Basic
Intonation Patterns
Rising
– Falling Intonation
- Susan bought a new sweater
The pitch
raises at the major sentence stress, the first syllable of the word ‘sweater’
and falls over the second syllable of this word. The pitch of the entire sentence
is called intonation pattern. The pattern in this sentence is called the
raising-falling. It is the common intonation pattern in English and is
characteristic of simple declarative sentences, commands and questions that
begin with a wh-word, such as ‘who’, ’what’ or ‘how’
- He wants to go home.
- She gave him five dollars
- Give her a sweater
- What do you want to do with it
Rising Intonation
- Did Susan buy a new sweater?
The pitch of
the voice rises towards the end of the sentence. The intonation pattern in this
case is the raising intonation and is characteristics of questions that require
a simple yes or no.
- Does he want to go home?
- Did she give him five dollars?
- Couldn’t she have seen him?
- Do you want to give it to him?
Continuation Rise
- Susan bought a sweater, new shoes
and a new dress?
This
intonation is termed as continuation, often used with lists. The pitch of the
voice raises slightly on each list, indicating that the speaker has not yet
finished speaking.
- He bought apples, peaches, pears
and oranges
- I saw Esther, Jane, Neil and
Susan
Tag
Questions
Tag questions
can display either rising-falling or raising intonations.Their meaning will
differ with which of these intonations is applied.
- Mary’s helpful, isn’t she?
(rising intonation)
- Mary’s helpful, isn’t she?
(falling intonation)
When said
with a rising intonation ,it means that the speaker clearly does not know
whether Mary is helpful and wants the listener to provide information. With
falling intonation ,indicates that the speaker believes that Mary is helpful
and is just asking a confirmation from the listener.
Speaker Attitude
Speaker
attitude can be signaled through the use of
pitch variation in intonation patterns:
- Extreme high pitch or low pitch
indicates anger
- If we expand our range, i.e.
higher pitch becomes higher and lower pitch becomes lower indicates
deference.
- Narrowing of pitch indicates boredom.
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