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Intonation.Functions. Components




Rhythm

Pitch

PROSODIC SUBSYSTEMS

 

The pitch component of intonation, or speech melody is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place with voiced sounds.

Acoustically, speech me today is the variations of the fundamental frequency, generated by the vibrations of the vocal cords.

To describe the melody of an utterance it is necessary to determine the relevant pitch levels, pitch ranges, directions and rate of pitch movement in the terminal zone and pre—terminal part of each of its intonation groups.

The pitch level of the whole utterance (or intonation group) is determined by the pitch of its highest—pitched syllable. It shows the degree of semantic importance the speaker attaches to the utterance (or intonation group) in comparison with any other utterance (or intonation group), and also the speaker's attitude and emotions.

Parenthetical phrases and other semantically less important intonation groups of an utterance are characterized by a lower pitch level than the neighbouring intonat ion groups, as, for example, in This„castle| as far as I remember,

was build in the'l5thvcentury, or' Where did the' charitable, gentleman {who had a,first—class (ticket for this, seaside resort (find you?

The number of linguistically relevant pitch levels in English has not been definitely established yet: in the works of different phoneticians it varies from three to seven. In unemphatic speech most phoneticians distinguish 3 pitch levels: low, mid and high. These levels are relative and are produced on different registers depending on the individual peculiarities of the voice. Besides low, mid and high levels some phoneticians distinguish the emphatic (higher and lower) and the emotional (higher and lower) pitch levels [88].

American linguists K.Pike, J.Trager, G.Smith, R.Wells and others distinguish 4 relevant pitch levels (low, mid, high, extra-high), which they term "pitch phonemes". The sequence of pitch phonemes in pronouncing an intonation group are called intonation contours.

 

 

Rhythm has been defined as regularity or periodicity in the occurrence of a particular phenomenon in an utterance. Languages differ in their rhythm mainly because of this phenomenon. In some languages the recurring phenomena are stresses, in others — syllables. So languages may be characterized either by stress—timed or syllable—timed rhythm [103]. English is considered to be mostly a language with stress—timed rhythm. Though occasionally it may display syllable-timed character as well [103, 60].

Stress—timed rhythm presupposes that utterance stress serves as a basis for the rhythmical organization of speech and that stresses segment the speech continuum into units of more or less equal length. These are accentual, or rhythmic units. The units tend to follow one another in such a way that the lapse of time between the stressed syllables is somewhat uniform. Since the rhythmic units differ in the number of syllables they are comprised of, the syllables of the longer groups are compressed by very rapid pronunciation and those of the shorter ones are lengthened to conform to the same interval of time. This produces perceptible isochrony of rhythmic units within the limitsof a given intonation group [35, 110, 90]. But there is no direct relation between perceptible (subjective) and acoustic (objective) isochrony. Regarding isochrony as a characteristic feature of English rhythm G. Torsuyev points out that this rhythmic tendency of the English language does not mean mechanical equality of intervals between peaks of prominence even within one and the same intonation—group [35].

A number of special investigations show that isochrony of rhythmic groups is rather approximate. The lapses of time between stressed syllables (peaks of prominence) are not absolutely equal. Perfect isochronism can be realized very rarely, only when definite conditions are fulfilled.

So English rhythm can't be said to have objective isochrony of its units. One can only speak about a tendency to isochrony which results in the modifications of the length of syllables and vowels and in modifications of the stress patterns of words.

Since the approximate isochrony of intervals between stressed syllables is regarded as a measure of English rhythm, a great number of phoneticians (A.CIasse, D.Abercrombie, H.Halliday, J.Pring) define the unit of rhythm as a sequence of syllables from one stressed syllable to another. But this formal rhythmic division does not reflect the relations between prosodic units and the units of the other subsystems of the language, as the syllables of one and the same word may be parts of different rhythmic units. E.g. Semantic importance.

G.Torsuyev, V.Vassilyev, R.Kingdon, J. O'Connor, W.Jassem and other

scholars represent another approach to rhythmic division. According to this

approach the boundaries between rhythmic units are determined by the

semantic and grammatical relations between the words of an utterance. With

such rhythmic division the syllables of a word always belong to the same

rhythmic unit, form words join the stressed syllable as proclitics and encli-

tics, depending on their semantic links.

 

Intonation- in linguistics, intonation is variation of spoken pitch that is not used to distinguish words; instead it is used for a range of functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker, signalling the difference between statements and questions, and between different types of question, focusing attention on important elements of the spoken message and also helping to regulate conversational interaction.

Although intonation is primarily a matter of pitch variation, it is important to be aware that functions attributed to intonation such as the expression of attitudes and emotions, or highlighting aspects of grammatical structure, almost always involve concomitant variation in other prosodic features.

Капельку истории:

British descriptions of English intonation can be traced back to the 16th century. Early in the 20th century the dominant approach in the description of English and French intonation was based on a small number of basic "tunes" associated with intonation units: in a typical description, Tune 1 is falling, with final fall, while Tune 2 has a final rise. Phoneticians such as H.E. Palmer broke up the intonation of such units into smaller components, the most important of which was the nucleus, which corresponds to the main accented syllable of the intonation unit, usually in the last lexical word of the intonation unit. Each nucleus carries one of a small number of nuclear tones, usually including fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall, and possibly others. The nucleus may be preceded by a head containing stressed syllables preceding the nucleus, and a tail consisting of syllables following the nucleus within the tone unit. Unstressed syllables preceding the head (if present) or nucleus (if there is no head) constitute a pre-head. This approach was further developed by Halliday and by O'Connor and Arnold, though with considerable variation in terminology. This "Standard British" treatment of intonation in its present-day form is explained in detail by Wells and in a simplified version by Roach. Halliday saw the functions of intonation as depending on choices in three main variables: Tonality (division of speech into intonation units), Tonicity (the placement of the tonic syllable or nucleus) and Tone (choice of nuclear tone); these terms (sometimes referred to as "the three T's") have been used more recently.

Research by Crystal emphasized the importance of making generalizations about intonation based on authentic, unscripted speech, and the roles played by prosodic features such as tempo, pitch range, loudness and rhythmicality in communicative functions usually attributed to intonation.

The transcription of intonation in such approaches is normally incorporated into the line of text. A typical example would be:

We ˌlooked at the ↗sky | and ˈsaw the ↘clouds

in this example, the | mark indicates a division between intonation units.

An influential development in British studies of intonation has been Discourse Intonation, an offshoot of Discourse Analysis first put forward by David Brazil. This approach lays great emphasis on the communicative and informational use of intonation, pointing out its use for distinguishing between presenting new information and referring to old, shared information, as well as signalling the relative status of participants in a conversation (e.g teacher-pupil, or doctor-patient) and helping to regulate conversational turn-taking. The description of intonation in this approach owes much to Halliday. Intonation is analysed purely in terms of pitch movements and "key" and makes little reference to the other prosodic features usually thought to play a part in conversational interaction.




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