Intonation Structure and its functions

Components of an Intonation Group

The stressed and unstressed syllables of an intonation group perform different functions. Palmer was the first to single out consecutive elements of the intonation group (“tone-group”) which differ in their functions. These elements are “pre-head”, “head”, “nucleus”, and “tail”.

The number of functional elements distinguished by different phoneticians is not the same. Thus, Palmer, O’Connor and Arnold distinguish two elements in the per- nuclear part of the utterance - the pre-head (unstressed syllables, preceding the first stressed one) and the head (the first stressed syllable and the following stressed and unstressed ones). The notion of “head” in this sense coincides with the notion of “scale”, used by Russian phoneticians, e.g. Torsuyev⁹, Trakhterov, Vassilyev¹⁰, Antipova¹¹ and others.

Kingdon uses the term “head” to mean only the first stressed syllable, which he considers to be independent functional element. The stressed and unstressed syllables following the head form another functional element - the body.

The functional role of the pre-head of an utterance has been proved. It bears distinctively significant pitch variation. The high pre-head is opposed to the low or mid pre-head for differentiating attitudinal meanings.

But whether the first stressed syllables of an utterance plays a functional role or not is a moot point. Auditory observations and the analysis of acoustic data show that pitch characteristics attributed to the first stressed syllable are actually characteristics of the unstressed syllables following it (part of the body). Eth Rising Head, for instance, is frequently characterized as such due to the higher pitch of the following unstressed syllables.

The first stressed syllables and the following ones seem to function as one whole, the first stressed syllable being the one which determines the pitch variations of the intonation group.

It is also disputable that the tail is an independent functional element of the intonation group, since its pitch variations are determined by the nuclear tone.

The “pre-head”, “head” and “tail” are non-obligatory element of an intonation group, whereas the nucleus is an obligatory and the important functional element.

Thus, the intonation group can be divided in two different ways: 1) into rhythmic groups and syllabic which are hierarchically related (the latter being an element of the former) or 2) into functional elements which are autonomous prosodic units.

Further experimental investigations are needed to study prosodic features of all theses units and to determine their correlation and their functional significance.

The largest prosodic unit is the utterance, which is characterized by its definite acoustic and auditory structure. It is the main communicative unit. One and the same intonation pattern of an utterance may be imposed on any syntactical structure of a sentence. The term “sentence” may denote:

1. 
   a syntactical unit only. A formal grammatical structure, and
   
2. 
   a syntactical and phonetic unit together.
   

The utterance is an actualized sentence (a formal grammatical structure which is uttered), or it is the phonetic aspect of the sentence in the broad sense.

An utterance may consist of one or more intonation groups.

The structure of an utterance is determined by its thought content and its modality, and also by the number of stressed and unstressed syllables in it.

The meaning of an utterance is to a great extent determined by its prosodic characteristics, or intonation.¹²

As we know, intonation may be defined as such a unity of speech melody, sentences tress, voice timbre and speech tempo which enables the speaker to adequately communicate in speech his thoughts, will, emotions and attitude towards reality and the contents of the utterance.¹³

Speech melody, or the pitch component of intonation, is the variation in the pitch of the voice which takes place when voiced sounds, especially vowels and sonorants, are pronounced in connected speech. The pitch of speech sounds is produced by the vibrations of the vocal cords.

Stress in speech is the greater prominence which is given to one or more words in a sentence as compared with the other words of the same sentence.

The voice quality (timbre) is a special colouring of the voice in pronouncing sentences which is superimposed on speech melody and shows the speaker’s emotions such as joy, sadness, irony, anger, indignation, etc.

The tempo of voice is the relative speed which sentences or their parts are pronounced. Closely connected with the tempo of speech is its rhythm: the recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time. Intonation serves to form sentences and intonation groups to define their communicative type, to express the speaker’s thoughts, to convey the attitudinal meaning. One and the same grammatical structure and lexical composition of the sentence may express different meaning when pronounced with different intonation.

The sentence is the basic unit of language. It may either be a single intonational unit or consist of two or more intonational units. This intonational unit is called intonational group. If considered not only from the purely intonational points of vie, but also from the semantic and grammatical points of view this unit is known as the sense group.

An intonational group may consist of a whole sentence or a part of it. In either case it may consist of a single word or a number of words.

Sentence stress is the greater prominence with which one or more words in a sentence are pronounced as compared with the other wordsof the same sentence.

Sentence stress may vary in degree: it may be full or partial. Full sentence stress in its turn may be unemphatic or emphatic. Full unemphatic stress is indicated by single stress-marks placed above the line of print, e.g.

‘Open your ‘books at ‘page ,three.

Emphatic stress is effected by greater force of utterance, greater exhalation and lengthening the sounds. Emphatically stressed syllables become more prominent and sound louder than syllables with unemphatic stress.

Words which are usually stressed in English unemphatic speech belong to the notional parts of speech namely: nouns, adjectives, numerals, notional verbs, adverbs, demonstrative, interrogative emphasizing pronouns and absolute form of the possessive pronouns.

Rhythm in speech is the recurrence of stressed syllables in a sense- group at certain intervals of time. In connected English speech stressed syllable have a strong tendency to follow each other as nearly as possible at equal intervals of time in the unstressed syllables (whether many or few) occupy the time between the stressed syllables. The greater the number of unstressed syllables, the quicker their pronounced.

A stressed syllable pronounced together with the unstressed syllables forms are rhythmic group.

Changes in the tempo of English speech caused by the regularity of its rhythm are closely connected with changes in the length of English sounds, especially vowels.

The characteristic features of English speech rhythm may be summed up as follows:

1. 
   The regular recurrence of stressed syllables which results in:
   

1. 
   The pronunciation of each rhythmic group in a sense group in the same period of time, irrespective of the number of unstressed syllables in it;
   
2. 
   The influence of this feature of English speech rhythm upon the tempo of speech and the length of sounds, especially vowels.
   

2. 
   The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables which results in the influence of rhythm upon word-stress and sentence- stress.
   

We see that sentence has one more function to serve as the basis for the rhythmical structure of the sentence.

3.