Languages & Linguistics
Intonation
Intonation refers to the variation in pitch, stress, and rhythm in spoken language. It plays a crucial role in conveying meaning, attitude, and emotion in communication. Different languages and dialects have distinct intonation patterns, which can impact how messages are interpreted and understood.
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12 Key excerpts on "Intonation"
eBook - PDF- Paul Tench(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
This book is intended to introduce to language students and teachers a description of English Intonation that will take into account the actual nature of Intonation and its functions in spoken language. Intonation is in fact part and parcel of the English language, as it is for every language of the world. Intonation is inevitable whenever a language is spoken; it is important, because we eventually realize that it carries meaning and will often be the most important part of a message (consider Oh they did, did they spoken in a menacing way); and it is integral to the study of any language, for it links up not only with meaning, but also with grammar, pronunciation and spoken discourse at large. 1. Definition A firmer definition than the one we gave on the first line of this chapter is that Intonation is the linguistic use of pitch in utterances. By saying linguistic, we hope to avoid reference to other uses of pitch such as singing, and to subjective, aesthetic evaluations about how 'nice' and 'pleasant' (or 'ugly' and 'unpleasant') an accent's Intonation is. (Some people say that they cannot stand a certain accent and its Intonation; this is obviously not a linguistic judgement, since the allegedly 'unpleasant' accent still has all the forms and functions of Intonation that it needs in order to carry meaning.) We also specify pitch as the essence of Intonation, and in this way we make Intonation distinct from the broader concept of paralanguage. Intonation does in fact have both a linguistic and a paralinguistic dimension. The linguistic dimension concerns the message itself: how many pieces of information there are; what information is new; whether the message is complete or incomplete; whether the speaker is telling you something or asking you, or whether the speaker is turning to a new topic or finishing off an old one.
eBook - PDF- Pamela Rogerson-Revell(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
11 Intonation Introduction Many of the earlier chapters in this book are concerned with describing individual phonemes or sound segments, which is often termed segmental phonology . However, later chapters move on to look at larger parts of speech, such as syllables, words and then connected speech: the study of these broader aspects of the sound system is known as suprasegmental phonology . This chapter aims to introduce the key element of suprasegmental phonology, that is, Intonation. We will consider what form Intonation takes, how it functions in English and what that implies for pronunciation teaching and learning. There can be considerable difference in the way Intonation is defined, sometimes meaning is restricted narrowly to tone choice while at others it includes broader aspects of stress, rhythm and prominence. This broader perspective is also sometimes referred to as prosody . However, definitions generally include linguistically significant variations in pitch level, or speech melody , across an utterance or part of an utterance. Pitch refers to our perception of how ‘high’ or ‘low’ the voice sounds based on the ‘fundamental frequency’ (speed of vibration) of the vocal folds: the higher the frequency the higher the perceived pitch and vice versa. To be linguistically significant, pitch variations have to be under a speaker’s control and not based for instance on physiological difference, for instance differences in physical size (e.g. height) or activity (e.g. running or riding) can result in differences in a speaker’ s pitch. Intonation in English is an important vehicle for meaning. It helps the listener to get a clearer picture of what the speaker intends to mean and fulfills many, overlapping functions including attitudinal, grammatical, discursive and pragmatic. However, there is still much to be learned about how we acquire and use Intonation systematically and how, or if, it can be taught to second language learners.
