contour which goes
from one pause to the next is not necessarily a single tone group. Even if
this sentence were uttered without any internal pauses, it would contain
two tone groups. In most peoples intonation there will be a break in the

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continuity of the intonation after yesterday. This break in continuity suggests that a boundary occurs at this point. Support for the placing of a
tone group boundary in this position comes from the behaviour of the
pitch of the voice. After the tonic syllable, which falls on the nal syllable
of yesterday, and is uttered with a falling tone, there is a slight step up in
pitch to the next syllable, which is unstressed. This change of pitch between a stressed and an unstressed syllable usually indicates a tone group
boundary.
Finally, the tonic syllable is often the stressed syllable of the nal lexical word in a tone group. Having identied the tonic syllable, the tone
group boundary may be placed after the tonic and any associated unstressed syllables. These associated syllables may be part of a syntactic
constituent, or if the tonic does not fall on the nal syllable of a word,
then the boundary will occur after the remaining (unstressed) syllables.
Kuiper, Koenraad, Allan W.Scott. An Introduction to English Language. Sound, Word and Sentence. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
pp. 106107.

1. What are possible markers and places of tone group boundaries?

***
Intonation is not a tune imposed arbitrarily upon speech: its use
contributes to how speech carries a message. The goal to be aimed at is a
situation in which students recognise and use the variations as meaningful
choices. Even in a pronunciation course, therefore, meaning has to be the
starting point.
A major source of dierence among the ways intonation has been described has been disagreement about how its meaning can best be represented. Some note that a change in intonation seemingly alters the grammatical organisation of a sentence. Others see a relationship between the
intonation of certain utterances and the supposed attitude or emotional
state of the speaker. A problem with observations like these is that they
seem only to apply on particular occasions. The task of pairing dierent
kinds of utterance with dierent intonation patterns seems like an enormous, and perhaps even an open-ended, one. Having explained how intonation aects one sentence, you move on and nd that a quite dierent
kind of explanation is needed for the next.

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To describe the meaning of any intonation feature, we have to think of

the tone unit as being part of some interactive event: that is to say, the
speaker is to be thought of as addressing a known listener, or listeners, at
a particular moment in time. Each feature then reects the speakers view
of what state of background understanding exists at that moment between
speaker and listener. This means, of course, that discussion of the intonation of isolated sentences must be avoided: the context must always be
taken into account.
Brazil, David. Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English.
Cambridge University Press, 1994. pp. 1517.

1. Why is there much disagreement in describing meanings of intonation?

***
When, as speaker, you assign a prominent syllable to a word, you indicate that this word represents a selection. The existing state of speaker-listener understanding determines whether each successive word selects one
possibility from a number of them, or whether there is eectively no choice.
The procedure can be seen at work in
// in the FIRST street on the LEFT //.
Here, the word left occurs at a time in the narrative at which the alternative right could easily have occurred; part of what the speaker needed to
be told was that the required turning was on the one hand rather than on the
other. Under these circumstances, one of the syllables of left (and since it
is a monosyllable that is the only one) is given prominence. A very similar
argument applies to the other prominent syllable rst. But in a tone unit
that comes later,
// and TOOK the left turning // (where shed said)
left has no prominence. This is because by this time the likelihood of its
being anything other than a left turning has been ruled out. What matters now
is whether she took it or went straight past it, so took is prominent. No relevant selection is made by turning in either tone unit, something that is
made evident by the fact that in some styles of conversation it could easily be
missed out:
// in the FIRST on the LEFT //.

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Intonation

Yet another possibility enables us to take the notion of selection a step

further:
// in the FIRST road on the LEFT //.
Clearly, there are cases where alternative words, like turning and road
can occur and where the use of one rather than the other might be said to be
the outcome of a process of selection. But since in this context the choice
makes no dierence to the message since for all practical purposes the
two words are interchangeable we can say that no sense selection is involved. And when this is the case no prominence is assigned.
In any discourse there are words which, at the moment they are spoken,
do represent a sense selection and other words which do not. The way prominence is distributed reects the speakers view of how this two-way division
of words is made.
Brazil, David. Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English.
Cambridge University Press, 1994. pp. 1517.

