Lecture 8
Functions of Intonation
Functions of intonation:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Attitudinal function enables people to express ____________________and ____________________.
This adds special kind of meaning to the spoken language.
Accentual function helps to focus attention on a particular ____________________ or ___________
__________________.
Grammatical function enables listeners better recognize the _____________________________ and
_________________ of what is being said. Boundaries between phrases, sentence clauses,
differences between Qs and statements are involved.
Discourse function includes looking at the act of speaking in a _______________________: what is
new information and what is not, what kind of response is expected etc.
Attitudinal Function
Many scholars state that one sentence can be said in different ways: angry, happy, enthusiastic,
indifferent etc.
The key factor is the ____________ used. For example:
1. _________________
2. _________________ – most functions assigned to rises are closer to grammatical function; they
are included to give a fuller Picture.
3. ___________________
4. ____________________
There are 3 distinct types of suprasegmental variable:
1. _________________________
2. _________________________
3. _________________________
Sequential: elements in sequences of other elements occurring ______________________________:
Prosodic: these are characteristic of speech which are constantly present and can be observed while
speech continues. The most important ones are:
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
4. ______________________
5. ______________________
Paralinguistic: Facial expressions, gestures, and body movements can be mentioned here. Moreover,
the term _____________________________ can be introduced.
Certain vocal effects such as laughs and sobs can be mentioned too.
Accentual Function
One particular aspect of stress could be regarded as a part of intonation: ______________________.
Some older pronunciation handbooks refer to this as sentence stress.
The location of the tonic syllable is of high importance. The most common position for this is on the
________________________________ (noun, adjective, verb, adverb) of the tone unit. However,
for the contrastive purposes, any word can become the carrier of the tonic syllable.
The placement of the tonic syllable indicates the focus of the information.
i represents normal placement an ii contrastive:
Similarly, for the purposes of __________________, tonic stress can be placed in other positions:
There are some other situations where tonic syllable comes earlier in the tone-unit:
Version ii could not be regarded as emphatic and there are other examples – for instance when
something has already been ____________________ or _________________________________:
Grammatical Function
It is usual to illustrate the grammatical function by creating __________________ sentences:
Tone-unit boundary placement can indicate grammatical structure:
i means that some conservatives like the proposal and ii means that all of them like the proposal.
Question tags:
i indicates that the speaker is fairly ________________ that they are coming, whereas ii possibly
indicates a lesser degree of certainty.
Discourse Function
Discourse attempts to look at the larger contexts. Two main areas can be identified within the
discourse:
1. ______________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________.
2. _____________________________________________________________
Intonation is also important in the conversational interaction of 2 or more speakers. For example:
The difference between falling and rising intonation on question-tags indicates what sort of
____________________ is expected.
It appears that ___________________ (the part of the pitch range used) is important in signalling
information about conversational interaction.
List of resources:
Cruttenden, A. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. Hodder Education, 2008.
Crystal, D. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackvell Publishing, 2008.
Davenport M. – Hannahs S. Introducing Phonetics and Phonology. Hodder Arnold, 2005.
Richards, J. – Schmidt, R. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.
Longman, 2010.
Roach, P. English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Underhill, A. Learning and teaching pronunciation. Macmillan, 2005.