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Intonation

Intonation. Juan Torres Ampuero Phonetics Lecturer. The Three T’s. Intonation may be subdivided into three (sub)-systems according to a set of choices or decisions that any speaker must make in order to present a coherent and sound piece of utterance. These systems are called:

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Intonation

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  1. Intonation Juan Torres Ampuero Phonetics Lecturer

  2. The Three T’s • Intonation may be subdivided into three (sub)-systems according to a set of choices or decisions that any speaker must make in order to present a coherent and sound piece of utterance.These systems are called: • Tonality (how to break the material up into chunks). • Tonicity (what is to be accented). • Tone (what tunes are to be used).

  3. Tonality • It refers to the division of the spoken material into chunks, which are called intonation groups (IG) or phrases (IP), having their own intonation pattern within an utterance. These chunks may include just a single word or a group of words, depending in some cases on the intentions of the speaker (focus); although in most cases this division is connected directly with a grammatical boundary.

  4. Tonality (2) These intonation breaks may even help disambiguate a confusing or blurry piece of utterance. For example, let us take a look at this newspaper headline: a) The po'lice helps 'dog bite 'victim. b) The po'lice helps 'dog | 'bite 'victim. In a) the police helps a person who has been bitten by a dog, whereas in b) the police helps a dog bite someone.

  5. Tonality (3) Another example which shows the importance of tonality is the following: “When you enter the waiting room is on the left” Most people will take two ‘tries’ to read the above example properly because we tend to treat ‘the waiting room’ as the direct object complementing the verb ‘enter’ leaving the verb ‘is’ without a subject. However, on a second try, we correct that mistake by treating ‘the waiting room’ as the missing subject of ‘is’. Obviously, no one would make that mistake if a comma were placed after the verb ‘enter’, but there are no commas in spoken language.

  6. Tonality - Exercises 1. • What would you like on your toast, honey? • What would you like on your toast? Honey? 2. • She washed and ironed her blouse. • She washed and ironed her blouse. 3. • It’s all over my friend. • It’s all over my friend.

  7. Tonality - Exercises 4. • Those who spoke quickly got an angry response. • Those who spoke quickly got an angry response. 5. • The Swedes say the Danes drink too much. • The Swedes say the Danes drink too much. 6. • What is this thing called love? • What is this thing called, love?

  8. References • Tench, P. (1996). The Intonation Systems of English. London, Cassell PLC. • Wells, J. (2006). English Intonation, An Introduction. Cambridge, CUP.

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