Table 2
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 390.
Notation
Intonation is a powerful means of human intercommunication. One of the aims
of communication is the exchange of information between people. The meaning of an
English utterance, i.e. the information it conveys to a listener, derives not only from the
grammatical structure, the lexical composition and the sound pattern. It also derives from variations of intonation, i.e. of its prosodic parameters.
David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language [ 1997:173] offers the functions of intonation summarized as follows:
| Function | Its explanation |
| 1. Emotional | To express a wide range of attitudinal meanings – excitement, boredom, surprise, friendliness, reserve, etc. Here, intonation works along with other prosodic and paralinguistic features to provide the basis of all kinds of vocal emotional expression. |
| 2. Grammatical | To mark grammatical contrasts. The identification of such major units as clause and sentence; and several specific contrasts such as question and statement, or positive and negative, may rely on intonation. Many languages make the important conversational distinction between ‘asking' and ‘telling' in this way, e.g. She's here, isn't she! (where a rising pitch is the spoken equivalent of the question mark) vs She's here,isn't she! (where a falling pitch expresses the exclamation mark). |
| 3. Information structure | To convey what is new and what is already known in the meaning of an utterance – what is referred to as the ‘information structure' of the utterance. If someone says I saw a BLUE car, with maximum intonational prominence on blue, this presupposes that someone has previously asked about the colour; whereas if the emphasis is on I, it presupposes a previous question about which person is involved. It would be very odd for someone to ask Who saw a blue car!, and for the reply to be: I saw a BLUEcar! |
| 4. Textual | To construct larger than an utterance stretches of discourse. Prosodic coherence is well illustrated in the way paragraphs of information are given a distinctive melodic shape, e.g. in radio news-reading. As the news-reader moves from one item of news to the next, the pitch level jumps up, then gradually descends, until by the end of the item the voice reaches a relatively low level. |
| 5. Psychological | To organize language into units that are more easily perceived and memorized. Learning a long sequence of numbers, for example, proves easier if the sequence is divided into rhythmical ‘chunks'. |
| 6. Indexical | To serve as markers of personal identity – an ‘indexical' function. In particular, they help to identify people as belonging to different social groups and occupations (such as preachers, street vendors, army sergeants). |
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 content/notional
words,andthose words which do not carry so much informationare called function/structure/form words.
Content words are brought out in speech by means of sentence-stress (or utteranńĺ-level stress).
Sentence stress/utterance-levelstress is a special prominence given to one or more words according to their relative importance in a sentence/utterance.
Stress, i.e. prosodic highlighting, is related in a very important way to information.
In languages, prosodic highlighting serves a very obvious deicticfunction which is to
signal important information for the listeners. The general rule in all languages 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, Thus accentuation may involve a noticeable:
1. change in a pitch – usually, but not always, a pitch rise;
2. increase in duration, or length of a syllable;
3. increase in loudness;
4. combinations of l) – 3) [Pennington 1996:137].
In English all three of the prosodic features l) – 3) occur together to signal prominence; in other languages accentuation may be accomplished by one of these prosodic features.
Under normal, or unmarked, conditions, it is the content words(nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) that are accentuated by pitch, length, loudness or a combination of the prosodic features. Function words(prepositions, articles, pronouns) and affixes suffixes and prefixes) are deemphasizedor backgroundedinformationally by destressing them. When any word receiving stress has more than one syllable, it is only the word's most strongly stressed syllable that carries the sentence stress.
Look at this telegram message: Arriving Kennedy airport Tues 03.45 p.m. This is not a complete sentence, but the words carry the important information; they are all content words, emphasized by sentence stress: nouns, adjectives, verbs (with the exception of link verbs, auxiliary verbs and modal verbs), numerals, adverbs, demonstrative, interrogative pronouns, etc.
Let us expand the message: I am ARRIVING KENNEDY AIRPORT on TUESDAY 03.45. Articles, prepositions, conjunctions, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, etc, are not normally emphasized. As a matter of fact, they can be pronounced in two different ways: in their strong(stressed) formand in their weak(reduced, unstressed) form. It is important to know when these forms can and cannot be used.
Function wordsusually have strong forms when they are:
1. at the end of the sentence, e.g. What are you looking at?Where are you from? I'd love to.
2. used for emphasis, e.g. Do you want this one? No. Well, which one doyou want?
That one.
3. used for contrast, He is working so hard. Sheis but not he.
In ordinary, rapid speech such words can occur much more frequently in their weak form than in their strong form.
The main function of sentence stressis to single out the focus/the communicative centreof the sentence which introduces new information.
Sentence Focus.Within a sentence/an intonation unit, there may be several words
receiving sentence stress but only one main idea or prominent element. Speakers choose
what information they want to highlight in an utterance/sentence. The stressed word in a
given sentence which the speaker wishes to highlight receives prominence and is referred to as the (information) focus/the semantic center.
In unmarked utterances, it is the stressed syllable in the last content word that tends to exhibit prominence and is the focus.
When a conversation begins, the focus /the semantic centeris usually on thelast contentword, e.g. Give me a HELP. What's the MATTER? What are you DOING?
Words in a sentence can express new information(i.e. something mentioned for
the first time/rheme/comment) or old information(i,e. something mentioned or referred to before/theme/topic). Within an intonation unit/sentence, words expressing old or given information (i.e. semantically predictable information) are unstressed and are spoken with lower pitch, whereas words expressing new information are spoken with strong stress and higher pitch. Here is an example of how prominence marks newversus oldinformation. Capital letters signal new information (strong stress and high pitch):
A I've lost my HAT. (basic stress pattern: the last content word receives prominence)
 What KIND of hat? (‘hat' is now old information; ‘kind' is new information)
A It was a SUN hat.
 What COLOR sun hat?
A It was YELLOW. Yellow with STRIPES.
 There was a yellow hat with stripes in the CAR.
A WHICH car? [The example is taken from Celce-Murcia et al 1996].
The speaker can give focus/prominence(strong stress and high pitch) to words to
contrast information,i.e. to correct or check it. Words which are given prominence to
contrast information have contrastive stress,e.g.:
1 A Have they ever visited LONDON?
 No, THEY haven't, but their SON has. (correcting information)
2 A I didn't LIKE the movie.
 You didn't LIKE? (checking information)
The speaker can wish to place special emphasis on a particular element – emphatic
stress.The element receiving emphatic stress usually communicates new information
within sentence. It is differentiated from normal focus/prominence by the greater degree
of emphasis placed on it by the speaker, e.g.:
A How do you like the new courses you've taken this semester?
 I'm REALLY enjoying them! (emphatic stress on really indicates a strong degree of enjoyment)
In sum, sentence stress/utterance-level stresshelps the speaker emphasize the most significant information in his or her message.
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| Utterance and pausation. | | | Table 3 |