1. What does prominence in a phrase depend on?

***
Some speech events, however, like some kinds of reading out and the
carrying out of certain ritualised procedures, amount to no more than the
vocalising of what is written, or what is habitually said. This is to say that no
assumptions at all are made about a listener. Speech which occurs in these
circumstances is obliquely orientated: the speakers can be thought of as being engaged with the language purely as language. We can say that they are
thinking about what they are saying rather than about what message they
are trying to convey.
Oblique discourse makes use of proclaiming tones in the special sense
of I tell you what is written here, or I tell you what it is customary to tell
you on occasions like this. It also makes use of the special level tone or
o-tone.
As well as occurring in pre-coded discourse, level tone often occurs at
points of hesitation. Speakers often hesitate because they are having some
kind of diculty in putting together the language the present situation
demands. In these circumstances, there is a temporary shift of attention
from the listener (direct orientation) towards the language (oblique orientation). The eect of such a shift can often be interpreted as something

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like Wait a moment while I work out what to say next. Not surprisingly,
this kind of orientation shift is common in the speech of people whether learners of the language or native speakers who are having to think
before they speak.
Brazil, David. Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English.
Cambridge University Press, 1994. pp. 2223.

1. Speak about two kinds of speech orientation and their peculiarities.

***
Intonation is traditionally equated with variations in the perceived
pitch of the speaking voice. Pitch varies continuously from the moment
anyone begins speaking to the moment they end. An accurate description of the variation would be exceedingly complex and would reveal
nothing of the significantly patterned phenomenon that we take intonation to be. This is because not all the variation has the same kind of
communicative significance. The only meaning is of the kind that can
be represented as the result of a speaker having made an either/or choice.
We are concerned with identifying a set of oppositions that reside in the
language system, knowledge of which we must assume the speaker shares
with his/her hearer.
Suppose there is a language system that includes an opposition we can
describe in the following terms: having pitched a particular syllable at a
certain level, the speaker can, at some subsequent syllable, make a meaning choice between the same pitch, a higher one or a lower one. Graphically, we might represent the choices at the second syllable thus:
S2 (high)
S1 <> <> S2 (mid)
S2 (low)
Two important conditions are inherent in the kind of situation we have
postulated at S2:
if the speaker produces S2 at all he/she cannot avoid choosing one of
the three possibilities specied (there is no fourth choice).
the communicative value of any one choice is dened negatively by reference to the other options available (the value of high is whatever is
not meant by mid and low taken together).

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This account misses out one very obvious thing we might say about
what our speaker does. Having decided on a higher choice, he/she must
then make a further decision, as to how much higher to pitch the syllable. To
deal with this kind of decision, any descriptive enterprise would have to
concern itself with variation on a continuous scale, and would demand a
quite dierent analytical method from that used here. So, a small set of either/or choices can be identied and related to a set of meaning oppositions
that together constitute a distinctive sub-component of the meaning-potential of English.
Brazil, David. The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge University Press, 1997. pp. 13.

1. What sets of opposition does intonation form?

***
A spoken utterance consists of words put together in a grammatical construction; this part is verbal and vocal. While people are producing such utterances, they are also communicating something, intentionally or not, by
elements that are not part of language, neither vocal nor verbal, such as gestures, appearance, stance, and proximity to the addressees popularly
called body language, labelled kinesics by those who study such things systematically. Some of the elements may be considered vocal gestures that
accompany speech: laughing, giggling, whispering, falsetto, a quavering or
breaking voice. Some are individual ways of speaking: some people are
louder than others, or louder at certain times; some have higher-pitched
voices than others; some speak in a near monotone while others have a
broad pitch range; some clip syllables short by comparison with others who
drawl. These and other such phenomena are part of speech but not part of
language.
Intonation is vocal, non-verbal, and part of language. It is the use of
(relative) pitch changes in patterns used and recognized by all speakers of a
language (allowing for dialect dierences analogous to other phonological
and semantic dierences) and which can impart dierent meanings to otherwise identical utterances.
Kreidler, Charles W. Describing Spoken English. An Introduction.
Hartnolls Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall, 1997. pp. 192193.

