The Glide-Down

Tune shapes

As it has been already said, when we pronounce an utterance the voice goes up and down and the different notes of the voice combine to make tunes. In English the tune belongs not to a single word but to the whole utterance or word group. The shape of the tune is decided partly by the number of important words in an utterance and partly by the exact attitude you wish to express. Important words carry most of the meaning in an utterance. An important word always has a stressed syllable and usually has a change of pitch connected to it. But not all stressed words in an utterance can be called important: some words may be stressed simply to preserve rhythm, and the fact that there is no change of pitch shows that the speaker does not treat them as important.

Also the attitude of the speaker, his feelings as he says an utterance, affects the tune-shape, and affects it very much, as we shall see later.

In the shortest word groups, where we use just one important word, the falling tune consists of a fall in the voice from a fairly high pitch to a very low one. The fall is on the stressed syllable or from the stressed syllable to a following one:

Two. Excellent.

· On a single syllable the voice falls within the syllable.

· On more than one syllable the voice either falls within the stressed syllable or it jumps down from that syllable to the next.

· Unstressed syllables at the end are all very low.

If there are other words following the fall they may have stress, but they are still said on that very low pitch, just like unstressed syllables:

He was in an ap pallingly bad temper.

When there is more than one important word in an utterance, the last one has the fall but the others are treated differently:

· The stressed syllable of the first important word is high and any unstressed syllables following it are on the same pitch.

· The stressed syllable of the second important word is a little lower and any unstressed syllables following it are on the same pitch.

· The fall starts at the same pitch as the syllable just before it.

In groups with more than three important words the stressed syllable of each one is lower than the one before; this is why we call the tune the Glide-Down.

How can I possibly pay him two hundred pounds?

If there are any unstressed syllables before the stressed syllable of the first important word, these are all said on a rather low pitch. Also, any stressed syllables near the beginning which belong to words which are not important are said on this same rather low pitch.

I was glad. He seems very nice.

These low syllables at the beginning are not at the lowest possible pitch like the ones at the end, but they must be lower than the high pitch which follows.

We have a way of showing the Glide-Down which is simpler and quicker than the dots and lines. Before the stressed syllable where the voice falls we put (). Before the stressed syllable of each other important word we put (). Each of these marks shows a step, beginning with a high one and gradually coming lower until the fall is reached. Unstressed syllables at the beginning as well as at the end have no mark before them. If there is a low-pitched stress near the beginning it is marked by (). And the same mark is used for stressed syllables which come after the fall.

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