Intonation and Tones

How to study tones

The best way to study English tones is by listening to phonetic samples for ESL learners, using text transcripts of audio recordings for marking intonation, tones, sense groups, pauses and sentence stress, and repeating the audio samples after the speaker. It is also helpful to study descriptions of the main tones in order to know where the tones begin, in what direction they go, where they end, and what pitch range they cover.

It is convenient to study the tones by comparing them with the two principal tones: the falling tone and the rising tone. Normal unemphatic falling and rising tones begin at mid level. The falling tone goes down and ends near the bottom of the normal speaking range. The rising tone goes up, but not too high, and it never reaches the upper boundary of the normal speaking range.

You can listen to the falling and rising tones in the audio materials Listening for Falling and Rising Intonation (AmE) and Listening for Intonation in Questions and Answers (AmE) in the section Phonetics. You can listen to the high fall and the fall-rise in the audio material Listening for Intonation: Fire and Ice by Robert Frost in the section Phonetics.

Emphatic tones (high fall, high rise) are described here for understanding, and not for active use. Low fall may be emphatic or unemphatic depending on the situation. (See "Low fall" below.)

Falling tone

The falling tone is used at the end of statements (It's \nice.), special questions (What \happened?), commands (\Call him.), exclamatory sentences (How \nice!), in the first part of tag questions (He \works, \doesn't he?), and in the last part of alternative questions (Do you /study or \work?).

The falling tone expresses finality, completeness, confidence. The falling tone begins on the last stressed syllable of the sentence and goes down (much deeper than in Russian), ending near the bottom of the normal speaking range.

The fall takes place within the last stressed syllable: Tom is my \friend. If there are unstressed syllables after the final stressed syllable, they are pronounced on the same low level where the fall ends: Tom is a \journalist.

In many cases you can use the normal falling tone instead of the high fall and low fall.