Intonation

Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say. Without intonation, it's impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words. Listen to somebody speaking without paying attention to the words: the 'melody' you hear is the intonation.

WHAT IS INTONATION 1. Intonation is a term used to refer to the

distinctive use of different patterns of pitch that carry meaningful information.

2. The kinds of pitch modulation which are found in whole utterances. Intonation contours can be used to highlight certain elements in an utterance, to bundle words together into information chunks,& to convey speaker’s attitude to what he/she is saying.(Philip Carr,page#78)

WHAT IS INTONATION

• Intonation can be described as the movements or variations in pitch to which we attach familiar labels describing levels (e.g. high / low) and tones (e.g. falling /rising), etc. (Ranalli, 2002)

Articulatory phonetics(production point of view)

Acoustic phonetics(transmission point of view)

Auditory phonetics (Perception point of view)

Rate of vocal folds Fundamental frequency Pitch

The quicker the vocal folds vibrate.

The higher Fo (higher number of cycles per second)

The higher the pitch the sensation.

INTONATION

Tone & Intonation languages • We can divide language into languages which are tone languages

and those which are not, English falls into second category, that is, it is not a tone language.

• All the languages in the world use consonants and vowels to build morphemes, which in turn join together to form words.

• Thus the English word ‘me’ is made up of a nasal consonant followed by a high vowel.

• If we change the consonant to a/b/ we would get a different word, ‘be’, and if we change the vowel to a low vowel, we would also get a different words, ‘ma’.

• We may pronounce the word ‘ma’ with various pitch patterns, depending on the occasion. We may pronounce it with high pitch if we are emphatic, we may say it with a rising pitch in a question etc.

• But these different pitch patterns do not alter the word in the way that changing a consonant or changing a vowel does.

• These different pitch patterns that do not change but merely add to the basic meaning of words are called intonation.

• Yet there are some languages in the world that use pitch patterns to build morphemes in the same way consonant and vowels are used. The best known such language is Chinese.

Tone languages

• In Chinese, the syllable ‘ma’ when pronounced with a falling pitch patterns means, ‘to scold’.

• When pronounced with a rising pattern, the meaning is ‘hemp’, when pronounced with a high level pattern, the meaning is ‘mother’ as in some dialects of English, and lastly, when pronounced with a low dipping pattern, the meaning is ‘horse’.

• When pitch patterns are used in this lexical capacity i.e. to build word and morphemes much as consonants and vowels do, they are called tones.

• And languages that use tones in this way are called tone languages.

Tone languages

• English is not tone language because different tones make no difference in meanings.

• But chinese is a tone language• Urdu is stressed lang• English is not stress language

DEVELOPMENT OF INTONATION

The study of intonation went through many changes in the twentieth century.

British linguistics Daniel Jones & (1926)

The most intensive development began during the 1940.

In United States the theory that evolved was based on ‘pitch phonemes’ (Pike. 1945).

It was developed in 1951 and then by Halliday (1967).

Intonation

Halliday divides intonation into “the three T’s”:

1. Tonality (the chunking of speech into intonational phrases, or tone-units)

2. 2.Tone (mainly, but not only: fall, rise, and fall-rise

3. Tonicity (nucleus placement).

Intonation

Halliday divides intonation into “the three T’s”: Tonality (the chunking of speech into intonational phrases, or tone-units),

2.Tonicity (nucleus placement), and 3.Tone (mainly, but not only: fall, rise, and

fall-rise

TONE UNITa group of words forming a distinctive unit in an utterance, containing a nucleus and optionally one or more other syllables before and after the nucleus. How do we identify tone units

• Are there any physical constraints on theextent of tone unit?• How do we identify tone units in connectedspeech?• What communicative function(s) do toneunits realise in speech?

Constraints on Tone Units.

• We break up spoken language into tone groups because we need to breathe, and so there is a physical reason.

• There is also the need to think; that is, tone groups also have a cognitive basis. While we are speaking one tone group, we are planning the next one, and so the tone group carries only one idea at a time. Thus the pace of the tone groups, and the information they convey, matches the speaker's thoughts.

Identification of tone unit boundaries in connected speech • Pause

• Pitch

• Speed

Phonetic clues

• A perceivable pitch change immediately following the final accented syllable

• Speed – syllables towards the end of a tone unit tend to be relatively slow while syllables towards the start of a tone unit tend to be relatively quick.

combination of pause, pitch change, and a change of pace.

communicative function of a tone unit• Halliday (1967) recognised that • each tone unit realised semantically one

information unit – in other words we • use tone units to package our messages into

bite sized chunks of information e.g., • || i THINK || you have made good

PROgress // THIS year ||

PauseSome scholars e.g. Brazil (1997) argue that the

boundaries of a tone unit are marked by a pause.

