New trends in English intonation

Lecture 5. Suprasegmental Phonetics (II).

Intonation and Prosody.

1. Intonation and Prosody: Basic Concepts.

Functions of Intonation.

Prosodic Settings of English and Russian.

New trends in English intonation

Prosody is an umbrella term to refer collectively to all modifications of voice during speech (pitch, loudness, tempo, rhythm and voice quality).

As for intonation, there are different approaches depending on the phonological tradition.

For example, in the British phonological schoolthe basic notions of prosody and intonation are defined as follows:

Intonation is “a term used in the study of suprasegmental phonology referring to the distinctive use of patterns of pitch, or melody” (Crystal, 1980);

“The use of pitch variation to convey meaning” (Poach, 2001).

Sometimes this interpretation is called the narrow approach to intonation.

The Russian phonological school:

Intonation “is a complex unity of four components, formed by communicatively relevant variations in: (1) voice pitch, or speech melody; (2) the prominence of words, or their accent; (3) the tempo (rate), rhythm and pausation of the utterance, and (4) voice-timber….” (Vassilyev, 1970))

As we see, the Russian definition of intonation is much broader, it includes practically all the prosodic features of speech. This one is called the broad approach.

Still both the narrow and broad approach supporters agree to make pitch come the first in all the definitions. Why is it so? –An English phonetician David Crystal suggested an interesting classification of the prosodic features ranking them from “most linguistic” to “least linguistic”.

Here we see that pitchranks the highest as the most linguistic prosodic feature, i.e. it can differentiate meaning.

The most rational principles of defining intonation components are considered the ones suggested by N.D. Svetozarova and J.B. Vereninova. They state that to be a component of intonation a phonetic feature should have a correlate on the acoustic level, and this correlate should be of homogeneous nature. The features which meet this requirement are pitch, loudness, tempo, pause and voice quality. Also, a component of intonation should be linguistically relevant, i.e. be able to distinguish meaning.

Thus, intonation can be defined as a complex entity of interrelated components – pitch, loudness, tempo, pause and voice quality which are realized in speech and differentiate the meaning of a phrase.

Minor changes in its prosodic pattern will not affect the meaning of the phrase. By contrast, when such changes result in changing meaning, it means that intonation has come into play. Intonation performs the distinctive function, whereas prosody does not.

Prosody functions as a kind of material to build oral speech and to divide it into segments, thus performing the structural function of organization and segmentation of speech flow.

e.g. In TV newsreading, changes in prosody highlight the most important events, ‘break the news’; in sports commentary prosodic changes reflect the progress of the action.

The other function of prosody is indexical: prosody is a means of indicating social relations between speakers (their permanent social status or their social role in a particular talk). Prosody can signal:

- dominance (slower tempo+perfect timing) or submissivness (faster tempo+narrower pitch range)

- formal or informal occasion (increasing pitch level and loudness in the words of address to the meeting – Ladies and gentleman,…)

-habitual sayings such as greetings, leave takings, thanks, apologies, etc. They can be called “intonational idioms”, as they are prosodically set expressions (fall+rise or fall+level). Function: to keep contact with the listener.

Eg. ↓Hello, _Dad! I’m ↓terribly _sorry.

Unlike prosody, intonation acts as a contrast of pitch variations. It does not operate withabsolute values of fundamental frequency, intensity and duration.

Можно произнести фразу в выс. или низ. регистре, ее значение не изменится. Но если изменить тон на инт.центре (было высоко-стало низко), то изменится и смысл всей фразы.