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    Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching - D. Brazil

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    1K views112 pages

    Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching - D. Brazil

    Uploaded by

    Nuri Vallejos
    Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching - D. Brazil

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    DISCOURSE INTONATION AND LANGUAGE TEACHING Longman The new Apalied Lingui intended tg reflect an , David Brazil of . Malcolm Coulthard Theoretical and. descriptwve studies and thus deline. more Catherine Johns clearly the scope of applied linguistics and language study for the informed language teacher and student book is accomper Ae ISBN 0 682 55966 0 eae (© Longman Group Ls 1980 Allies reserved, No part ofthis anion yb epfadon ored seyfomor Sy neste leone terms tout te pr perien ‘tibe Cobyit owe Est pubes 1960 ‘Seo impresion 1981 gp 0 52 346 0 ISBN 0 58 55369 9 Case C60 Patt in Singapore by Hiistnen Offe Palog Pe Lis, Contents Preface Author" Preface Introduction Chapter 1 "Tome Chapter 2 ey Chapter 3 “The tone wn Chapier ¢ Moreon tone Chapter 5 ‘Key and termination Chapter 6 Tntonation and discourse strocture poe B 38 si n 8 ” rey as 182 198 208 Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching DAVID BRAZIL MALCOLM COULTHARD CATHERINE JOHNS LONGMAN Acknowledgements ‘We would ike to acknowledge our debt to Tim Joan, with whom we have collaborated over a period of several years inte writing of ‘materials for teaching intonation. Hiscomments on an carly plan of (Chapter 9 were very helpful and his inuence i particulaely evident in our discussion of dil types. [As ever, we are most grateful to Hazel Hanlon for tansforming four manuscript salo a beautifl typescript wih even the spelling ristakes corrected DCB RMC CMJ, ‘The publishers are grateful {o the Rt, Hon. Denis Hesley for ranting them permission to reproduce the recording and wanscrpt ff his imerview ‘with George Scott for the BBC's “Analyst programme, broadcast in 1972, and to the BBC. Copyright Department They are also grateful to Mrs Caroline Moseley andthe Communication in Schools projet team, Me Wynn and Lovell Park ‘Schoo, Leds, and lan Symonds the sound engineer. fr permission tw reproduce the recording and transcript ofthe ston on Enerey secorded at the schoo! Preface ‘As the authors point out in ther Preface, and in detail thee fnat ‘hapter Inonation a languoge teaching, most guage teaching ‘materials insofar a they Weat intonation seriously at all, inevitably do so by associating certain attudial values to particular pitch ‘contours in jolted utterances. Apart from the inberent implaus- ‘bility of such an approach, given tht the st of avaiable contours is far outnumbered by the conceivable range of attitudes, there sre ‘deeper flaws. A good deal of recent sty of the relationship of| Semantics to pragmatics, in particular studies of the mater of ‘scourge, has thrown sn impresive amount of doubt on the pombility of determining pragmatic of communicative value by ‘aamining ieolated utterances, Interpretation of value depends oa. fpeakers™ and hearers teractions as they work out particular ‘meanings in particular contexts. Diferetdiseoursal contexts, a the futhorsinioate, wll imbue the same sentence with different valu, ‘This isnot to suggest that speakers and hearers have no signposts for secking out the communicative significance of utterances in context, merely that the signals they need to address are of & ‘ferent order from those they have been led 1 look. for in singh Sentences A second flaw which becomes evident through exams tion of current language teaching materials is that intonation is fomehow dependent on prior syntactic and semantic choices, and ‘gain thatone can unproblematcally associate particular contours ‘ith particular types of sentence structure “The central importance of this coneibution to the Applied Linguistics and Language Study sie sto begin from the premise that view of lanmuape a discourse and communication. where ‘terance value depends erucaly on interactive funeton within the ‘isooure, needs a stem of iatonational analysis which is distinct from that appropriate toa syntactic and semantie view of language. ‘The approach ofthe authors i to begin from the standpoint of the peaker and his messages - the information he wishes to convey and to ask how be can