eBook - PDFIntonation and Stress
Evidence from Hungarian
- L. Varga(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Part I Intonation 19 2 Intonation, Paralanguage, Prosody 2.1 Introduction In this chapter we first clarify, in section 2.2, some basic concepts that are necessary for defining Intonation, and accommodate Intonation within the broader framework of prosodic devices. The term prosody will be used in its broadest sense, as a loose synonym for suprasegmental or non-segmental phonation. Intonation is defined as those pitch variations that are the manifestations of melodic prosodemes and upstep pros- odemes, functioning in utterances. Intonation is closely related to stress prosodemes and pause prosodemes, but has to be separated from para- language and also from the prosodic limits within which particular speakers use it. Section 2.3 identifies four types of Intonational func- tion – attitudinal, cognitive, thematic and communicative sentence type distinctions – and demonstrates the division of labour between syntax and Intonation in the expression of certain meanings. 2.2 Prosodic devices and Intonation 2.2.1 Intonation as part of prosody Intonation can be identified with a subset of prosodic (or suprasegmental) devices. These are the results of stereotypical variations in pitch, loudness, duration and quality, superimposed upon different-sized sections of the sound string (Cruttenden 1997: 172–7). 1 The prosodic devices include pitch patterns (i.e. recurring configurations of consecutive pitch heights), pitch range (i.e. the distance between the highest and lowest pitch heights), pitch register (i.e. the general pitch level of a section of speech), stress, volume, tempo, voice quality variation and pause. 2 Pitch patterns, pitch range and pitch register constitute various kinds of pitch variation. L. Varga, Intonation and Stress © László Varga 2002 20 Intonation and Stress: Evidence from Hungarian The stereotyped variations in some prosodic devices produce discrete, categorically different vocal effects; these will be called prosodemes.
- Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible, Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
In this view, Intonation is essentially peripheral to language. It reflects a pre-linguistic com-municative code, and/or it depends on physi-cal properties of the speech production mech-anism. The important features of Intonation are actually the same in all languages; any observable differences are merely convention-alized variations on the universal themes, and therefore any typological generalizations we may find will be different in kind f r o m those that can be drawn about phonology or syn-tax. In recent years the universalist view has lost some ground to what we might call the phonological approach, based on the work 98. Intonation 1381 of Bruce (1977), Pierrehumbert (1980), Beck-man (1986) and others. As we shall see in § 2.3., this approach treats Intonation as part of phonology, and as such is compatible with the idea that normal typological generaliza-tions about Intonation may be possible. Nev-ertheless, the universalist view still thrives, and one important task in writing about into-national universale and Intonational typol-ogy is to do justice to both points of view. Section 2 of this article presents the undis-puted cross-language similarities of intona-tion first (§2.1.), together with a universalist interpretation (§ 2.2.) and a critical evalua-tion of that interpretation (§ 2.3.). Section 3 then summarizes three aspects of Intonation — melody (§ 3.1.), sentence-stress (§ 3.2.), and phrasing (§3.3.) — that differ across lan-guages in a way that reflects possible typo-logical dimensions. Finally, §4. briefly dis-cusses several dimensions of what we might call the phonetic typology of Intonation. 2. Intonational universals 2.1. Substantive universals The most basic use of Intonation is to divide the stream of speech into chunks, which we will refer to here as Intonational phrases or IPs.
eBook - PDFNon-Native Prosody
Phonetic Description and Teaching Practice
- Jürgen Trouvain, Ulrike Gut, Jürgen Trouvain, Ulrike Gut(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
With this, we hope that results from theoretical research will find their way into the class-room. 1. Intonation The term ‘Intonation’ has been defined in at least two different ways in the literature. A narrow definition equates Intonation with ‘speech melody’, restricting it to the “ensemble of pitch variations in the course of an utter-ance” (‘t Hart, Collier and Cohen 1990: 10). The crucial role of pitch varia-tions for the interpretation of utterances can be seen in the German example 26 Martine Grice and Stefan Bauman utterances (1) and (2), in which the pitch contour is represented as a line above the words spoken. (1) Sie hat ein Haus gekauft ‘She bought a house.’ (2) Sie hat ein Haus gekauft ‘She bought a house?!’ The examples display exactly the same string of segments. They only differ in their Intonation, making (1) a statement with a (rising-)falling contour, and (2) an echo question with a (falling-)rising contour. Pitch can be modulated in a categorical way, with the presence vs. ab-sence , or type of pitch movement, and in a gradient way, involving e.g. variations in the way a pitch movement is realised: the extent of the rise or fall, or the pitch range within which a pitch movement is realised. The two main tasks of pitch modulation are (1) highlighting, marking prominence relations ( Haus is more prominent than ein ), and (2) phrasing, the division of speech into chunks. However, it is not pitch alone which is responsible for these tasks. A broader definition of Intonation includes loudness, and segmental length and quality, although languages differ in the extent to which they modulate these to achieve highlighting and phrasing. Like pitch, loudness, length and quality are auditory percepts. Their articulatory and acoustic correlates are given in table 1 below, adapted from Uhmann (1991: 109), (see also Baumann 2006: 12). An introduction to Intonation – functions and models 27 Table 1.
