Normal Wide Narrow (of low, medium and high levels)

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 438.

The pitch range of a whole intonation unit is in fact the inter­val between the highest-pitched and the lowest-pitched syllables. Pitch levels may be high, medium and low.

High__________________________________________________________________________

Medium_______________________________________________________________________

Low___________________________________________________________________________

The meaning of the intonation group is the combination of the "meaning" of the terminal tone and the pre-nuclear part com­bined with the "meaning" of pitch range and pitch level.

The parts of the intonation pattern can be combined in vari­ous ways manifesting changes in meaning, cf.: the High Head combined with the Low Fall, the High Fall, the Low Rise, the High Rise, the Fall-Rise in the phrase "Not at all!"

^→Not atˎall. (reserved, calm)

^→Not at,all.

(encouraging,

friendly)

^→Not atˋall. (surprised, concerned)

^→Not at'all. (questioning)

^→Not at _vall.

(intensely encouraging, protesting)

It should be noted that the more the height of the pitch con­trasts within the intonation pattern the more emphatic the into­nation group sounds, cf.:

He's won. Fanˎtastic.

^-Fanˎtastic.

The number of possible combinations is more than a hundred but not all of them ate equally important. Some of them do not differ much in meaning, others are very rarely used. That is why in teaching it is necessary to deal only with a very limited number of intonation patterns, which are the result of a careful choice.

The tempoof speech is the third component of intonation. The term "tempo" implies the rate of the utterance and pausation.

The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. The parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower. Unimportant parts are commonly pronounced at a greater speed than normal, e.g.:

"My mother thinks him to be a common labouring boy," said Betty with a sad smile.

The word combination "...a common labouring boy" express­es the main idea of the phrase and is the slowest part of the ut­terance; "My mother thinks him to be" is pronounced at normal speed; the author's words "said Betty with a sad smile" are pro­nounced very quickly to underline their secondary importance for the utterance.

Any stretch of speech can be split into smaller portions, i.e. phonetic wholes', phrases, intonation groups by means of paus­es. By "pause" here we mean a complete stop of phonation. For teaching expediency it is sufficient to distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:

1. Short pauses which may be used to separate intonation groups within a phrase.

2. Longer pauses which normally manifest the end of the phrase.

3. Very long pauses, which are approximately twice as long as the first type, are used to separate phonetic wholes.

Functionally, there may be distinguished syntactic, emphaticand hesitationpauses.

Syntactic pauses separate phonopassages, phrases, intona­tion groups.

Emphatic pauses serve to make especially prominent certain parts of the utterance, e.g.

¹ By “phonetic whole” here we mean a chain of oral speech which is semantically and intonationally complete. A phonetic whole may be equal to a phrase or include several phrases.

She is the most ⌇ charming girl I've ever seen.

Hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain some time to think over what to say next. They may be si­lent or filled, e.g.

She is rather a ... good student.

— Where does she live? — Urn, not very far from here.

It is well to point out here that our ear can also perceive a pause when there is no stop of phonation at all. It may happen because a stop of phonation is not the only factor indicating an intonation unit boundary. The first and the main factor is a per­ceivable pitch change, either stepping down or stepping up, de­pending on the direction of nuclear tone movement. The other criterion is the presence of junctural features at the end of each intonation group. This usually takes the form of a pause but there are frequently accompanying segmental phonetic modifica­tions (variations in tempo, aspiration etc.) which reinforce this. So the intonation unit boundary is not necessarily indicated by a complete stop of phonation.

The changes of pitch, loudness and tempo are not haphazard variations. The rules of change are highly organized. No matter how variable the individual variations of these prosodic compo­nents are they tend to become formalized or standardized, so that all speakers of the language use them in similar ways under similar circumstances. These abstracted characteristics of intona­tion structures may be called intonation patterns which form the prosodic system of English.

Some intonation patterns may be completely colourless in meaning: they give to the listener no implication of the speaker's attitude or feeling. They serve a mechanical function — they provide a mold into which all sentences may be poured so that they achieve utterance. Such intonation patterns represent the intonational minimum of speech and are very helpful for begin­ners in language learning.