use intonational features o signal these his hearer. Chapters 4 offer a careful and lucid description of the sain features of tone, key and prominence within the tone wait, st fut elsewhere by Brasil and Coulthard in their recent SSRC study ‘on Discourse Intonation, Throughout these chapters the emesis is placed on the use of intonational signals to indicate such dis oursalysignifeant information as awareness by speaker of fcommon ground, speaker’ choice of presenting information as Tnown or unknown to the hearer, speaker's assessment of the relative information load carried by particular elements in his lauerance,roleelationships between speaker and hearer, degrees of ‘lidaity and apartness and so on. Readers of Coulthard earlier book in this eis, An Iroduction to Discourse Analysis, will know that euch discussion has taken place on the size and structure of discoursl units, and particularly fon ways of determining the boundaries of these units in spoken Aiscourse, Chapter 5 ofthis present book Key and termination, ad especially Chapter 6 Tanation and dscourse spuctre address this problem and show very persuasively how Bazil fan be applied to this question of boundary-ma ‘obvious language teaching implications. If we can senstse foreign learners o the various functions played by intonation choice inthe structure ofthe discourse as a whole, we will greatly enance thei fapacity not only to understand but alto to oer timely and propriate responses, The advantages do not only accrue in ) 2 biscoURSEISTONATION AND LANGUAGE TEACHING ‘Any vibrating object emits a sound or note whose perceived pitch can forall practical purposes be garded as deel related tthe {frequency of the vibrations: fr instance, vocal cords, piano wires or fnything else vibrating 262 times or eyeler a second (ep) will ‘Produce the sound we hear as middle C. ‘The frequency at which an object vibrate and therefore the perecived pitch of the sound it emis, is a function of both is ‘physic! composition and its length, and thus an alteration in either ‘orboth wll afet the pitch Ione were to take a piano wie and cut {inal t would vibrate exacly fwie as fast abd produce a note exactly an crave higher cuttin hall again and it would now vibrate {four ties 28 fast and produce a note exacly 290 octaves above However, whereas each note on the plano has its own wie there is ‘only one set of vocal cords and variation in the pitch ofthe voice is Schieved by tightening and slackening the muscles to alter both the length and the thickness of the wocal cords and thereby the Frequency at which they vibrate Speakers hive considerable control ovr the setting of ther vocal ‘corde and thus can make small and accurate adjustments tthe pitch Of ther voice asi most evident in singin. In normal spec the pitch ofthe voice varies within a range of an octave or an octave and 5 hal, though extremes of emotion can increase the range con fiderably. Met's vocal cords are heavier and appreciably longer {han women's and thus vibrate on average more lowly and produce range of pitches roughly an octave lower. The frequency of the teacher's voice in Transcript A, Tor instance, (p. 14S) varies between 0cps, roughly the second F below middle C, and 280eps, the B below mide C ‘As soon at we come (o describe pitch lnpuitically we are Interested in how many’of the measurable pitch differences are in fact signifcant Ladefoged (1962) suggests that listener can peecive pitch dferences caused by variations in frequency as small 48 2or 3eps and thos inthe range used by the teacher in Transcript 1 there ace 65-10 distinguishable gradations of pitch. However, this is to look at pitch phoneialy. ina phonologleal description one ‘would expect a much smaller number of sgneany diferent pitch choices. All scent description involves making abstractions from the data and treating tems which are not denial asf thay were, fotder to achieve useful generalisations. The mest obvious example ‘of such motivated peneralsation within phony i the phoneme, “the smallest conrasive nguise unit which may bring about a wmooucion 3 ‘change of meaning’, (Gimson 1962, p.44). The concept of the [honeme is sliy based on the assumption that phonetically quite tinct items can be teated as functionally the same, So the {question becomes, how many phonological sigan itch choices ae ther One of the most famous descriptions of intonation (Trager and Smith 1951; Trager 1968) analogised directly from phoneme