Definitions of intonation

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 478.

Phonemes, syllables & words, as lower-level linguistic units, constitute a higher phonetic unit –the utterance. Every concrete utterance, alongside of its phonemic & syllabic structures, has a certain intonation.Acoustically, intonation is a complex unity of varying fundamental frequency, intensity & duration. Speech melody is primarily related with fundamental frequency, tempo- with duration. The definition of intonation given above is a broad definition. It reflects the actual interconnection & interaction of melody, sentence stress, tempo, rhythm & tamber in speech. A great number of phoneticians abroad, D. Jones, L. Armstrong & I. Ward,K. Pike, R. Kingdon, A. Gimson, J.O'Connor & G. Arnold define intonation as the variation of the pitch of the voice, thus, reducing it to just one component –speech melody. This is a narrow definition of intonation. Thus D. Jones writes: “Intonation may be defined as the variations which take place in the pitch of the voice in connected speech.”According to R. Kingdon: “When we talk about English intonation we mean the pitch patterns of spoken English, the pitch tunes or melodies, the musical features of English.”Some foreign phoneticians give broader definitions of intonation. Thus, L Hultzen includes the variations of pitch, loudness & duration, F. Danes –the variations of pitch & intensity, E. Haugen a combination of tone, stress & juncture.