eBook - PDF- Lynne Cahill(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
When linguists talk about pitch being used in spoken language, there are two different uses for it: Intonation and (linguistic) tone . They are used differently, as you’ll see shortly, but the important thing to note here is that they both refer to relative rather than absolute pitch. Absolute pitch can be measured. Tone (and Intonation) are not referred to like this – they are just described as being relatively high or low or of them rising or falling. 8.2 Intonation English, like all languages, uses pitch to mark Intonation over phrases and sentences. That is, the pitch varies over a phrase or sentence to indicate grammatical and discourse information. Quick quiz 1. Say the sentences ‘I like chips’ and ‘Is that right?’ Say them a few times over and try to listen to the tune of each one. What happens to the pitch at the end of each one? 2. Say the sentences ‘The students who had finished their work were allowed to go.’ and ‘The students, who had finished their work, were allowed to go.’ What happens to the pitch between the words students and who ? 3. Say the sentence ‘The cat with the white bib had kittens.’ Now say the same sentence as if it was the answer to the question ‘Which cat had kittens?’ What happens to the pitch of the word bib in each case? Intonation affects meanings that are associated with phrases or sentences. It can indicate syntactic structure, discourse structure, information structure and emotive meaning. The idea of syntactic Intonation is what questions 1 and 2 refer to. Questions usually have a different Intonation pattern from 124 DISCOVERING PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY statements. In SSBE, there is usually a drop towards the end of a statement but a rise at the end of a question, as in question 2 of the first quiz. Syntactic structure is also important in 2, and it also gets at an interesting relation-ship between the spoken and written form. First of all, check that you know what the difference in meaning is between the two sentences.
eBook - PDFSounds Interesting
Observations on English and General Phonetics
- J. C. Wells(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
For most, though, their Intonation patterns are presumably those of their first language, transferred to English. The same applies to English learners of foreign languages. On the whole, even though this may make the speaker sound strange, typical of their origin, boring or annoying, it seems not to cause much of an actual breakdown in communication. How can this be? It must be because the principles of Intonation in language are sufficiently universal for us to be able to rely on them even in a foreign-language situation. However, it may also be the case that many of the nuances of meaning carried by Intonation in the speech of native speakers are overlooked or misinterpreted by some or most non-native speakers. But this may also apply between different native varieties of the same language: think only of Ulstermen interacting with Londoners. This leads me to ask which parts of Intonation are universal and which are language-specific. I am referring only to the linguistic (systemic) use of the pitch of the voice, not the paralinguistic (presumably non-systemic) factors such as pitch range, speech rate and voice quality. Analysing Intonation in terms of the three systems discussed above (4.1, 4.4), we can say that the principles of chunking are probably pretty universal. Those of tonicity (accentuation) clearly are not. Is choice of tone universal in any way? In 4.29 international Intonation 133 English, when we pronounce lists we signal that the list is incomplete by using a rise, and that it is complete by using a fall.
