CLASE N° 02: INTONATION

PRESENTACIÓN DE LA CLASE

This lesson will bring to the student a fundamental knowledge about the
English intonation, which is an important and crucial aspect of the speech.
This will allow him to know the special patterns of English intonation and the
characteristics that each tone has in order to communicate in the correct
way. Also, knowing these aspects will create on him the necessary
confidence that he will need when communicating.

Objectives:

 Improve the oral expression to get a good performance as a

teacher.
 Use the appropriate vocabulary for the subject
 Identify the structure of the intonation unit.
 Recognise and produce the five main tones of the English
intonation.
 Analise the tones according to the grammatical function.

DESARROLLO TEÓRICO DE LA CLASE

● Introduction
The last lesson, we have learnt about the English rhythm which is stress-
timed, while Spanish rhythm is syllable timed. Also, we have seen how
pauses interfere when speaking. Now, in this lesson, we are going to work
with another aspect of pronunciation which is closely related with rhythm.
This is intonation. We are going to focus on the concept of intonation and on
its system. Also, we are going to work with the structure of the tone unit:
nucleus, head, pre-head and tail. Besides, we are going to deal with the
correlates of intonation. Finally, we are going to work with the grammatical

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function of intonation (point 7). We are going to read about the intonation
used in the four syntactic classes: statements, questions, commands and
exclamations. But as the last topic is a bit complex, it will be developed in
the third lesson.

*Development
Intonation has traditionally been defined in terms of rises and falls of
the voice in speech- a strict phonetic definition, which only takes into
account vocal fold activity. A wider view of intonation does not define it in
terms of patterns of falls and rises only, but as a complex of features
belonging to different prosodic systems, mainly pitch movement,
loudness, rhythmicality and tempo. This is a technical definition, but I
would like to share with you a definition from a web site
(https://www.thevoicecafe.net/English_Speech_Rhythm/Learn-English-Intonation-
Online.htm) that I like: Intonation is the music of the voice. It tells us
much more about the speaker's attitude and feelings than the words
they choose. I consider this definition as appropriate because when we speak,
we convey much more with the tone of our voice, our gestures and the
movements of our body than the words itself.
I challenge you to visit the website mentioned before because it has audible
materials that will help you with your ear-training.

The intonation system of English

The intonation system of English is described through the following terms:

pitch movement and pitch range
Pitch movement can be carried by both accented and prominent syllables,
although only the former can act as initiators of it. This definition only takes
into account the direction that is to say falling or rising level, without
considering how wide the movement is. A more accurate description of the
intonation system of English, however, must also account for pitch range.
Pitch range can be described by its degrees: wide and narrow. A given
pitch direction and pitch range constitute a tone, which can be spread over
one or more syllables. Finch 1982.
Finch, 1982 describes the intonation system with 8 basic tones. But we are
not considering them in such a way. In order to easy the understanding of

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them, I will just use five tones:
1- Falling: The syllable starts at a high pitch and falls to a low pitch. We
mark this tone with the following symbol `
2- Rising: The syllable starts at a law pitch and rises to a high pitch. We
mark this tone with the following symbol ,
3- Rise-fall: The syllable starts at a law pitch, rises to a high pitch and
then, it falls to a law pitch. We mark this tone with `´
4- Fall-rise: The syllable starts at a high pitch and falls to a law pitch,
then it rises to a high pitch. We mark this tone with ´`
5- Level: the syllable has always the same pitch. It neither rises nor
falls. We mark this tone like this –
*** Don´t get confused with primary and secondary stresses.
The primary stress is marked with a raised vertical line at the beginning of
the accented syllable ['] while the secondary stress is marked with a
lowered vertical line at the beginning of the syllable [ˌ].
I will make a deep and detailed explanation and analysis of tones in class 3.

Structure of the intonation unit

The structure of the intonation unit is composed of the following elements:
nucleus or tonic syllable, head, pre-head and tail. I will use the Peter Roach
explanation to described them as I consider them clearer than the ones
provided by Diana Finch.

Nucleus or tonic syllable: it is the syllable that has the tone in an

utterance.
Example: 'give me `those.
N (nucleus)
In this example, the word `those has the tone, so it is the nucleus.

Head: it is all the part of a tone unit that extends from the first stressed
syllable up to (not including) the tonic syllable. If there is no stressed
syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a head.
Example: 'give me `those
H (head) N

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Pre-head: it is composed of all unstressed syllables in a tone unit
preceding the first stressed syllable. Thus, pre-heads are found in two main
environments:
1- When there is no head- (no stressed syllable preceding the tonic
syllable) for example: in an `hour
PH N
(pre-head)
2- When there is head, as in the following example:
in a 'little 'less than an `hour
P-H H N
Tail: any syllables between the tonic syllable or the syllable that has the
tone and the end of the tone unit.
The syllables after the tone can be unstressed or stressed. The first
example refers to the tail with unaccented syllables and the second with
accented ones.
1-Example: `Look at it
N T (tail)

2- Example: `Both of them were ˙here

N T
When a stress is necessary to mark in the tail, we will use a special
symbol, a raised dot.

