Syntactic function

Functions of intonation

At the beginning of the previous century intonation was treated as " Cinderella of linguistics" in service of grammar. The first linguists who wrote about intonation were grammarians, and the first function was defined as syntactic. It consisted in signalling the boundaries of major syntactical constituents, such as clauses and subject groups, for instance, and also the degree of cohesion and subordination between clauses. In other words, intonation can show how close or loose the links between the parts of a compound or a complex sentence are, and which is the main clause. Much comment was given to the ability of intonation to change a statement into a ques­tion, and that also was referred to as a grammatical meaning. At the same time it was realized that intonation has a large potential of expressing what was called "emotions" (the term favoured by Russian scholars) or "attitudes" (the British preference). This led to the explorations in the attitudinal function of intonation. Now that linguists turned to the analysis of connected speech, called texts or discourse, intonation has finally demonstrated its full communicative value. Intonation, it turned out, may signal the relation between what is being said and a larger context of the situation. It shows whether the information is shared by the participants of the discourse (because it has been mentioned already or is part of the background knowledge) or is new to them. It indicates relative importance of information as viewed by each speaker, it signals turn-taking in conversation and has many other techniques necessary for human beings to communicate successfully. The principal functions of intonation are:

a) Phrasing, or the division of utterances into meaningful units which are called intonation groups (also named intonation phrases, or tone-groups, or syntagmas). This function used to be called syntactic because boundaries between intonation groups generally correspond with clause and major syntactic phrase boundaries. Besides pitch change, other prosodic cues often mark such boundaries: pause, final syllable lengthening and changes in the tempo, creaky voice quality to accompany RP (men's) low falling tone at the end of the phrase. Proper phrasing helps to disambiguate sentences like:

a) They decorated the girl/ with flowers.// They decorated/ the girl with flowers.//

b) Those who sold quickly/ made profit.// Those who sold/quickly made profit.//

c) The Conservatives who voted for the bill/were happy.// The Conservatives, /who voted for the bill,/were happy.//

d) This is my teacher Dr Brown.// This is my teacher,/Dr Brown.//

The correspondence with a syntactic unit is considered to be the basic, the "neutral" or "unmarked" case of intonation grouping.

It all began/on New Year's Day/in my thirty-secondyear/ofbeing single.// Once again/1 found myself on my own/ and going to my mother's annual turkey curry buffet.// Every year/ she tries to fix me up with some bushy-haired,/middle-aged bore/and I feared this time/ would be no exception.//

(Helen Fielding "Bridget Jones Diary")

However, in case syntactic bonds are interfered with by intonation means, like, for instance, when we slow down and make a pause after the article before a noun or an adjective, it may be a natural search pause or a special rhetorical device to attract the listener's attention, or to hold the floor a little longer:

There was a // HUGE crowd in the square//.

This discord between syntax and intonation creates a "marked" case of phrasing. As there is no syntactic unit exactly corresponding to an intonation phrase, the way in which a speaker breaks up a sentence depends largely on what a person considers to be the important information points in the sentence and on the style of speech. In the following example the speaker pauses after but to emphasize the importance of the point which follows:

Right.// No pressure, Bridge,/ ^xBUT/your whole future happiness now depends on/ how you behave on this/ one social occasion//.

When speaking slowly in a formal style, on a solemn occasion, the speaker may choose to break up a sentence into a large number of phrases (a). It is only in rapid conversational style that there is likely to be one intonation phrase per sentence (b):

(a) Today/ a generation/ raised/ in the shadows/ of cold war/ assumes new responsibilities/ in a world warmed/ by the sunshine of freedom// but threatened still/by ancient hatreds/ and/ new/plagues//.

(b) We have a ^wedding this weekend.// Why do you want to be in ^television?// Do you 'have any children of your own?//

"An intonation phrase is a unit of information rather than a syntactically defined one" (Ladefoged 2003:100). Thus, for instance, an adverbial phrase is normally pronounced as a separate intonation unit in the initial position, as in (a), (b), but in the final position it is either a separate intonation unit, as in (c) or part of the previous unit, as in (d):

a) Apparently,/ she lives just round the corner from you.//

b) Unfortunately,/ he just happens to be my boss.//

c) Pretty nasty beast,/apparently.//(?xv apologetic afterthought).

d) He's divorced, apparently.// (as you know from experience).

"The tunes do not correlate with any specific kinds of grammatical structure, and yet there is an element of truth in the popular belief." (Kreidler2003:183). There are plenty of cases which demonstrate that tone unit boundaries are predictable from both syntactic and information structure:

Was that F.R. Leavis?/ 'The F.R. Leavis/who wrote "Mass Civilization and Minority Culture "?// The F.R. Leavis who 'died in 1975?//

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