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    Functions of Intonation Assignment

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    Mahmood Rehan
    Intonation serves several functions in speech. It indicates what information is new versus given through accentual function. Grammatical intonation helps identify grammatical structures by placing boundaries between phrases and clauses and distinguishing statements from questions. Discourse intonation signals how clauses and sentences are linked to contrast or cohere in spoken discourse and can indicate the type of response expected from the listener. However, intonation patterns are not obligatory and attempting to generalize them too broadly may fail to accurately predict intonation in all cases.

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    Functions of Intonation Assignment

    Uploaded by

    Mahmood Rehan
    289 views2 pages
    Intonation serves several functions in speech. It indicates what information is new versus given through accentual function. Grammatical intonation helps identify grammatical structures by placing boundaries between phrases and clauses and distinguishing statements from questions. Discourse intonation signals how clauses and sentences are linked to contrast or cohere in spoken discourse and can indicate the type of response expected from the listener. However, intonation patterns are not obligatory and attempting to generalize them too broadly may fail to accurately predict intonation in all cases.

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    Intonation serves several functions in speech. It indicates what information is new versus given through accentual function. Grammatical intonation helps identify grammatical structures by placing boundaries between phrases and clauses and distinguishing statements from questions. Discourse intonation signals how clauses and sentences are linked to contrast or cohere in spoken discourse and can indicate the type of response expected from the listener. However, intonation patterns are not obligatory and attempting to generalize them too broadly may fail to accurately predict intonation in all cases.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    289 views2 pages

    Functions of Intonation Assignment

    Uploaded by

    Mahmood Rehan
    Intonation serves several functions in speech. It indicates what information is new versus given through accentual function. Grammatical intonation helps identify grammatical structures by placing boundaries between phrases and clauses and distinguishing statements from questions. Discourse intonation signals how clauses and sentences are linked to contrast or cohere in spoken discourse and can indicate the type of response expected from the listener. However, intonation patterns are not obligatory and attempting to generalize them too broadly may fail to accurately predict intonation in all cases.

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    Functions of Intonation:

    Accentual Function:
    It is also called as Focusing Intonation and it helps to show what information in an utterance is
    new and what is already known. We use it to bring some parts of message into focus and leave
    other parts out of it. We combine accentuation with choice of tone to present some longer
    stretches of message as constituting the foreground of picture while leaving others as
    background. It refers to accent and implies that placement of stress is somewhat determined by
    intonation.
    1. Most common position of placement is the last lexical word and not the functional words
    except for contrast.
    Example: She was wearing a red dress. (Normal Placement)
    2. For purpose of emphasis the tonic stress can be placed in other positions.
    Example: The movie was very boring / The movie was very boring.
    3. Intonation is used to clear ambiguities.
    Example: I have plans to leave. (I am planning to leave.)
    I have plans to leave. (I have plans/drawings to leave)

    Grammatical Functions:
    Intonation helps to identify grammatical structures in speech. Listener is better able to recognize
    the grammar and syntax structures by intonation. Things like (a) Placement of boundaries
    between phrases clauses and sentences. (b) Difference between Question and Statements.
    1. Grammatical Intonation is used in those sentences which when written are ambiguous and
    which can only be removed by using differences of intonation. In following example differences
    caused by placement of tone-unit boundaries causes two different interpretations.
    a). Those who sold quickly | made a profit.
    b). Those who sold | quickly made a profit.
    2. Another function is the choice of tone on tonic syllable. Rising tone is used with questions.
    Simply by changing the tone from falling to rising, possibility of changing a question is created.
    a), Price is going up. (Falling)
    b). Price is going up. (Rising)
    3. Another function is question tags. Difference in falling and rising intonation can cause
    difference in meanings.
    a). They are coming tomorrow | aren’t they. (Falling)
    b). They are coming tomorrow | aren’t they. (Rising)

    Discourse Function:
    It signals how sequence of clauses and sentences go together in spoken discourse to contrast or
    cohere. Division of text in sentences and paragraphs indicates when the speaker is indicating
    some sort of contrast or link with material in another tone unit. In conversations it can convey to
    listener what kind of response is expected from him.
    1. Attention Focusing:
    Tonic stress is placed on the appropriate syllable of one particular word in the tone unit. Stress is
    placed on most important unit.
    a). She went to Scotland.
    b). He went to the drawing-room.
    2. Information Content:
    Stress is placed on syllables in terms of information content. The more predictable a words
    occurrence in sentence lower its information content will be. Stress will be placed on words with
    high information content.
    a). I have to take the dog for a walk.

    Exception:
    In many cases it is difficult to explain the tonic placement in terms of importance and
    information.
    a). Your coat is on fire.
    Conclusion:
    The mentioned intonation patterns are certainly not obligatory. Risk with these approaches is that
    one might end up making generalizations that are too broad and will have little power to predict
    intonation with accuracy. It is not possible to draw any distinct sketch regarding intonations.
    Reference: Roach, Peter. English Phonetics and Phonology. 4th Edition. Cambridge University
    Press, 2009.

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