4. Intonation and its functions.

Effective communication depends to a significant degree on such features of speech as variations in the pitch, loudness, tempo & timbre of the voice. These are prosodic, or non-segmental, features, which form a complex unity of properties commonly referred to as intonation –an indispensable characteristic of connected speech & its basic unit - an utterance in particular. Intonation constitutes a constant structural element of an utterance & performs a number of important communicative functions.

The delimiting function: intonation delimits utterances & parts of utterances in the speech flow. In other words, each of the semantic blocks singled out of the speech flow presents a prosodic, or intonation, unit. Since the segmental base of such a unit often comprises a group of words, it is usually defined as an intonation group.

The accentual function: intonation gives precision to the information being conveyed: it signals the central point of information, marking more & less important elements within the utterance through contrasts in the degree of prominence.

To show the aim of communication: to indicate the type of a speech act, or in other terms, the communicative type (a statement, a question, an imperative, an exclamation) or subtype of an utterance (e.g. a reply or an announcement within a statement; an instruction or an order within an imperative, an alternative question with a complete/incomplete list of choices or a certainty/uncertainty disjunctive question within interrogative utterances). Often, intonation is the only marker of the speaker's communicative intent.

The attitudinal, or modal-emotional, function of intonation: the important role of intonation in conveying the speaker's attitude to the subject matter and to the speech situation, as well as his relations with the listener and his emotional state at the moment of communication.

5. The pitch. The tune.

The pitch component of intonation, or speech melody, is commonly referred to as variations in the height of the voice during speech, & is generally described in terms of pitch-changes & levels.

A pitch-level is a certain height within the speaker's voice-range. The notion of a level may be applied to the whole stretch of an utterance, and then it means the average height of the voice during the pronunciation of the given utterance. In a narrower sense a pitch-level is associated with some particular point in an utterance, generally the boundary points of pronunciation units: syllables, rhythmic groups, intonation-groups. From the functional point of view the pitch-level plays an important role in marking the degree of semantic prominence attached by the speaker to this or that word or phrase in an utterance.

Pitch level is also significant for conveying various shades of modal-attitudional meanings and emotional colouring.

A pitch-change (whether a real glide or the result of a pitch contrast) is a feature perceived more easily than a pitch-level. Priority in identification is usually given to the direction of the pitch movement rather than to the height of the beginning and ending points of the pitch movement. The term t u n e is used to refer to the pitch pattern of the whole intonation-group. It is obvious that the notion of tune is wider than that of tone and the tune may comprise several tones while a tune of a minimal size coincides with a tone realized in a monosyllabic utterance.

The stressed and unstressed syllables within the tune are distinguished according to their position and function in the tune. Unstressed or partially stressed syllables which precede the first full stress (the onset) form the p r e h e a d . The portion of the tune extending from the first stressed syllable up to, but not including, the nuclear syllable is referred to as the h e a d. It consists of any number of stressed or unstressed syllables (at least one of the former). The syllable bearing the nuclear (terminal) tone is called the nucleus of the utterance. Unstressed or partially stressed syllables following the nucleus are called the t a i l.

The number of the component parts in a tune may vary. The only indispensable element of a tune is the nucleus. The other components may or may not be present in a tune. It depends on the length of the utterance, the phonetic structure of the words (monosyllabic or polysyllabic) and the number of prominent words in it.