Intonation of the English language

Intonation is a language universal. There are no languages which are spoken as a monotone without any changes of prosodic parameters.

Intonation is a complete unity of non-segmental or prosodic features of speech. They are melody (pitch of the voice), sentence stress, temporal characteristics (duration, tempo, pausation), timbre, rhythm.

Intonation organizes a sentence, determines communicative types of sentences and clauses, divides sentences into intonation groups, gives prominence to words and phrases.

In practical courses of English phonetics emphasis is naturally made on the so-called grammatical functions of intonation:

1) The constitutive function: forming words, syntagms, sentences and supra-phrasal unities

2) The distinctive function: distinguishing between words and word combinations with the same phonemic composition, communicative types of a sentence. They are statements, questions, explanations, commands, requests, parenthesis.

Emotional function of intonation is to express is to express attitudinal meaning – sarcasm, surprise, impatience, delight, shock, anger, interest, and other semantic nuances.

Informational function of intonation helps to draw attention to what meaning is given and what is new in an utterance. The word carrying the most prominent tone in a syntagm signals the part of an utterance that the speaker is treating as new information: I’ve got a new pen, I bought threebooks.

Textual function of intonation helps larger units of meaning than the sentence to contrast and cohere. In radio news-reading, paragraphs of information can be shaped through the use of pitch. In sports commentary, changes in prosody reflect the progress of the action.

Psychological function of intonation helps us to organize speech into units that are easier to perceive and memorize.

Indexical function of intonation: serves as a marker of personal or social identity.

Intonation can also serve as a typical feature of different registers of speech (or styles of speech).

Intonation also reflects such extra-linguistic factors as age, sex, personality traits, status, social identity of the speaker, his emotions.

Prosodic parameters:

1) Pitch – the fundamental frequency of vibration of the vocal cords is perceived as pitch. The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch. And vice versa. So during the pronunciation of a sound or larger segments pitch is either lowered or raised, or sustained. And in this way can form various configurations. If it varies within a sound (or a rhythm group) the configuration is referred to as “tone”. If the unit is higher than the corresponding configuration is a “tune” (melody).

2) Range – (diapason). This term is used to denote the whole band of frequencies which it is possible for the individual to produce from the lowest to the highest. Normally we speak only within one-third of our total pitch range. Even emotionally coloured pitch is realized within the limits of the normal voice range, only at times going beyond it.

3) Loudness is the product of the amplitude of vibration of the vocal cords brought about by differing intensity of air-pressure from the lungs.

There are some more prosodic parameters, pauses of different length, tempo of speaking, a stress (or accent) and rhythm.

4) Pause – the absence of voice or phonation. Any piece of connected discourse is split up into smaller portions (paragraphs, sentences, sense groups). In this case a pause is a complete cessation of phonation. In actual speech pauses may differ in length.

a) The one-unit pause is denoted by a vertical line It is equivalent to one beat or cycle of a person’s normal rhythm of speech. It is used to separate two sense-groups (or syntagms).

b) The two-unit pause is denoted by two vertical lines. It is approximately twice as long as the one-unit pause. It is used to separate two sentences.

c) The three-unit pause is marked by three vertical lines. It’s approximately three times as long as the one-unit pause. It’s generally used to separate two paragraphs.

An interval within an intonation group is marked by ≀

In rapid speech a one-unit pause will naturally be shorter than in slow speech. It may be longer or shorter depending on the tempo of the utterance.

Pauses are usually divided into filled and unfilled, corresponding to voiced and silent pauses. Their length is relative to the tempo and rhythmical norms of a person. The exception is the co-called “end-of-utterance” pause which length is controlled by the person who is about to speak.

Functionally, there may be distinguished syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses.

Syntactic pauses separate phrases, intonation groups.

Emphatic pauses serve to make especially prominent certain parts of the utterance, e.g.

She is the most ≀ charming girl I’ve ever seen.

Hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain sometime to think over what to say next. They may be silent or filled, e.g.

She is rather a … good student.

Where does she live? – Um, not very far from here.

5) The timbre of the voice quality is a special colouring of the speaker’s voice. It’s used to express various emotions and moods.

6) Sentence stress is a greater prominence of words, which are made more or less prominent in an intonation group. The special prominence of accented words is achieved through the greater force of utterance and changes in the direction of voice pitch, constituting the nuclear tone.

The difference between stress and accent is based on the fact that in the case of stress the dominant component is loudness, in the case of accent it is pitch. Degrees of stress in an utterance correlate with a pitch-range system. Nuclear stress is the strongest, it carries the most important information. Non-nuclear stresses are subdivided into full and partial. Full stress occurs only in the head of an intonation group, partial stresses occur also in the pre-head and in the tail. Partial stresses in the pre-head are most frequently of a low variety.

7) Rhythm – is the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllable. It is so typical of an English phrase that the incorrect rhythm betrays the non-English origin of the speaker. The units of the rhythmical structure of an utterance are rhythm groups. Unstressed syllables have a tendency to cling to the preceding stressed syllables, in this case they’re called enclitics, or to the following stressed syllables – proclitics.

Each sense group of the sentence is pronounced at approximately the same period of time. Unstressed syllables are pronounced more rapidly. The greater the number of unstressed syllables, the quicker they are pronounced. Proclitics are pronounced faster than enclitics.

Rhythm is connected with sentence stress. Under the influence of rhythm words which are normally pronounced with two equally strong stresses may lose one of them, or may have their word stress realized difficulty, e.g.

ˌPiccaˈdilly – ˌPiccadilly ˈCircus – ˈclose to ˌPiccaˈdilly

ˌprinˈcess – a ˌprincess ˈroyal

8) Tempo – the term “tempo” implies the rate of the utterance and the pausation. The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. The parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower, unimportant parts are commonly pronounced at a greater speed than normal.