INTONATION

Types
Fall Rise Fall-rise Rise-fall

Functions
1. Focusing function, by which the speaker focuses on the most significant information by means of the location of the nucleus. The nucleus is typically at the end of intonation group. e.g. (nucleus is shown in bold) I kissed your elder sister. (neutral) I kissed your elder sister. (not the younger) I kissed your elder sister. (not his sister) I kissed your elder sister. (not kicked) I kissed your elder sister. (not he/she/they)

2. Attitudinal functions, is what allows speakers constantly

superimpose an attitude on top of bare semantic content of what is being said. Fall-rise: doubt, correction, reservation, appealing to listener to consider Rise-fall: impressed, arrogant, confident, self-satisfied, mocking, putting down. It is also possible to make the following broad distinctions: Two tones-high fall and low rise- can be regarded as neutral. Two tones-low fall and high rise-have a strengthening function. These tones tend to add to, emphasize or exaggerate a speaker s basic attitude.

3. Grammatical function, which permits

speakers to distinguish certain syntactic relationship, e.g. phrase and clause boundaries, questions versus statement.

4. Discourse function, which covers such diverse matters as the organization of conversation between two or more speakers (e.g. signals of turn taking), the indication of speaker/listener relationship (e.g. in relation to power and authority) and the indication of new versus old information. In this context, we can broadly allocate the nuclear tones to two categories on the basis of whether they are terminally falling or rising:

 Falling tones (i.e. high fall, low fall and risefall) suggest: finality, unloading of information Rising tones (i.e. high rise, low rise and fallrise) indicate: non-finality, information is sought or anticipated, rather than unloaded. Consequently, we usually find that completed statements and commands involve falling tones, whereas yes-no questions and introductory non-final clauses more typically have rising tones.

Patterns of intonation
Utterance type Statements Default pattern Fall Other patterns (1)Rise (adds non-finality or questioning) (2)Fall-rise (adds non-finality with an implication of an additional but unspoken message) Rise (turns command into request) Rise (adds warmth, interest) Fall (turns question into exclamation)

Commands Wh-questions

Fall Fall

Yes-no questions Rise