eBook - PDF- Caroline Féry(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
135 135 6 Intonation and Meaning 6.1 INTRODUCTION The aim of this chapter is to examine the relationship between into- nation on the one hand and pragmatics, semantics and information structure on the other. The relation between meaning and Intonation is at least twofold. First, the tonal contour of a sentence is shaped by information structure. The informational roles investigated in this chapter are focus, givenness and topic, as proposed by Krifka (2008), for example; see also Büring (2016a) and the collection of chapters in Féry & Ishihara (2016). These roles influence the prosodic phrasing and the tonal pattern of sentences by assigning special tones or tonal sequences to bearers of the information structural roles. Lexical stresses and boundaries can be more or less prominent depending on the status of the respective constituents: information structural roles can be conveyed by scaling of tones and scaling of reference lines. Moreover, in many languages, prosodic phrasing is changed as a consequence of information structure. Second, the choice of specific tones and the way they combine is essential in communication. In Intonation languages, meanings and illocutionary roles influence the tonal patterns of sentences, and conversely, the choice of tones has an influence on the pragmatic interpretation of sentences. Intonation has a different role from the other grammatical modules, without being completely separated from other parts of grammar. Rather, the part played by an intona- tion contour interacts with other grammatical components to pro- duce specific nuances. The question of how Intonation relates to meaning, which has been central in the discussion of Intonation, especially in the models preceding the tone-sequence model, is given a simple answer in this chapter. As was demonstrated in Chapters 4 and 5, a prosodic domain is realized Intonationally by tones with specific roles, such as pitch accent, lexical tones and boundary tones.
- Ulrike Gut(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
As with all other phonological units, it is assumed that speakers have amental representation of Intonation phrases, i.e. they know how to produce speech structured into Intonation phrases and they rely on this knowledge when listening to the speech of others. 106 Chapter4 Within an Intonation phrase, there is typically one word that is most prominent. Section 4.2 explains the phonological rules describing which of the words in an English Intonation phrase is most prominent. Moreover, the pitch of a speaker's voice changes across Intonation phrases. The linguistie use of such pitch movements is called Intonation and is described in section 4.3. When producing speech, speakers can combine Intonation phrases into longer utterances by means of Intonational phrasing and by Intonation. Some utterances might contain just one Intonation phrase, others might contain several of them. Moreover, speakers can put utterances together to form larger stretches of speech or discourse. This also happens with the help of Intonational phrasing and Intonation, as described in sections 4.1 and 4.3.3. Section 4.4 explains how language leamers acquire these phonological units and their rules. 4.1 Intonational phrasing in English Speakers do not often produce single words when they communicate with each other but usually string several words together. However, speakers do not simply produce one word after the other. In speech, partieular groups of words are closer-knit than other groups of words. This is something listeners expect and make use of in interpreting speech. Many people can even hear these word groups in some (related) languages they do not speak - which shows that it is not the meaning alone that makes words belong together but phonological properties of speech (see section 5.5.1 for more details). The groups of words that belong closely together are called phrases. In order to avoid confusion with syntactic phrases, these phrases are referred to as Intonation phrases.
eBook - PDFAnalysing Conversation
An Introduction to Prosody
- Beatrice Szczepek Reed(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
3.1.3 Summary The main points to take away from this section are: • Intonation is emerging pitch movement during voiced talk. • Pitch accents in English may rise, fall or remain level. • Rising pitch involves a gradual change from low to high. • Types of rises are ◦ low rise: starting lower than previous stressed syllables and typically located low in a speaker’s pitch range; PITCH: Intonation 53 ◦ high rise: starting higher than previous stressed syllables and typically located high in a speaker’s pitch range; ◦ rise-to-mid: rising to mid in a speaker’s pitch range; ◦ rise-to-high: rising to high in a speaker’s pitch range; ◦ fall-rise: pitch falls, then rises, starting on a stressed syllable. • Falling pitch involves the gradual change from high to low. • Types of falls are ◦ low fall: starting lower than previous stressed syllables and typically located low in a given speaker’s pitch range; ◦ high fall: starting higher than previous stressed syllables and typically located high in a given speaker’s pitch range; ◦ fall-to-mid: falling to mid in a given speaker’s pitch range; ◦ fall-to-low: falling to low in a given speaker’s pitch range; ◦ rise-fall: pitch rises, then falls, starting on a stressed syllable. • Level pitch involves little perceptible pitch change throughout a stressed syllable and any following unstressed syllables. • Local pitch movements on, or originating on, stressed syllables are called pitch accents. • Pitch configurations across longer stretches of talk are called Intonation contours. • Intonation contours often form Intonation phrases. • Intonation phrases have at least one pitch accent. • The boundaries of Intonation phrases may be created by ◦ pauses; ◦ a change in pitch on unstressed syllables; ◦ lengthening; ◦ reduction in loudness on the final word or syllable; ◦ anacrusis.
