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Tone

Tone. Juan Torres Ampuero Phonetics Lecturer. Definition.

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Tone

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  1. Tone Juan Torres AmpueroPhonetics Lecturer

  2. Definition • Tone refers to the kind of pitch movement speakers utilise as they speak. Namely, when people speak, they tend to make changes in tune (or notes) as they produce a particular utterance. In fact, it would be practically impossible to use only a monotone (mid-level tone) in everyday speech. • More importantly, if we spoke with no pitch contrasts, how could we express our emotions and feelings? For instance, Tench (1996) explains that “a message, a piece of information, can be given politely, grumpily, angrily, warmly and so on” (p.20), which will normally refer to the speaker’s state of mood or the attitude he shows towards the addressee.

  3. Default tones • In English, there is a wide variety of nuclear tones (falls, rises and levels), which speakers use in different ways to convey meaning. In some cases, it is possible to establish a ‘default’ tone pattern (neutral or unmarked) for a given type of sentence. • For instance, as Wells (2006) suggests, it is possible to state –although only as a general rule- that statements, commands, WH-questions, and exclamations tend to be uttered with a falling tone, whereas yes-no questions are most likely to be said with a rising tone.

  4. Falling tone • “In a falling nuclear tone the pitch of the voice starts relatively high and then moves downwards. The starting point may be anywhere from mid to high. The endpoint is low” (Wells, 2006, p.17). • In a falling tone, the “downward pitch movement happens on or from the syllable that bears the nucleus” and “after a falling nucleus, the tail is always low” (Wells, 2006, p.19), no matter the number of syllables that it may contain.

  5. For example: (Wells, 2006, p.19)

  6. It is worth noting that “falling tones involve a sense of finality, of completeness, definiteness, and separateness when used with declaratives; hence… [they] are more common on sentence final intonation groups than on sentence non-final intonation groups”. (Cruttenden, 1997, p. 91)

  7. Rising tone • “In a rising nuclear tone the pitch of the voice starts relatively low and then moves upwards. The starting point may be anywhere from low to mid, and the endpoint anywhere from mid to high” (Wells, 2006, p. 21). • As opposed to a falling tone, “the rising pitch movement does not happen wholly on the nuclear syllable… Rather, the rise is spread over the nuclear syllable and all the following syllables –over the whole of the nucleus plus tail” (Wells, 2006, p. 21). Therefore, the highest pitch is found on the last syllable of the IG, even though it is not accented.

  8. For example: (Wells, 2006, p.21)

  9. There is still another complex rising tone called fall-rise. Here, “the pitch of the voice starts relatively high and then moves first downwards and then upwards again. The starting point may be anywhere from mid to high, the mid point is low, and the end point is usually mid” (Wells, 2006, p. 23). • If there is no tail in an intonation group, either because it consists of only a one syllable-word or because the nucleus is on the last syllable of the IG, the entire downward and upward movement will take place on that unique or final syllable. However, if there is a tail, the falling part of the nuclear tone will take place on the nuclear syllable and the rising part will occur towards the end of the tail.

  10. Let us look at the following example: (Wells, 2006, p. 24)

  11. Lastly, the level tone is normally grouped with the rising tones because “it is generally commutable with them in similar contexts and with similar meanings. The first point to be made about all four tones is that they are all very common on sentence non-final intonation groups”. (Cruttenden, 1997, p. 93). • As a matter of fact, the characteristic meaning of all four of these tones is that of non-finality, as opposed to falling tones. Thus, the former are usually referred to as non-falls, whereas the latter are obviously called falls.

  12. References • Cruttenden, A. (1997). Intonation. Cambridge, CUP. • Tench, P. (1996). The Intonation Systems of English. London, Cassell PLC. • Wells, J. C. (2006). English Intonation, An introduction. Cambridge, CUP.

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