1. Comment on the ways of communication.

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***
The nal topic within the general subject of prosody is voice quality,
dened as the long-term and stable characteristics of a given voice which
span stretches of speech. Voice quality is the term used to describe the auditory impression made by a certain mechanical setting of the speech organs
over stretches of speech. The term voice setting is sometimes used in the
same way as voice quality but can also mean the physical postures of the
articulators which produce a particular voice quality <> Dierent individuals and groups of speakers have dierent ways of setting their tongue,
jaw opening, lip shape and vocal cords to achieve a characteristic voice
quality.
<> intonation and stress, as well as the articulation of vowels and consonants, are produced within the limits of the voice quality set by the articulators and the breath stream coming up from the lungs. For example, if the
setting of the vocal cords is very tense, it is not possible to produce as full a
range of pitch as when they are set at a more moderate level of tension. As a
second example, if the voice is set at low volume i.e. soft voice the possibilities for producing stress contrasts are thereby reduced <>
Pennington, Martha C. Phonology in English Language Teaching:
an International Approach. Longman: London and New York,
1996. P. 156.

1. Give the denition of voice quality.

2. State the dierence between voice quality and voice setting (if any).
3. Prove that voice quality is an aspect of prosody (intonation).

***
Because of its associated physiological correlates, voice quality is a sign
of the speakers overall physical and mental condition. Speakers who are
elderly, tired or in very poor health often have a creaky voice quality, as a
result of a tense posture of the vocal cords and their slow and somewhat irregular vibration. One manifestation of psychological tension is a tense setting of the vocal cords, which shows in the voice as a harsh or strained quality that is generally accompanied by heightened pitch. Conversely, a
generally relaxed state of mind and body results in a relaxed vocal posture as
well, producing a lax or slack setting of the vocal cords that lowers pitch and
may produce breathy voice as well <>

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Intonation

A loud voice, which would be appropriate in situations where it is necessary to get someones attention, might also indicate a state of high emotion, such as anger, surprise or excitement. If part of a speakers normal
voice set, a loud voice might be interpreted as a sign of the speakers condence, or, less positively, of an aggressive or dogmatic personality. A soft
voice <> can be indicative of shock or terror, or of a sad or depressed state.
As a normal vocal feature, a soft voice might be interpreted as an indication
that the speaker is a gentle, shy or timid person.
A high-pitched voice including falsetto or false voice expresses surprise and is also used for joking and discussion of non-serious matters <>
As a stable trait, high pitch is associated with a non-threatening, pleasant or
playful personality, and with femininity. Less positively, it might be viewed
as an indicator of someone who is childish or who cannot be taken seriously <>
Pennington, Martha C. Phonology in English Language Teaching:
an International Approach. Longman: London and New York,
1996. P. 159.

1. How can voice quality indicate the speakers physical and psychological
state?
2. What impressions does a loud/soft/falsetto voice produce?

***
Because dierent voices have dierent natural and symbolic associations, they are often exploited in acting, pretending or playing various roles.
In English and some other languages, labialized articulation can signify
baby talk <> A combination of retroex and labialized articulation made
the American actor, Jimmy Stewart, seem ingenuous a combination of
childlike and rural. A palatalized articulatory setting, sometimes with nasalization, is used in English for baby talk as well as for mocking. The combination of nasal voice and a spread lip setting in the speech of the American
actor, Jack Nicholson, gives a sinister impression a man who mocks and
smiles at the same time.
By raising the larynx e.g. by raising the chin and leaning the head
backward an adult voice can be made to sound more like that as a child,
as this stretches the vocal cords and raises the pitch as a consequence. This
is a setting that might be used for the voice of a cartoon character (e.g.
Mickey Mouse), a doll or an adult playing a child <> In contrast, produc-

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ing a voice with a lowered larynx creates a deeper, more adult voice and so
might be the voice adopted by a child attempting to imitate an adult, especially a male adult. An army drill sergeant might bark out orders in a
harsh shout while also placing his chin on his chest, thereby lowering the
larynx and making the voice lower and more commanding <>
Pennington, Martha C. Phonology in English Language Teaching:
an International Approach. Longman: London and New York,
1996. pp. 160161.

1. What eects can be achieved by changing voice quality?