eBook - PDF- Raymond Hickey(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
2.4 Prosody The term “prosody” refers to all aspects of speech which go beyond individual sounds and their combinations (Crystal 1969; Couper-Kuhlen 1986). Because of this, the term “suprasegmentals,” i.e. beyond the segments of the sound system, is also found. Non-native forms of English (second- and foreign-language varieties) are often characterized by prosodic features not found in native varieties (Trouvain and Gut eds, 2007) and noticeable to first-language speakers of English. The aspects subsumed under prosody include Intonation (variations in pitch), stress (variations in loudness), and duration (variations in time). Note that they do not include tone, which refers to pitch differences within a word. Tone is used for differentiating meaning in many of the world’s languages (Table I.33), called tone languages; English is not one of them. Some languages allow for certain tone distinctions, e.g. Swedish or Serbo-Croatian, but do not have it as a general principle for most words of the lexicon, as do Chinese and Vietnamese, for instance. Timing is an additional prosodic aspect of non-tone languages. There are two basic types, stress- timed and syllable-timed languages. The distinction is not watertight and there are languages occupying intermediary positions. Nonetheless, one can identify the basic principle. In order to do this, one first needs the notion of foot (see Hirst 1998: 58–62 for a detailed discussion). A foot consists of a stressed syllable and all unstressed syllables up to the next stressed one. This is an important aspect of metrics, the study of rhythm in poetry. Stressed syllables are abbreviated as S (= strong) and unstressed ones as w (= weak), as in the following example, the opening line of a Shakespeare sonnet (No. 30, in iambic pentameter, i.e. with five feet per line).
eBook - PDFText and Discourse Constitution
Empirical Aspects, Theoretical Approaches
- János S. Petöfi(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
DAFYDD GIBBON Intonation and Discourse /. Introduction In this paper I shall try to give an overview of some of the methodological problems and a few descriptive results in the area of Intonation and discourse. The report is divided into four sections: 1. Methodological considerations, in which such questions as the role of discourse in general, as opposed to 'sentences', and the question of autonomy of systems will be dealt with; 2. Aspects of discourse structure, with a highly selective, relatively informal presentation of some points of relevance to Intonational meaning; 3. Discussion of a specific systematic application of discourse relations to the solution of a problem in the area of Focus: so-called 'default accent'; 4. Outline of a model of prosodic phonology based on extensive perceptual and interpretative analysis of natural data, and on assumptions of concrete-ness in Intonation which I would like to term 'Natural Prosodic Phonol-ogy'; it is intended to define procedurally interpretable prosodic structures. /. /. Is a 'sentence phonetics' possible? The commonly used phrases 'Sentence Phonology' and 'Sentence Phonetics' deserve a closer look. Everybody understands roughly what they mean — probably things such as Intonation, accent, stress, rhythm, tempo, as well as word-linking phenomena at the segmental level. But I think one is justified in asking what, in fact, all this has to do with the category of sentence. Is there such a thing as 'Sentence Phonology' or 'Sentence Phonetics'? Without wishing to split hairs — or, at least, without wishing to split too many of them, I would like to point out a few things which these traditional terms imply in a modern context. First, there is the sentence/utterance distinction made (for instance) by Lyons, following a common tradition in the philosophy of language.
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