The phonology aspect of intonation
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 484.
Phonology has a special branch, intonology, whose domain is the larger units of connected speech: intonation groups, phrases and even phonetic passages or blocks of discourse.
Descriptions differ according to the kind of meaningthey regard intonation is carrying and also according to the significance they attach to different parts of the tone-unit.
J.D. O'Connor and G.F. Arnold assert that a major function of intonationis to express the speaker's attitude to the situation he/she is placed in.
M. Halliday supposes that English intonation contrasts are grammatical.
He argues first that there is a neutral or unmarked tone choice and then explains all other choices as meaningful by contrast.
Halliday attributes separate significance to the prе-nuclear choices.
D. Crystal presents an approach based on the view "that any explanation of intonational meaning cannot be arrived at by seeing the issues solely in either grammatical or attitudinal terms". He ignores the significance of pre-head and head choices and deals only with terminal tones.
The distinctive functionof intonation is realized in the opposition of the same word sequences which differ in certain parametersof the intonation pattern.
Any section of the intonation pattern, any of its three constituents can perform the distinctive function thus being phonological units.
The most powerful phonological unit is the terminal tone. The opposition of terminal tones distinguishes different types of sentence.
The number of terminal tones indicates the number of intonation groups. Sometimes the number of intonation groups may be important for meaning.
Together with the increase of loudness terminal tones serve to single out the semantic centre of the utterance which may simultaneously concentrate the expression of attitudes and feelings.
The opposition of the distribution of terminal tonesis fulfilling the distinctive function.
The most important role of the opposition of terminal tones is that of differentiating the attitudes and emotions expressed by the speaker.
Commonly different kinds of pre-heads, heads, the same as pitch ranges and levels fulfill their distinctive function not alone but in the combination with other prosodic constituents.
Intonation may be in contradiction with the syntactic structureand the lexical contentof the utterance neutralizing and compensating them.
Lack of balance between intonation and word content, or intonation and the grammatical structure of the utterance may serve special speech effects.