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Lecture 13

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18 views16 pages

Lecture 13

Uploaded by

Aydana Nurlan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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LECTURE 13

LATANOVA R.U.
INTONATION
When we speak the flow of speech does not consist only of
speech sounds (segmental units), there are also other phonetic
means that characterize a sequence of speech sounds. They are
called suprasegmental or prosodic means. Intonation and
stress are closely linked. In fact it's impossible to dissociate
them. There are no languages which are spoken without any
change of prosodic parameters but intonation functions in
various languages in a different way.
Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say,
the way the voice rises and falls when speaking, in other words
the music of the language. Just as words have stressed
syllables, sentences have regular patterns of stressed words. In
addition, the voice tends to rise, to fall or remain flat
depending on the meaning or feeling we want to convey
(surprise, anger, interest, boredom, gratitude, etc.). Intonation
therefore indicates the mood of the speaker.
• Changes in intonation can convey subtle information about
the speaker’s attitude and emotions, in addition to indicating whether
or not a sentence is a statement or question. Intonation in English can
be used to convey the nature and mood of your sentence. Changes in
intonation tell your listener if you have finished speaking or if you are
going to add something else to the sentence.
• Intonation can also convey a friendly or unfriendly mood,
sarcasm, humour, sadness, reluctance, excitement, anger, disapproval
and many other attitudes and emotions.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6aE4nceJt8&ab_channel=Oxfor
dOnlineEnglish

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwSdaFRaNaY&ab_channel=Le
arnEnglishwithEmma%5BengVid%5D

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3SThAIpVRc&ab_channel=Engli
shPronunciationRoadmap
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUY8LEMOYkQ&ab_channel=ETJ
English
Intonation is a complex unity of these prosodic features of speech:
melody (pitch of the voice); sentence stress; temporal characteristics
(duration, tempo, pausation); rhythm; timber (voice quality). The term
"prosody" is widely used in linguistic literature alongside with the term
"intonation" but in the broad sense.
Intonation can be described on the acoustic level (in terms of its
acoustic characteristics), on the perception level (in terms of the
characteristics perceived by a human ear) and on the linguistic level (in
terms of meanings expressed by intonation).
Intonation on the perception level is defined as a complex, formed by
significant variations of pitch, loudness and tempo (the rate of speech an
pausation) closely related. There are definitions that also include timbre,
which is sometimes regarded as the fourth component of intonation by
some linguists (it shows the speaker’s emotions, such as joy, sadness,
irony, anger, indignation, etc.).
Intonation is restricted to the pitch (tone) changes only. Intonation is
identified with pitch movements (melody), because pitch has the
greatest linguistic value.
• Pitch correlates with frequency of the vibrations of the vocal
cords, loudness correlates with intensity, tempo correlates
with time (duration) during which a speech unit lasts.
• Pitch is usually described as a system of tones (fall, rise, fall-
rise and so on), pitch levels (keys, registers), which can be
high, medium and low, and pitch ranges (intervals between
the highest and the lowest pitched syllables), which can be
wide, normal and narrow.
FUNCTIONS OF INTONATION

• Different phoneticians name, describe and classify the


functions of intonation in different ways. But it is important
to recognize nowadays that the basic function of intonation is
communicative. It has a great value for expressing ideas and
emotions and contributes to mutual understanding between
people. One of the aims of communication is the exchange of
information between people.
• Intonation serves to structure the text and thus performs the
organizing function. On the one hand, it delimitates the text
into smaller units (delimitative function), on the other hand, it
ties smaller units into bigger ones (constitutive function).
These two processes take place simultaneously.
Intonation is capable of distinguishing the syntactic
(communicative) type of the sentence, thus performing the
distinctive function. In other words, intonation can indicate
whether the utterance is a statement, a question, a command or
an exclamation. It is the change of the nuclear tone that leads
to the change of the syntactic type of the sentence.
Intonation helps to express attitudes of the speakers to what is
said, to the listener or to the situation. It can convey a wide
range of attitudes (attitudinal function). When people speak
they can sound angry or happy, pleased or surprised, interested
or indifferent, and so on.
• Have you read the book? – Not ˎonce. (the speaker has not
read the book)
• Have you read the book? – Not ̌once. (the book has been read
several times)
Questions:

1. Give the definition of intonation.


2. Name the components of intonation?
3. What types of pauses are distinguished according to their length
and function?
4. How is the intonation pattern defined? What are its components?
5. What are the functions of intonation?
6. Speak on the stylistic use of intonation.
7. What are clitics? Explain the notions ‘enclitics’ and ‘proclitics’.
Exercise 1:

1. Read these words with the six main tones:


Low Fall (ˎdeed), Low Rise (ˏdeed), High Fall (ˋdeed), High
Rise (ˊdeed), Fall-Rise (ˇdeed), Rise-Fall (ˆdeed):

feed, cord, window, matter, quarter.


Exercise 2:

Intone the following sentences, divide them into rhythmic


groups:

1) She is eager to see them again. 2) She can give them a


piece of advice. 3) Pete is an honest person. 4) Their child is
as big as mine. 5) Bring six books.

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