theory land suggested that, in American English at last there are four Significant pitch choices, low, mde, high and exira high symbol- jae 1, 2, 3,4, respectively, and that these choices are correctly regarded as (suprazogmenal) phonemes. In contest, Crystal (1969) suggests that fr individual syllables there are up to seven sgnifieant ‘hoes, sx marked terms around a norm, (p. 148), though he ges fon to argue that in considering the relative pitch of stretches of ltterance iis only useful to thinkin terms of three choices, high, normal alow. The desertion we oer below aso argues fo hece signifeant pitch choices Stress Most descriptions of intonation make use ofthe concept of stressed syllable though there isa gret deal of confusion about what stress is From the speakers point of view itis quite simple to dein ses: its the pushing out of more ait from the longs; for the listener, however, things are not so simple If we return for moment tothe plano wie and imagine that it has bee struck extra hard the extra Force will not cause an increase in the fecguene) at which the wire brats, af that isa constant; what ic wil afect isthe distance the vite travels in each diretion as it vibrates rapidly backwards and Forwards. Tis more intense ibeatin i pereived by the sence a5 (an increase in louse, By analogy, one might reasonably expoct the speaker'sextra ort {in ping more air from his lungs to eause more intense vibration of the vost! cords and thus be heard a+ an irease in loudness — certainly Block and Trager (1942) equated stress with loudness However, the extra effort can also cause a tightening and shortening fof the vocal cords and a consequent higher pitch, while again ‘Sresed syllables tend tobe longer a fat additionally emphasised in English by the tendency to change the vowel quality of wnsressed lables toward 4 scours neroNATION AND LANGUAGE TEACHING [Experimental evidence confirms the interrelation of the three parameters of loudness, pitch and duration in the cretion and petception of stress. In an examination of production of tess, Lieberman (1960) recorded sateen speakers of American English producing 25 word pair of the type confit/confllt. On analysis he ‘iscovered that the stressed syllable hada higher pitch in 90% of the case, was louder in 87% of the casce and had a longer duration in 1674 of the eases. However, surprisingly, loudnes seems of much less importance to the listener. Fry (1955, 1958) examined the perception of srs, initially comparing the relative importance of duration and loud ness. He discovered that when both parameters were working together, thats when syllables were long andoud, or short and sot, there was a great deal of agreement between listeners, but when the {wo parameters wee t variance listeners tended to hea the longer rather than the louder sylable as the suessed one. When Fry ‘complicated the experiment to take into aceount the importance of | pitch i was evident that higher slales were moch more likely tobe heard as stressed and thatthe pitch eve “probably outweighed the duration cue. This position eosives additional support from Bolinger (1958) who concludes that for the listener the primary evidence fr stress is pitch prominence; duration he allows a8 & 2 ‘arable but not loudness ‘AS the auditory clues to which syllables are stresed are at best ‘complex, it may sem surprising that listeners are able with «high degree of accuracy to hear and identify them. Lehiste (1970) anc Ladefoged (1975) argue that the explanation must be interme of ‘motor theory of speech perception — they suggest thatthe listenet pls together the available clues from pitch, loudness and duration, Imagines how he would produce the same variations in sound and thus deduces the stress sympathetically. ‘With stress, as with pitch, there isthe question of how many linguistically signifcant gradations exist. Trager and Smith (1951) suggested four, Chomsky and Halle (1968) needed five to handle stress placement in words, Ladefoged (1975), however, argue tht fering depres of stress area phenomenon of isolated words only nd suggests that in connected speech ts oly necessary and indeed ‘only helpful to think in terms of two types of slable~ stressed and unstressed. Certainly two of the most popular descriptions of Intonation, Halliday (1970) and O'Connor end Arnold (1961), manage with thie Binary distinction, rtmovveno—$ yt Abererombie (1961) argues that speech is inherently rhythmical Roth