Utterance stress, its types and problems of classification. The interrelation of word-stress and utterance-stress.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1050.

Intonation group as a meaningful unit in speech communication. Functional parts of the intonation group and their semantic loading. Possible types of intonation groups in English. Different systems of graphical notation of information.

Seminar 7.

Seminar 5.

1. The definition of intonation.

2. The functions of intonation.

3. Two approaches of intonation.

4. The tone unit and the structure of a sense group.

5. Sentence stress.

6. Rhythm and tempo.

7. Pausation and timber.

1. American English.

2. Principal peculiarities of GA consonants.

3. Differences in pronunciation in RP and GA.

4. Intonation in American English.

When we look at continuous speech in English utterances we find that different tones can only be identified on a small number of particularly prominent syllables. For the purposes of analyzing intonation, a unit generally greater in size than the syllable is needed, and this unit is called tone-unit/intonation group/sense group. In its smallest form the tone-unit may consist of only one syllable. One of the stressed syllables in the tone-group, which has the greater prominence than the others, forms the nucleus/focal point. The nuclear tone is obligatory and the most important part of the intonation pattern without which it cannot exist. Tone is a pitch contour that begins on an accented syllable and continues to the end of a tone group: that is, up to but not including the next stressed syllable. Simple tones move only in one direction: fall or rise. The number of nuclear tones varies from 2 to 16. According to R.Kingdon the most important nuclear tones are:

Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, Fall-Rise.

Roughly speaking the falling tone of any level and range expresses ‘certainty', ‘completeness', ‘independence', it has an air of finality. A rising tone expresses ‘uncertainty', ‘incompleteness', ‘dependence'. A general question, for example, has a rising tone. Parenthetical and subsidiary information in a statement is also often spoken with a rising tone, or a mid-level tone, for this information is incomplete, being dependent for its full understanding on the main assertion. Encouraging or polite denials, commands, invitations, greetings, farewells are generally spoken with rising tone. A falling-rising tone may combine the falling tone's meaning of assertion, certainty with the rising tone's meaning of dependence, incompleteness. At the end of a phrase it often conveys the feeling of reservation. In the beginning or in the middle of a phrase it is a more forceful alternative to the rising tone, expressing the assertion of one point, together with the implication that another point is to follow. The falling-rising tone consists of a fall in pitch followed by a rise. If the nucleus is the last syllable of the intonation group the fall and rise both take place on one syllable – the nuclear syllable. Otherwise the rise occurs in the remainder of the tone unit. The tone of a nucleus determines the pitch of the rest of the intonation pattern following it which is called tail. Thus, after a falling tone the rest of the intonation pattern is at a low pitch and vice versa. The nucleus and a tail form a terminal tone. The other sections of intonation pattern are pre-head and head, they form the pre-nuclear part of intonation pattern and are optional elements. There are 3 types of pre-nucleus: descending, ascending, level.

There are a variety of methods for recording intonation patterns in writing. The first three methods reflect variations in pitch only:

-The method introduced by Ch.Fries involves drawing a line around the sentence to show relative pitch heights.

-According to the second method syllables are written at different heights across the page.

-Acc to the ‘levels' method a number of discrete levels of pitch are recognized, and the utterance is marked accordingly.

-The fourth method is favoured by most British phoneticians. Here not only variations of pitch but also stressed syllables are marked. Distinct modifications of pitch in the nuclear syllable are indicated by special symbols (downward or upward arrow or a slantwise stress mark). Pitch movements in the prenuclear part can be indicated too.

In a sentence or an intonation group some words are of greater importance than the others. Words which provide most of the information are called notional words. Content words are brought out in speech by means of sentence-stress(utterance stress). Utterance stress is a special prominence given to one or more words according to their relative importance in a sentence/utterance.

In all l-ges stress serves a obvious deictic function which is to signal important information for th listeners. General rule in all l-ges is that the most important information in a phrase or longer utterance will be highlighted, that is will receive prominence through some kind of accentuation of a particular word or group of words. This accentuation may involve a noticeable:

1. change in a pitch

2. increase in duration or length of a syllable

3. increase in loudness

4. combination of 1 -3

In English all three of the prosodic features occur together to signal prominence.Usually the content words (nouns, verbs, adj, adv) are accentuated, the function words (prep, art, pron) or affixes are de-emphasized or backgrounded. Function words can be emphasized when they are at the end of the sentence, used for emphasis, used for contrast. Because they are unstressed in the stream of speech, function words exhibit vatious forms of reduction. The main function of sentence stress is to single out the communicative centre of the sentence which introduces the information. The stressed word in a given sentence which the speaker wishes to highlight receives prominence and is referred to as the semantic centre. When a conversation begins, the semantic centre is usually on the last content word. Words in a sentence can express new or old information. Words that express old information are unstressed, words that express new information are spoken with strong stress. The speaker can give words focus to contrast information; words which are contrasted have contrastive stress. The speaker can place special emphasis on a particular element – emphatic stress. The element receiving emphatic stress usually communicates new information within the sentence. English has certain anaphoric words whose function is to repeat a given information in a different way. They are typically not accented. Anaphoric words: he, she, it, they, one, some, one, ones, so, not, there, then, do.

The function of sentence stress is different and more complicated than of word stress. Word stress indicates the strongest syllable in a word, when sentence stress indicates the end of the syntagm, indicates the important words in a syntagm.