Correlates of intonation
The final effect produced by any utterance is the result of the interaction of
a number of variables which are mutually related, and which correlate
with intonation in its strictly traditional sense. It is important to be aware
of them. Some of them are of a linguistic nature while others are of a non-
linguistic one. They are pitch range and pitch direction, accent, rhythm,
pause, loudness, tempo. Now, I will make a brief explanation of them.
1- Features responsible for tone: pitch direction and pitch range.
What is important to know about this is that a tone can be responsible for
changes of meaning depending on its direction and range. There are three
basic attitudes that can be established:
a-Falling tones tend to be conclusive, that is to say, they indicate that the

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utterance ends and there is nothing further to be added; rising tones tend
to be inconclusive. Either the speaker has not finished his utterance and
tends to continue, or he will not continue, but implies that something has
been left unsaid.
b- The upper range tones generally indicate animation on the part of the
speaker while the lower range ones are more frequently used to express
an unanimated attitude.
c- Wide tones can be said to be more emotive than narrow ones, which
tend to be unemotive.
2- The meaning of the intonation unit depends on which words are
made to stand out by means of accent, because they carry most
important information, and especially on the word containing the
nucleus. The term used to refer to the location of the nuclear syllable is
tonicity. Normally, tonicity occurs on the last content word of the unit, but
sometimes structural words, or other content words attract the nucleus
towards themselves so as to establish special semantic contrasts.
3- The succession of prominent and non-prominent syllables in an
utterance determines the rhythm of that utterance.
4- Pause can contribute to create the desired impression on the speaker.
For instance, it can be used to produce suspense or expectancy.
5- The loudness with which we perceived a part or the whole utterance can
contribute to different attitudes.
6- Tempo can affect different parts of an utterance, either by quickening it
up or slowing it down and this will have some influence on meaning.
7-Paralinguistic features:
Speakers can have a different voice quality:
Breathy voice: It is produced by ordinary voice and a simultaneous extra
amount of air scaping.
Creaky voice: It is characterized by a law frequency of vocal fold vibration.
Falsetto voice: It is produced by an extra pitch.
Spread voice: it is made by spreading the lips, as when speaking and
smiling at the same time.
Furthermore, speakers can have spasmodic articulations caused by
laughing, giggling, sobbing or crying while speaking.
8- Grammatical structures and lexis are responsible for determining

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meaningful contrasts of intonation. Grammatical constructions can help to
make a particular element in the utterance stand out while the lexical
contents of the utterance can largely contribute to the general meaning of
an intonation pattern.
9- Non-linguistic variables:
Kinesics activity: it can accompany speech in order to reinforce, or even
contradict the vocal part of the message, such as a shrug of the shoulders.
Situation: different meanings can arise from different situations in which
the speakers are found, even though the intonation pattern is the same.

Conclusion
To conclude with this lesson, I must say that we have developed the concept
of intonation, how its system is organized, how the structure of intonation
unit is formed and which are the variables that correlate with intonation.
This is a tedious but necessary part that you must learn in order to work
with the next step that is tones and functions of intonation which will be
developed the following lessons.

The next class we will deal with the five tones mentioned in the English
system of intonation.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA OBLIGATORIA Y BIBLIOGRAFÍA AMPLIATORIA

Diana Finch and Hector Ortiz Lira. 1982.A course for English Phonetics for
Spanish Speakers. London. Heinemann educational book.
Peter Roach. 2009. English Phonetics and Phonology. A practical course. UK.
Cambridge University press.

CONSIGNA DE LA CLASE

Criterios de evaluación:
- Appropriateness and clearness in the answers.
- All the questions must be answered.

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- The assignment must be presented in the correct format.
Section-Foros:

Answer the following questions:

Do you think English intonation will be difficult for you to understand? Why?
In 2nd year of the English career, you have learnt about falling and rising
tones. What do you remember about them? When do we have to use them?

Activity:
Answer to the following questions:
1- What is intonation? Here you have to give a technical definition from the
book of Peter Roach or Diana Finch. Also, you can add concepts of another
authors, but you have to mention who is the author or write the website
from where you have taken it.

2- Which is the difference between primary and secondary stress and tone?
Explain about its uses and the way in which we mark them.

2- Explain how the intonation unit is composed. Describe each of its parts:
nucleus, head, pre-head, tail. You can use Peter Roach book to do it. Go to
intonation 2, page 129. But if you want Finch’s book, use it!

3- Explain:

A-what does correlate mean?

B- Which are the correlates of intonation? You will find this in Finch’s book.

ENTREGA DE LA TAREA DE LA CLASE

The assignment must be presented on the 14th of June.

The activity in the section foros must be solved there.

The activity in the section actividades must be answered there with the following
format: full name and the number of the class. For example: Grinczuk, Mónica
Georgina_ Class 02.

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LECTURAS-TAREAS PARA LA CLASE SIGUIENTE

Read unit 12, point 7, grammatical function of intonation from the Finch’s
book.

CANALES DE COMUNICACIÓN

Foros
Mensajería interna.
e-mail: monygrinczuk@gmail.com
Whatsapp 3644629102

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