i created by the regular reeurence of particular stems and in speech there are two possible bases —the syllable andthe stressed syllable. Following Pike (1945) Abercrombie argues that all lan- fuages fll into one of two groups depending on whether thei Speech chythm is s)lablemed lke French of strertined like English, In order to describe rhythm in English, itis necessary to postulate a phonclogical unit, the foo, beginning with a strewed fyllable and including an indefinite number of unstressed slabs. Thos lid 2 asl pee ana aya [oe 46h | cis that | Péter and | Mary wit be | ebming Fora siceich of speech to be stres-imed, that is forthe stressed lables to recur at regular jatervals its necessary forall the fet {0 be of equal duration, oF woclranous,s0 that foot 4 above, for ‘example, cakes only as much time as foot I. The sttong version of| the isoctrony hypothesis, as presented by Abercrombie, is that in ‘Avent English speech al ihe fet wil have the same duration. ‘There are, however, difficulties when one attempts to discover isochrony in tape-recorded samples of speech, rather then passages ‘of prose read aloud ~ there is no question of isochrony or constant thythm during slong utterance, and, as Crystal (1969) notes, much ‘of the time ‘ven fone reduces the unit for which one posits an rochronous free to something quite small, such asthe tone unit, one tll Ads Substantial #hythmie variation. (p62) “There are ofcourse times when a speaker will connect two oF three tone units together rhythmically, but the very fact that this is an ‘exploitable choice suggests that the norms not one af ict cyt, ‘There remsins, however, @ certain amount of evidence that isochrony has a psychological reality, and that speakers strive towards i. Classe (1939) suggests that isochrony ati bl ala sci to preset and to mike ate although frequently, only remains as an underlying tendency trite “some” other factor atime simostSonpleely ‘bitrates the ects (p50) Halliday (1967 refers to experimental evidence which suggest that 6 DISCOURSE ITONATION AND LANGLIAGE TEACHINGS “the ratio of the average durations of one, two~ and ives syllable feet is 56:7, (p.12) and uses the foot with all is rhythmic Implications, in his transcription of intonation patteras. “The tone group Descriptions of intonation are not concerned with the piteh of| individual sylabes but rather with pith patteras or mes. The ‘Phonological unit setup to handle the structure of tunes is the tne {roup oF tone wi. Crystal (1969) observes that there is now a fait Segree of ugreement among those whe have deserted the intonation fof British English thatthe tone wnit can uaeilly be analysed into four separate components, each defined on pitch criteria (Prebead) (Head) Nucleus (Tail) Nucleus and tat [As we std above ulteranesin English consis of sequences of (not ‘ecessarily) isochronous fet, each beginning with a stressed ‘jlble. Some siresed syllables are additionally marked by pitch ‘movement which gives them added significance ~ ae Crystal (1969) puts it ‘each tone unit wil have one pek of prominence inthe form ‘of a nuclear pitch movement” (p.205). Nucleus is the label widely tiven to the syllable om which the major pitch movement begins, though Halliday (1967, 1970) cals the soni syale Thera if ‘oeurs, caries the continuation and completion of the. pitch ‘movement begun in the nvleus; for this reason Halliday does not ddtional equating of intonation with pitch variation, which we follow here, i 4 standing temptation to just such a misleading implication, Most people fel that their ability to recognise what ‘wecall prominence depends atleast as much upon intensity as upon Ditch, and eaders will doubsdess fad relative intensity diagnostial ‘sefl, Nevertheless, twill enable us to preserve consistency in our ‘teount (and ineidentaly to avoid entanglement with matters so far rie rose usr 43 only imperfectly understood) if we concentrate here on pitch. Ia ‘other words, our aims to show that there is a consistent relation ‘hip between pitch variation dd the distribution of prominence; we {not claim that pitch isthe only means of realisation, nor even the fone on which, operationally, we principally tly. (See discussion above, page 4) "The pli correlate of persived pitch is fndamenal frequen, and under cersin favourshle circumstances the liter can be examined objectively by means of a ptel-meter and oscilloscope ‘splay. An idealised version ofthe trace which plots