PHONETICS III----work number :3 Members of the group: -LOBO,Mirta del Valle – MUN: 1365 -ROBLES,Gisella Marìa – MUN: 1283
4)-why do we say english is an intonational language? The intonation system of English constitutes the most important and complete parts of English prosody. By combining different pitch levels we express a range of intonational meanings: breaking the utterances into chunks ,perhaps distinguishing between clause types,focusing on some parts of the utterance and not on others,indicating which part of our message is background information and which is foreground,signalling our attitude to what we are saying.Some of this intonational meaning is shown in writing,through,the use of punctuation, but most of it is not.This is very spoken English ,as spoken by native speakers,is richer in information content than written English. The same word in the same grammatical constructions may have different pragmatic effects.This is because they may differ in intonation, and perhaps also in other,paralinguistic features.. Like other prosodic characteristics,intonation is partly universal (the same in all languages), but also partly language-specific (differing from one language to another).
Languagues differ in the intonation patterns they use, and in the extent to which they rely on intonation to convey aspects of meaning.
5)-Describe the form of English intonation. The form of English intonation PITCH: It is the movement of our voice, pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and to the musical notion of low and high pitched notes. TONE (tonality): The active element of intonation are tones which are divided into two classes. 1-the static or level tones: in which the voice remains on a given pitch.(voice remains in the same level). 2-the kinetic tones: which are the moving tones which are used to give expressions and even meaning to a given utterance. Tonality= (chunking) the first matter a speaker has to decide is the division of the spoken material into chunks. There will be an intonation pattern associated with each chunk. These chunks are known as intonation phrases (IPS), including word group, tone group and intonation group. Example: /that woman said/the husband/has been unfaithful/. PROMINENCE: At least four factors are important. Stress syllables are louder than unstressed, in other words, LOUDNESS is a component of prominence. In a sequence of identical syllables,if
one syllable is made louder than the others it will be heard as stressed. The LENGTH of syllables has an important part to play in prominence. If one of the syllables is made longer than the others there is a tendency for that syllable to be heard as stressed. In other words it refers to the length of time speaker decides to continue to produce a linguistic unit and to the length of time during which a listener hears that unit. PITCH: It refers to the frequency of vibration to the vocal folds, it defines how the voice rises and falls. A syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in QUALITY from neighbouring vowels. Prominence then is produced by 4 main factors:LOUDNESS, LENGTH, PITCH and QUALITY. Generally these 4 factors work together in combination, though syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one of two of them. TONICITY: Speakers use intonation to highlight some words as important for the meaning they wish to convey.These are the words on which the seaker focuses the hearer´s attention.To highlight an important word we accent it. More precisely, we accent its stressed syllable.That is to say, we add pitch prominence (a change in pitch, or the beginning of a pitch movements)to the rhythmic prominence that a stressed syllable bears. The nucleus is the most important accent in the IP. It indicates the end of the focused part of the material.
RHYTM: A speaker divides the sentences into rhytm units to emphasize a certain point ,to make his ideas clearer,or perhaps to take a breath. The factors that make up rhytm are: PITCH, LOUDNESS AND SPEED. STRESS: It is the relative degree of force used in pronouncing the different syllables of a word or more than one syllable. It is also a property of syllables which makes them stand out as more noticeable than others. Stressed syllable are produced with greater effort than unstressed. This produce various audible results. One is pitch prominence, other effects are loudness and length.
6) What are the function of English intonation? a)- the attitudinal function: intonation helps to express our attitudes and emotions by tone b)-the grammatical function: intonation helps to identify the beginning and the end of grammatical units (clause and sentencesthe demarcative function)by tonality.It is also used to distinghish clause types (questions vs statement ad to disambiguate grammatically ambiguous structures(syntanctic function ) by tone.
c)-the focusing (also called accentual or informational function): Intonation helps to show what information in an utterance is new and what is already known.We use it to bting some part of the message into focus, and leave other parts out of focus, to
emphasize or highlight some parts and not others. We do this by tonicity and by the placement of other accents. d)-the discourse o cohesive function: Intonation signals how sequences of clauses and sentences go together in spoken discourse, to contrast or to cohere. It functions like the division of written text into sentences and paragraphs. It allows us to mark when we have to come to the end out to point we are making or not, whether we want to keep talking or give another speaker or turn e)-the phychological function : Intonation helps us organize speech into units that are easy to perceive, memorize and perform. f)-the indexial function: Intonation may act as a maker of personal or social identity. What makes mothers sound like mothers, lovers sound like lovers and lawyers sound like lawyers.
1)- what are suprasegmental features? Suprasegmental features are : PITCH, LOUDNESS AND LENGTH.
2)what is intonation? Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation we study how the pitch of the voice rises and falls. One of the most important task in analyzing intonation is to listen to the speaker´s pitch and recognize what it is doing. It also involves the rhytm of speech, the study of how the interplay of accented , stressed and
unstressed syllables functions as a framework onto which the intonation patterns are attached.
3)-what is the role of pitch in defining intonation? The concept of pitch refers to how high or low a sound can be. The perception of pitch of a speech sound depends on the frequency of vibration of the vocals folds and also a variation of intensity on the same frequency. The pitch of the voice play the most important part in the definition of intonation because the acoustic manifestation of intontion is fundamental frequency which is perceived by listeners as pitch. When we speak the pitch of our voice rises and falls and we use the pitch variation to convey different meaning.
7)-English intonation is systematic because it is a system that is divided into subsystems by which speakers of English have to decide how to break the material up into chunks, what is to be accented, and what tones are to be used. These linguistic intonation system are known as tonality, tonicity and tone. Language differ in the intonation patterns tey use to convey aspects of meaning. English intonation is characteristic because it has specific patterns that belong to this language. English intonation is significant because we use it to express a range of intonational meanings.for example : to express emotions , an attitudes.