Prosodic notation systems

Speech is divided into short pieces which are pronounced without any breaks within them. These are called utterances. So an utterance is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear pause. Any utterance has a fairly clearly-defined structure.

In an utterance there may be several important words which carry most of the meaning. The stressed syllable of the most important word is called nucleus /'njHklIqs/. It is considered to be the centre of an utterance and it will have the greatest stress. This syllable will be pronounced with the change in the pitch (height) of our voice. This kind of utterance stress can be called a tone. As you know already there are five main tones in English:

· Falling tone is usually regarded as more or less “neutral”. If someone is asked a question and replies yes or no it will be understood that the question is now answered and that there is nothing more to be said. The fall could be said to give an impression of “finality”, “definiteness”.

· Rising tone conveys an impression that something more is to follow. If someone replies yes or no it will sound like an “invitation to continue” with what was intended to say. To reply with the falling tone would give a feeling of “end of the conversation”. Rising tone is also used in general questions and when you are making a list.

· Fall-rise is used a lot in English and has some rather special functions. It can mean interest, reservation, hesitation, warning, correction, friendliness, etc. For example the reply to the statement I’ve heard that it’s a good school may be yes meaning that the listener would not completely agree with what was said, and he would probably be expected to go on to explain why he was reluctant to agree.

· Rise-fall is used to convey rather strong feelings of approval, disapproval or surprise. It is not usually considered to be an important tone for foreign learners to acquire, though it is still useful practice to learn to distinguish it from other tones. For example, You wouldn’t do an awful thing like that, would you? - no (indignation, disapproval).

· Level tone (_ yes, _ no) is used in English but in a rather restricted context: it almost always conveys a feeling of saying something routine, uninteresting or boring.

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