6/15/2020

INTONATION

Pitch and Tone

Segmental and suprasegmental phonology: while segmental
phonology is concerned with the description of individual phonemes
and the phonotactic rules governing the combination of phonemes,
suprasegmental phonology deals with stress and intonation.

Unlike phonemes, stress and tone cannot be segmented and are

applied to (or are a property of) syllables.

Pitch is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal

folds. The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch. Pitch can be
described as high or low (or light/heavy or left/right), which are
arbitrary end-points of the pitch scale/range.

In speech, people rarely speak with an unvarying pitch, resulting in

what is called pitch movement. The overall behavior of the pitch is
referred to as tone.

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In segmental phonology, we are not interested in all aspects of a

speaker’s pitch; we are interested only in those aspects that are
linguistically significant.

Pitch changes are linguistically significant if:

1. They are under the speaker’s control,
2. They must be perceptible, and
3. They indicate contrasts.

The shortest piece of speech is the syllable.

Beyond the syllable, we need to use another term, the utterance.

An utterance is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending
with a clear pause.

Form and Function in Intonation

Two questions need to be asked:

1. What can we observe when we study pitch variations?

2. What is the linguistic importance of the phenomena we observe?

The two questions can be rephrased as:

1. What is the form of intonation?

2. What is the function of intonation?

Tone languages use tones to distinguish meaning. English is an

intonation language as it does not use tones to do so; rather, tones
are used for different purposes.

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Th Five Tones in English

Tone

level moving

Simple Complex

Fall Rise Fall-rise Rise-fall

Functions of Intonation

Function Definition

Attitudinal To express emotions and attitudes

Accentual To produce the effect of prominence on syllables

Grammatical To mark off boundaries between phrases, clauses and sentences,

To indicate different syntactic structures

Discourse To indicate new and given information,

To indicate contrasts/links with information in another tone unit,
To convey what kind of response is expected

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The Five Tones with their Main Functions

Tone Form Function

Level Yes No Sth routine, uninteresting, boring

Fall Yes No Final, definite;

End of conversation
Rise Yes No Sth more to follow, invitations to continue;
listing, encouraging
Fall-rise Yes No Limited agreement, response with
reservations, uncertainty, doubt, requesting
Rise-fall Yes No Strong feelings of approval, disapproval or
surprise; impressed

The Structure of the Tone Unit

Tone Unit

Pre- Tonic
Head Tail
head syllable

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The Tonic Syllable

A syllable that carries a tone is called a tonic syllable (TS). A tonic syllable not
only carries a tone but it is also given the strongest stress called tonic stress.
(Tonic syllable and tonic stress can also be referred to as nucleus and nuclear
stress respectively.)

Tonic syllables are underlined and given a tone mark.

To identify the tonic syllable of a tone unit (i.e. which syllable in the tone unit
carries the tone), we need to look for the stressed syllable of the word that
carries the most important information.

e.g. Consider the utterance “John is in the library.” (Final)

If it is a response to the question “Where is John?” then the word that carries
the most important information is “library.” Therefore, the first syllable, which is
stressed, is the tonic syllable.

What if the utterance is a response to “Who is in the library?” or “John isn’t in

the library” ?
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The Tail
Any syllables between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone unit is called
the tail. That is to say, the tail is what follows the tonic syllable in a tone unit.

A tone unit may not have a tail. When it does, the tail may or may not contain
stressed syllables.

If a tail does not contain any stressed syllables, it is left unmarked.

If there are stressed syllables in the tail, they marked as such.

e.g.

Look at it

What did you •say

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The Head

A head is all that part of a tone unit that extends from the first stressed
syllable up to (but not including) the tonic syllable.

All stressed syllables in the head are a stressed mark.

e.g.

ˈGive me those

ˈ Bill ˈ called to ˈ give me those

In an hour

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The Pre-head

The pre-head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone unit

preceding the first stressed syllable.

Pre-heads are not marked.

There are two environments in which a pre-head occurs.

1. When there is no head.

e.g. in an hour

2. When there is a head.

e.g.

ˈin a ˈlittle ˈless than an hour

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