Prosodic subsystem.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 2209.

Intonation. Its notion and Functions. Prosodic subsystems and their units

Every concrete utterance has a certain prosodic structure or intonation. Prosody - a complex unity of speech melody, utterance stress, tempo, rhythm and voice timbre. Each of these components forms a subsystem of its own and has got its own meaningful contrast. These components are the perceptible qualities of intonation. It helps the speaker to express his thoughts, emotions and attitudes towards the contents of the utterance and the hearer. The acoustic parameters are fundamental frequency, intensity and duration.

Prosody or intonation is an independent level of linguistic analyses. An independent level because intonation by itself can perform the 3 functions: - constitutive – distinctive - recognitive
Distinctive function of intonation: 1)communicative 2) syntactical (This is my niece Ann. This is my niece, Ann.) 3) semantic (different meaning of words) 4) modal or attitudinal 5) stylistic (formal, informal)

1. Pitch. Or speech melody. To describe the melody of an utterance we should determine the relevant pitch levels, pitch ranges, directions and rate of speech movement.

a) The pitch level shows the degree of semantic importance of the utterance in comparison with another and the speaker's attitude and emotions.

b) The pitch range is the interval between its highest-pitched syllable and its lowest-pitched syllable.(wide,(mid),narrow)

c) The rate of pitch variations may be different depending on the time.

d) Tone depends on whether the pitch of the voice varies or remains unvaried:

-static - may have different pitch level of the voice (high, mid, low)

-kinetic - the direction of pitch movement (simple, complex)

-terminal - may occur not only on the "nucleus" but may be extended to the "tail".

The pitch of the tail depends on the kind of terminal tone. The terminal tone can be treated as a phonological unit in the structure of a language - a toneme.

Another structural element of an utterance is head - one melodic shape, its function is to express relations between its constituent units - rhythmic groups and to convey modal-stylistic meanings.

2. Utterance stress. - the special prominence given to one or more words in an utterance. It is determined by variations of fundamental frequency, intensity, duration and formant structure. Utterance stress forms 3 main oppositions or contrasts: -imphatic stress –full –partial Word stress is an essential part of word shape, and utterance stress is a feature of utterance.

Functions: - constitutive – distinctive - identificatory

3. Rhythm. - regularity or periodicity in the occurrence of a particular phenomenon in an utterance.

English - stress-timed rhythm (utterance stress serves as a basis for the rhythmical organization of speech and stresses segment the speech continuum into units of more or less equal length.

4. Segmental and prosodic style forming means in English.
Language functions in two main forms: the spoken language and the written language.

Scholars distinguish a number of functional styles of the wr. lang., such as belles-lettres style, publicistic style and so on, but we can see the phonetic differences between a usual (familiar) conversation and an official exchange of views.

Each native speaker uses several varieties of the lang. (he uses one at home, another with his colleagues, a third when addressing an audience and so on). Each of these varieties may differ in the usage of: - items of vocabulary,- in grammatical structures,- phonetical. For ex., Shcherba distinguishes 2 styles: l) the full style, 2)the colloquial style.
The phonetic style-forming means:

-the degree of assimilation,- reduction,- elision.

They depend on the degree of carefulness of pronunciation (changes in the sound structure and the syllabic structure of speech were taken into consideration). So phonetic styles differ prosodically too. The degree of assimilation, reduction and elision may serve to distinguish phonetic styles – segmental means.

1) wi kn trЛst im t∂ du it we! (Colloquial conversation)

2) Wi: kжn trЛst him tu 'du: it we! (Political speech)
Prosodic feature:

Each speaker has a norm of loudness. He may change it in different circumstances. His speech is characterized by a regular usage of certain tones. But under the circumstances there is a variation of pitch levels and ranges (to awaken enthusiasm and interest in his audience, for ex.) Pauses help to distinguish dif. varieties of speech (in familiar conversation we can use some "silence-fillers" - 'I mean', 'well'. So, each style of pronunciation is characterized by a high proportion of definite segmental and prosodic features which are not typical of other styles.

Informal conversation English as opposed to written E. read aloud is characterized by ;

a) a high proportion of hesitation features

b) a high number of non-obligatory assimilation

c) high frequency of simple falling tones

d) using short intonation groups

e) Use of pauses