Universal, typological, specific features

When comparing two or more objects of study we find their common features and discover their points of difference. There are features which are shared by all languages of the world, they are called universal. But much earlier than it was possible to make generalizations about most languages spoken by man it was found that languages group into two main types according to the way they use pitch which is the basic component of intonation. There are languages which use pitch to differentiate words (morphemes), they are called tone languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and most African languages). Other languages use pitch to differentiate such modes of speech as, for example, statements and questions, and also the grammatical forms, as verbs and nouns in English {accent — to ac'cent). They are called intonation languages, or, stress languages (English, Dutch, Russian). There are also pitch accent languages, like Japanese, Swedish and Serbo-Croatian which occupy an intermediate position between tone languages and intonation languages.

The grouping of languages according to the ways they use pitch or other intonation means gives us a set of typological features, common for a family or a group of languages, like, for instance, for Germanic, Romance, Turkic or Slavic groups of languages. Then within each group we can observe features which differentiate individual languages. These features are called language-specific.

There is a limited number of universal, i.e. shared by most languages of the world, features in intonation but we believe them to be fundamental.

The first simple universal truth is that all languages, including tone languages, have intonation. There is ample experimental evidence to prove that, besides the lexical use of pitch, tone languages have special intonation signals, the so-called boundary tones, to show the beginning and end of a phrase; they also have intonation means for emphasis, expression and emotions which can modify the overall intonation pattern of the utterance. As the lexical tones are resistant to change there is intensity and duration to compensate for pitch variation.

Among other universal properties we can name the following:

• intonation groupings

• nucleus placement

• nuclear tones in statements and questions

• declination

• intonation of emotions

• key or pitch range to signal discourse linking, register (style)

• indexical information of social and regional character

• intonation acquisition

Let us have a look at them in more detail, as described in Cruttenden (1986).

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11