Marked and Unmarked Tonality= a Clause (Unmarked)Tone Unit≠ a Clause (MarkedAt phrase and clause boundaries: e.g.

In France where farms tend to be smaller the subsidies are more im portant

Link between tone-unit and units of grammar

• Halliday also realised that if a tone unit equals an information unit it is likely to • also correspond with a clause. Some statistical evidence for this is found in the • Crystal and Davy (1975) corpus approximately where around 50% of all tone • units corresponded to clauses. • 4. || we’re looking forward to BONfire night ||

Analysis of Utterances to Understand Tone – Unit

One syllable utterance YouThis is one tone unit. Note: Underlined syllable carry tone.

Three Syllable Utterance Is it you?This is one tone unit. Note: the underlined syllable have more prominence.

Division of intonational contour

H.Palmer (1922) was the first one to divide the intonational contour into three main segments:• head (all the stressed and the unstressed syllables before the nucleus),• nucleus (the most prominent syllable in the utterance) and• tail (the unstressed syllables following the nucleus).

• R. Kingdon (1958) suggests a division of the intonational contour into five parts: prehead (initial unstressed syllables), head (the first stressed syllable), body (all the stressed and the unstressed syllables in the scale preceding the nucleus), nucleus (the most prominently stressed syllable) and tail (the final unstressed syllables following the nucleus). For example:

Tone Unit

1 But he is not really interested in it.(1— prehead, 2 — head, 3 — body, 4 — nucleus, 5 — tail).

The first three segments (1,2,3) constitute the prenuclear pattern of the intonation contour. The fifth segment (5) is the postnuclear part of it. The nuclear part (4) is of primary importance. It is compulsory for every intonation group, while the rest of the segments are optional.

Division of the contour

• J. D.O'Connor and G. F.Arnold (1973) stick to R. Kingdon's system. However, they suggest a four-part division of the contour: prehead, head, nucleus and tail, uniting head and body into one segment that is head.

(i) Tonic Syllable • Tonic syllable is an obligatory component of tone unit. The

centre of the unit, around which everything else is constructed, is the tonic syllable, or nucleus.

For example:John, is it you?

• In this example, there are two tone units because there are, two tonic syllables in it. First is John, one syllable utterance) second is it you? (Three syllable utterance).

• It contains a high degree of prominence which is a property of stressed syllable, so, tonic syllable contains.

Tone + Stress:Tonic stress: The stress that tonic syllable is having is called

tonic stress.

Location of the tonic syllable

• Of great linguistic importance• The most common position – on the last

lexical word of the tone-unit• But, for contrastive purposes any word can

become the bearer of the tonic syllable• Thus, the placement of the tonic syllable

represents the focus of the information

(ii) The Head:The head is all that part of a tone unit that extends from the first stressed

syllable up to the tonic syllable. For example:

Give me, those? Head TS

If there is no stressed syllable proceeding the tonic syllable, there cannot be any head.

(iii) The Pre-Head:The unstressed syllable before the head is called pre-head. For example

In an hourPre-head TS

Pre-head can be found in two situations. When there is no head. As inFor example:

In an hour PH TS

b) When the head is after the unstressed syllable. For example: In a little less than an, hour PH H TS

(iv) The tailAny syllable that follows the tonic syllable or any syllable between tonic syllable and of tone unit is called the Tail. For example:

Look at it TS Tail I might buy it H TS Tail

Exercises

• Divide the following utterances into tone units and decide where the tonic or nucleus might fall in each tone unit:1. The first student to finish can go early2. Sadly, Maurice has gone away3. The person who was watching me left a ticket behind4. Alan couldn't make it so Ken took his place

Answers

1. //The first student to finish// can go early//2. //Sadly// Maurice has gone away//3. // The person who was watching me //left a

ticket behind//4. //Alan couldn't make it //so Ken took his

place//

Grammatical function of Tonality

• 22 || my brother who lives in LONdon || got MARried ||• 23 || my BROther || who lives in LONdon || got

MARried || • 24 || the man and the woman dressed in BLACK ||

STOOD up || • 25 || the MAN || and the woman dressed in BLACK ||

STOOD up || • 26 || they sent JOHN || a DOCtor || to HELP him|| • 27 || they sent john a DOCtor || to HELP him ||

Tone – unit and the structure of tone unit:

• Tone: Tone is the overall behaviour of pitch.

