Informational function

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 837.

Grammatical function

Emotional function

FUNCTIONS OF INTONATION

Intonation: Definition, Approaches, Functions.

Two main approaches to the problem of intonation:

The contour analysis - the smallest unit to which linguistic meaning can be attached is a tone-group (sense-group).

The grammatical approach - the main unit of intonation is a clause. Intonation is a complex of three systemic variables: tonality, tonicity and tone, which are connected with grammatical categories.

On perception level intonation is a complex, a whole, formed by significant variations of pitch, loudness and tempo closely related. Some linguists regard speech timbre as the fourth component of intonation.

M.O. Sokolova writes that the term prosody embraces the three prosodic components and substitutes the term intonation.

According to D. Crystal, the most important prosodic effects are those conveyed by the linguistic use of pitch movement, or melody.

Intonation's most obvious role is to express attitudinal meaning -sarcasm, surprise, reserve, impatience, delight, shock, anger, interest, and thousands of other semantic nuances.

Intonation helps to identify grammatical structure in speech, performing a role similar to punctuation.

Intonation helps draw attention to what meaning is given and what is new in an utterance. The word carrying the most prominent tone in a contour signals the part of an utterance that the speaker is treating as new information.