Intonation

What is intonation?

It’s the pattern of pitch variation
Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say. Without intonation, it's impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words. An utterance can be given a variety of different meanings according to the intonation patterns given by the speaker.
Listen to somebody speaking without paying attention to the words: the 'melody' you hear is the intonation. It has the following features:

·         It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.(A simple complete pitch pattern) They help us isolate pitch patterns by defining where one pattern ends and the next begins.

·         The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range'. Everybody has their own pitch range. Languages, too, differ in pitch range. English has particularly wide pitch range.

·         In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a combination of the two) takes place on the most important syllable known as the 'tonic-syllable'. The tonic-syllable is usually a high-content word, near the end of the unit. (It carries the main pitch change and it also carries prominence)

·         These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning. Changing the intonation can completely change the meaning.

Example: 

o    Say: 'It's raining'.

o    Now say it again using the same words, but giving it different meaning. You could say it to mean 'What a surprise!', or 'How annoying!',or 'That's great!'. There are many possibilities.

Intonation and grammar
Where patterns associating intonation and grammar are predictable, I highlight these to my students. I see these as starting-points, rather than rules.

Some examples are:

·         Declarative statements: falling intonation

• Wh-word questions: falling intonation
• Yes/No questions: rising
• Question-Tags: 'chat' - falling; 'check' ( a real question) – rising
• Imperative:  falling intonation
• Lists: rising, rising, rising, falling

Intonation and attitude
It's important that students are aware of the strong link between intonation and attitude, even if it's difficult to provide rules here.

·         The first thing is for learners to recognise the effect of intonation changes. I say the word 'bananas' - firstly with an 'interested' intonation (varied tone); then 'uninterested' (flat). Students identify the two and describe the difference. We then brainstorm attitudes, such as 'enthusiastic', 'bored', 'surprised', 'relieved'. I say 'bananas' for these. Students then do the same in pairs, guessing each other's attitude.

·         This can be developed by asking students to 'greet' everybody with a particular attitude. At the end, the class identify each person's attitude. For younger learners, I use 'Mr Men' characters (Miss Happy, Mr Grumpy, Miss Frightened, etc.) Each student is allocated a character and, as above, they greet the class with that character's voice.

Intonation and discourse

Learners' also need awareness of intonation in longer stretches of language. Intonation can be used as a way of organizing and relating together meanings  throughout the discourse. Here, we can give our learners clearer guidelines: 'new' information = fall tone; 'shared' knowledge = 'fall-rise'.

A simple shopping dialogue demonstrates this:

SK: Can I help you?
C: I'd like a chocolate (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall-rise) ice-cream. Anything else?
C: One strawberry (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall), one strawberry (fall). Anything else?
C: Yes. One chocolate (fall), one strawberry (fall), and one vanilla (fall-rise).

Higher level students can identify the 'new' / 'shared' information, and then practise reading accordingly.

Pitch direction and range

Differences in the extent and direction of pitch change are related to attitudes.

Pitch range:

-Two friends who haven’t seen each other in six months, bump into each other at a party. They say Hi!

When they say “Hi” the pitch range is going to be wide, that denotes high involvement, typically excitement or surprise

In contrast:

-Two friends A and B haven’t seen each other in a long time During this time B has heard that A has been saying unpleasant things about him/her.

 When B says Hi to A, the pitch range is going to be narrow, which suggests distance, boredom, even hostility.

By extension, politeness and rudeness are thought to be linked to wide and narrow pitch ranges respectively.

Pitch Direction: (Rising, Falling, fall-rise)

The conventional view on the relation between intonation and sentence structures claims that :

-Statements and Wh- questions have falling tones

-yes-no questions have rising tones.

However, different tone contours are equally plausible.

Some of the most reliable rules are the following

-      In Question Tags: A rise for genuine questions and a fall when the question is only to confirm what the speaker already knows.

-      In discourse, for example, in a conversation between two people (see below)

They use:

For things that are common ground between them, when they are reminding each other of things they both know, they use  an “open ended” referring tone (fall.rise)

When they are introducing a new idea or enlarging the common ground by either adding or soliciting more information they use a proclaiming tone, which is a fall tone

Did you get everything for the office?

Here are the envelopes and the stamps (Referring tone). But there wasn't any paper( proclaiming tone)

Who's cming to the dinner party?

As you know, we´ve invited the Whites and the Robsons (Referring tone) But I also invited the Jenkins. (Proclaiming)

From Intonation in Context by B. Bradford)

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/intonation

About Language, Scott Thrornbury, Cambridge University Press, 1997

Sound Foundations, Adrian Underhill, Macmillam 1994