• Pitch: Pitch is frequency of vibration of vocal cords.

• Tone unit: For the purpose of analyzing intonation, a unit greater than syllable one syllable. Usually tone – unit is always composed of more than one syllable.

Tone unit boundaries• Neutral division into tone units:• Tone unit boundaries correspond to clause boundaries.• Emphatic: • A tone unit boundary occurs in the middle of a clause

(usually at a phrase boundary). • | On the Saturday we went on the London Eye | (tone unit =

clause)• | On the Saturday | we went on the London Eye |

(marked/emphatic – tone unit boundary between adverbial and subject)

ToneTone is the major pitch movement within the tone unit. The overall behavior of pitch is “tone”

Choice of pitch movement•The meaning component deriving from tone does not attach to the word level only but to the complete tone unit.•The prominent words are the sub-classes of the tonic syllabus.•The communication value of prominence and tone choice depends on interaction between listener and speaker.•When is the meeting?

•On Saturday afterNOON•On SATurday afternoon

.

Tone Tone functions (i) First possibility of pitch movement and variation in is on “head” of the tone-unit

.(ii) Second possibility the movement and variation of pitch for tonic syllable, in the

form of rise and fall.

In a little less than an, hour PH H TSPitch variations in Head

“all that part of a tone-unit that extends from the first syllable up to tonic syllabus.”

Pitch possibilities in the head:

1.High Head

2.Low head

High Heads

The ‘bus was late is ‘that the end

The stressed syllable which begins the head is high in pitch ,usually it is higher than the beginning pitch of the tone on the tonic syllable.

Low HeadsIn the low head the stressed syllable which begins the head is low in pitch, it is lower than the beginning pitch of the tone on the tonic syllable

The ,bus was late is ,that the end

Low HeadUnstressed syllables continue the pitch of the stressed syllable that precedes them with high and low heads.

We ’asked if it had come. We ‚asked if it had come.

Pitch movement in tonic syllableTones are divided into two classes: static tone & kinetic tone

Static tone - a syllable is pronounced on a level ,no pitch variation

Kinetic tone-change in pitch on physiological level by tension of vocal cordsHalliday lists five intonation choices for the falling and rising tone movements.

Tone symbol tonic movement terminal pitch t tendency

1. ` Falling low

2. ‚ Rising high

3. ˆ falling-rising high

4. ˇ rising-falling low

5. - Level low

Transcription of pitch movement

• Daniel Jones uses a graphic transcription with a stave of three horizontal lines.

• Upper and lower limits of speaker’s Voice range.

• Top, middle and bottom • Stressed & unstressed syllable have small and

large dots respectively.

1.The Falling tone-(The glide-down)

• Polarity (truth value or validity)is known and stated, there is certainty with Yes or No

• A fall in the voice from a fairly high pitch to a very low one.

• On a single syllable the voice falls within the syllable.

The Falling Tone

• On more than one syllable the voice either falls within the stressed syllable or it moves down to the next syllable.

• Unstressed syllables at the end are all very low.

The Falling tone-(The glide-down)Pre- head + tonic syllableAny unstressed syllable before the tonic syllable have low pitch.

The Rising-tone (The glide-up )Polarity (truth-value) is unknown and information

is required.The tone conveys an impression that something

more is to follow.Frequently accompany polite and friendly feelings

Rising Tone the Glide-UpThe rise in the glide-up either take place on one syllable, before the rise any stress word is felt to be important but there is no change of pitch

The Rise-Fall Tone (compound tone)

• With the rise-fall tone we find a similar situation: if the tonic syllable is followed by a single syllable in the tail, the “rise” part of the tone takes place on the first (tonic) syllable and the “fall” part is on the second.

ˆno ˆno one ˆno sir

The Rise-Fall Tone (compound tone)

When there are two or more syllables in the tail, the syllable immediately following the tonic syllable is always higher and any following syllables are low.ˆAll of them went

Thatˆs a nice way to speak

Fall –Rise tones(compound tone)• The pitch movement are distorted by the structure of syllables

they occur on. If there is a tail of two or more syllable the normal pitch movement fall on the tonic syllable and to remain low until the last stress syllable

Most of it was for them

I .Might have .thought of .buying it

The Fall-Rise Tone(compound tone)

• The fall is on the first stress syllable, the fall and rise are separated. The rise is on the last stressed syllable .

• Glide down and Glide up tone.• Pitch movement is for the pitch to fall on the tonic

syllable and remain low until the last syllable in the tail.