fundamental Frequency against time, forthe monosy/lable Go" with proclaiming, tone, looks something ike: \ — 2 1 ps0) ‘The addition of ence lements results, principally, in the prolongation ofthe less steep part ofthe curve, which we shal eer fo asthe suronson: ‘ 7 1) j/ p90 home j) (22) /p co home now j/ “The sustenion can, in fact, be lengthened at wil, within fail wide limits, so the genera pattern for proclaiming tones, with or without nel segments, can be represehied schematically as 44 Discourse mVTONATION AND LANGWAGE TEACHING ‘We can now compare this with “Go" aba prominent but not tonic oabie oN (23) | p co wow |) ‘This time the fall i less steep, and there is no sustension. The interpolation of an accented syllable between the two prominent ‘ones results ia the appearance not of a sustesion but ofa more-or- Jess level trace ata comparatively high level: aaa (24) [ip co home wow / and the level trace is al proce segments: (25) 1 p wo Hom now /) ‘This se of examples simplifes matters by avoiding the iniro- duction of two factors which complicate the Visual dispiays: the presence of unacoented words nd voiceless segments, A thorough fs0ing acoustic analyis would need to show how thee alter the Picture, but as we are concerned only with acoustic evidence as an Bid to auditory recognition we can afford to past over them. They will not prevent us exploiting the general basis we now have for Sistnguishing prominent syllables from tonic syllables on the one hand, and metely accened ones on the other. The recognition of| unaecented syllables searcely constitutes a problem, characteristic of scented syllables in (26) 7 69 bome wow |) ‘rum Tone unr 45 Key tis now possibeto return tothe question of how a heater identifies the ey of tone unit, It wil be noted that al the prominent syllables in our examples are marked by a fall from a comparatively high point In connected speech, the fundamental frequency trace usualy fies to this point, and t makes sense to speak of turd point tis the pith evel at which this change of rection ceurs, relative othe corresponding turnin point ofthe previous tone unit that conveys key selection It wil be noted that this interpretation, which we base ‘upon extensive instrumental analysis, is in accordance with the frequently expresed view that people are better able to pereive dliferencs in pitch than absolute ptc level. Nether the identi cation ofthe reference point, nor it elation to the preceding one, ‘Sepends on absolute judgment. ‘Our examples have provided a means of dentiying the reference point when key ie realised simultaneously with fling tone or in a eparate onset sllable. Without intodueing the further compli fations that an instrumental approach to analysis entals we must provide a similar recognition procedure for the other tones, iagrammatialy, they may be represented as follows withthe dot indatng the reference pont: VALS , ot ‘The level tone presents dificlies since the notion of change of irecton is not applicable, but we can, in ft, proceed on the ‘ascumption that all tone units having lve tone will have separate ‘onset syllables where the key choir is made. We discuss function of | level tones in Chapter 7 and give further reasons for soeing them as needing slightly diferent treatment in out description. “Tone wnt boundaries ‘Whatever description of intonation one uses (0 analyse recorded speech, there are inevitable dtcuter im deeding where t0 put the tone unit boundaries in a small qumber of eases. One signicant tsivantage of our description, which suggests that al intonaional meaning is carried by the tonic segment, whose boundaries are 446 piscounse neroNATION AND LANGUAGE TEACHING perfectly clea, i tha it gives us a principled reason fr saying that fone unit boundaries are not in fact of gret importance. We have argued thatthe proctite and ence segments contain no prominent Syllables and are chus equally uninforming Its therefore of no great ‘Spnilcance which tone unit they ae attached to, though infec the ‘boundary is usually unproblematic and marked by a slight pause or ‘estation. In fact, Sgnicanly even when there fa change of key ‘between two successive tone ‘units, there is in many cases pitch foncord between the ence of the frst and the procl of the fecond tone unit, withthe Key change occurring markedly on the ‘set sable ‘Another question quite separate from the analyst's problem of

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