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Intonation and Structure Tone Language

- Intonation refers to the rise and fall of pitch in speech and helps convey meaning. It is an important part of suprasegmental phonology. - Some languages use tones, or pitch patterns, to distinguish words and their meanings, making them tone languages. English is not a tone language as pitch does not change word meanings. - Intonation in English plays a role in communication by expressing emphasis, attitudes, emotions and questioning through variations in pitch. It can vary between dialects and speakers.

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Clarence Stevens
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107 views

Intonation and Structure Tone Language

- Intonation refers to the rise and fall of pitch in speech and helps convey meaning. It is an important part of suprasegmental phonology. - Some languages use tones, or pitch patterns, to distinguish words and their meanings, making them tone languages. English is not a tone language as pitch does not change word meanings. - Intonation in English plays a role in communication by expressing emphasis, attitudes, emotions and questioning through variations in pitch. It can vary between dialects and speakers.

Uploaded by

Clarence Stevens
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Intonation

Mr. LOUNIS YOUCEF


S4 LESSONS
Intonation
The same sentence can have different meanings!!!!
I did not say you stole my red hat.
This means:
• Someone else said it, not me
I did not say you stole my red hat.

This means:
•I am very angry and strongly
deny…
I did not say you stole my red hat.

This also means:


•I am very angry and strongly
deny…
I did not say you stole my red hat.

This means:
• I dont think you stole it. Did
you?
• Also I did not actually make
this accusation
I did not say you stole my red hat

Means:
• I wasn't accusing you. I know it
was someone else
I did not say you stole my red hat.

Means:
• I said you did something else
with it, or maybe borrowed it.
I did not say you stole my red hat
Means:
• I meant that you stole someone
else's red hat
I did not say you stole my red hat.
Means:
• I said that you stole my (any
other colour) hat.
I did not say that you stole my red hat.
Means:
• I said that you stole my red
bat/cat etc.
• You misunderstood my
pronunciation.
• Intonation is a non-verbal method of expressing various meanings,
emotions or situations.
• Intonation in English uses the rise and fall of pitch to accomplish this.
Intonation and structure
• Intonation is very closely linked to grammar, or more
specifically, sentence structure.
– Because English has a fairly strictly fixed word order, it is not an
option to rearrange the words when we want to make a point
about something.
– Therefore, it becomes necessary to shift our intonation to
highlight information that is key to our point.
Introduction
Linguistics is concerned primarily with the spoken
word. Language is first and foremost a spoken thing not
a written one. Its appeal is to ear not to the eye. Even,
presently, there are some languages, which have no
written script. For efficient communication and for
proper understanding of the message it is essential to
have an understanding of intonation.
The study of intonation went through many changes in
the twentieth century.
The most intensive development began during the
1940.
In United States the theory that evolved was based on
‘pitch phonemes’ (Pike. 1945).
It was developed in 1951 and then by Haliday (1967)
and consequently a good introduction to the theoretical
issues is Cruttenden (1997).
We can divide language into languages which are toned
and those which are not, English falls into second
category, that is, it is not a tone language.
• Segmental phonology
• The description of phonemes

• Suprasegmental phonology or prosodic phonology or


prosody
• You studied stress. Clearly, stress has linguistic importance
and is therefore an aspect of the phonology of English that
must be described, but it is not usually regarded as
something that is related to individual segmental
phonemes; normally, stress is said to be something that is
applied to (or is a property of) syllables, and is therefore
part of the suprasegmental phonology of English.
• 1-Study of phonemes is something related to
individual segmental phonemes, it is therefore
a part of segmental phonology.
• 2-Intonation and stress are not related to
individual segmental phonemes but are
applied to syllables and are therefore part of
suprasegmental phonology.
• An important part of suprasegmental phonology
is intonation

• Every language has its own intonation, or speech


melody. Intonation helps you to recognize the
language that you hear in the same way as the
melody of a song helps you to recognize the song
that you hear. If you change the melody of a
song, it will be difficult for your listener to
recognize and understand the song you are
singing. The same is true in reference to
intonation: if you speak English with Russian
intonation, your listener will have a problem
understanding what you are saying.
• No definition is completely satisfactory, but any
attempt at a definition must recognise that the
pitch of the voice plays the most important part.
Only in very unusual situations do we speak with
fixed, unvarying pitch, and when we speak
normally the pitch of our voice is constantly
changing. One of the most important tasks in
analysing intonation is to listen to the speaker's
pitch and recognise what it is doing; this is not an
easy thing to do, and it seems to be a quite
different skill from that acquired in studying
segmental phonetics.
• Stress: Stress is the degree of force with
which a sound or syllable or a word is uttered.

• Pitch: The rate of the vibration of the vocal


folds.
• A word of caution is needed in connection with
the word pitch. Strictly speaking, this should be
used to refer to an auditory sensation
experienced by the hearer. The rate of vibration
of the vocal folds - something which is physically
measurable, and which is related to activity on
the part of the speaker - is the fundamental
frequency of voiced sounds, and should not be
called "pitch". However, as long as this distinction
is understood, it is generally agreed that the term
"pitch" is a convenient one to use informally to
refer both to the subjective sensation and to the
objectively measurable fundamental frequency.
► Intonation helps create the music of a
language. (like notes in music)

► It is a part of communication.
* the rise and fall of pitch in our voice
plays a crucial role in how we express
meaning.

► Intonation is the change of level of voice


Tone languages
• All the languages in the world use consonants
and vowels to build morphemes, which in turn
join together to form words.
• Thus the English word ‘me’ is made up of a nasal
consonant followed by a high vowel.
• If we change the consonant to a/b/ we would get
a different word, ‘be’, and if we change the vowel
to a low vowel, we would also get a different
words, ‘ma’.
• We may pronounce the word ‘ma’ with various
pitch patterns, depending on the occasion. We
may pronounce it with high pitch if we are
emphatic, we may say it with a rising pitch in a
question etc.
• As the figure shows, the syllable ‘ma’ when
pronounced with a falling pitch patterns means, ‘to
scold’.
• When pronounced with a rising pattern, the meaning is
‘hemp’, when pronounced with a high level pattern,
the meaning is ‘mother’ as in some dialects of English,
and lastly, when pronounced with a low dipping
pattern, the meaning is ‘horse’.
• When pitch patterns are used in this lexical capacity i.e.
to build word and morphemes much as consonants
and vowels do, they are called tones.
• And languages that use tones in this way are called
tone languages.
• English is not tone language because different tones
make no difference in meanings.
• However, it certainly gives different meanings when
different parts/syllables of the same words are
stressed.
• English intonation is a complicated and varied
phenomenon. There are dialectal and regional
differences in intonation; for example, there
are quite a few differences between British
and American intonation. Intonation may
sound differently depending on whether the
speakers have high or low voices, speak fast or
slowly, loudly or quietly, energetically,
emotionally, neutrally, or listlessly. Men and
women may have their own differences and
preferences in intonation.
• We will begin by looking at intonation in the
shortest piece of speech we can find - the
single syllable. At this point a new term will be
introduced: we need a name for a continuous
piece of speech beginning and ending with a
clear pause, and we will call this an utterance.

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