Connection between pitch and intonation

INTONATION AS A COMPONENT STRUCTURE

Generally speaking, intonation helps to determine meaning, gives clues about the attitude of the speaker and how he feels about what he is saying. Intonation indicates what is shared knowledge between the speaker and the listener and what is new information.

There are different approaches to intonation. It can be treated as one or many things.

According to the American school of phoneticians, intonation is pitch. The intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch, when we’re speaking. Pitch depends on the rate of vibrations of the vocal cords. The slower the rate is, the lower the pitch is; the higher the rate is, the higher the pitch is. Differences of pitch are used in languages to make differences of meaning. Pitch can be extrahigh, high, mid and low. It can be called a vertical approach to intonation.

Pitch creates tone. There are 4 main tones that have different logical meaning and possess different emotional expression.

Within the speech of a single person contrasts in pitch are significant. Let’s consider several examples.

• “I don’t know”:1) low fall – grim, 2) high fall – categoric
• “Not once”: 1) low fall – “Never”, 2) fall-rise – “Many times”
• “You’ll fall”: 1) fall-rise – warning (Ведь упадешь!), 2) fall – statement (Ты точно упадешь!)
• “No”: 1) answer to “Do you beat your wife?” with rise-fall – objection, 2) reaction to “I don’t like oranges” with fall-rise – implication is expressed (А что с тобой?)

Pitch may perform exactly the same demarcative function (ф-ция разграничения) as a pause. The difference between “I don’t know” and “I don’t, no” lies in the pitch that operates on whole utterances. Or: “My brother – who’s abroad – has sent me a letter” (I have only one brother) and “My brother who’s abroad - has sent me a letter” (I have many brothers).

So pitch phenomena are very complex. There can be numerous combinations of falls and rises and, consequently, the attitudes and emotions they express.

According to the British school of phonetics, intonation is a contour. A contour represents a tone-group consisting structurally of 4 basic parts. It’s a horizontal approach to intonation.

A contour contains the pre-head, the head, the nucleus and the tail.

Nucleus is the last stressed syllable of the contour. It is the syllable within which the tone changes (rises or falls):Don't you know it?

Head is the first fully stressed syllable: Whata difference from this time last week!

The stretch lying between the head and the nucleus is called body.

The syllables before the first stressed syllable are called pre-head: But do you 'really understand it?

Tail consists of the unstressed or weakly stressed syllables after the nucleus up to a pause: But can I ↓believe you when you say that?

The meaning of a contour may change with a new choice of nucleus tone and a new placement of the pre-head, head and tail within the voice range. The number of possible combinations is more than 100. But not all of them are equally important. That’s why, the number may be reduced to fewer combinations that are important. Thus Prof. O’Connor gives only 10 important tone-groups.

According to the Russian school of phonetics, intonation is many things. It’s a complex unity of several phonetic items. Here is a general scheme:

INTONATION

RHYTHM + SPEECH + TEMPO + TIMBER [tæmbә]

MELODY

STRESS

LOUDNESS TONE DURATION

PROLONGATION

AMPLITUDE OF VIBRATIONS PITCH PAUSATION

RESPIRATION RATE OF VIBRATIONS

So by intonation Russian phoneticians usually understand speech melody, pitch, stress, tone, loudness, rhythm etc. On the surface the approach looks heterogeneous, but beneath the surface there are more distinct interconnections.

Rhythm is defined as a regular co-occurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. The definition shows that rhythm is closely connected with stress. Stress is connected with loudness (the stressed syllable is pronounced louder than others). Loudness depends upon the amplitude of vibrations (the greater the amplitude – the louder the sound). And the amplitude of vibrations in its turn depends upon the force of exhalation - that is respiration.

Speech melody is a contour consisting of different tones. A tone is either no change in pitch (level tone) or a change in pitch (fall, rise…). Pitch is based upon the rate of vibrations(see above).

Tempo is the rate of an utterance (it can normal, fast be slow). Tempo of an utterance influences the durationof the syllables. The more durable the utterance is, the more prolonged are the sounds and the syllables (prolongation). There can never be constant prolongation of sounds or syllables, that’s why there occur some pauses (pausation). The number of pauses influences the tempo of the utterance.

Timber is the quality of a musical sound, a special colouring of the speaker’s voice. It’s used to express various emotions and moods.

Conclusion. In the treatment of intonation as one thing (pitch or contour) phoneticians just single out the most important phonetic item and view it as the cause of possible semantic modifications. As to Russian phoneticians, they consider intonation to be a more complicated thing. So the attitudes, emotions and logic conveyed by an utterance are dependent on a number of intonation components.

21. THE DYNAMISM OF INTONATION COMPONENTS
Q.21.

Intonation is treated theoretically as a notion, including either one central, phonetic item or several intensically interrelated phonetic items. The term 'intonation' in American school referrs to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch. Britain scholars consider intonation as a contour representing a tone group that is a unit of intonation, consisting structurally of 4 basic parts, and in each of these parts a different system of of contrasts operates. A contour contains the pre-head, the head, the nucleus and the tail. The last accented syllable of a contour is known as the nucleus. The stretch from the first accented syllable up to the nucleus is called the head. Sometimes the term 'head' is restricted to the first accented syllable and the remainder is called the body. The head may be short: 'What nonsense!'

or long: 'How on earth did you manage to make such a stupid mistake!'

The head has 14 syllables here, 5 of them are accented. Th esyllables before the first accented syllable are the pre-head. 'You can't do that!'

The pre-head is not usually very long, but it may be so when the 1st accented syllable occurs late in the tone group: ' I told him just about everything he knows'

The syllables after the last accented syllable (the nucleus) are the tail. Neither head nor pre-head may occur without the nucleus. On the other hand the nucleus can occur without the head and the pre-head, and both head and pre-head may occur independently from each other
'yes!' - the nucleus.
'What nonsense!' - head+nucleus+tail
'It was incredible!' - pre-head + nucleus + tail
the head-the pre-head-the tail may be omitted

For a head to occur there must be at least two accuted syllables in the contourand for the pre-head to occur there must be at least one syllable before the 1st accented syllable. The meaning of a contour may change with a new choice of nuclear tone and a new placement of the pre-head, head and tail within the voice range. But today not all of these changes are registered and classified.
A Conclusion : in the treatment of intonation as one thing, phoneticians just single out the most significant phonetic item and view it as the cause of possible semantic modifications.

Utterances are made up of syllables and the syllables where the main pitch movement in the utterance occurs, are called tonic syllables. The syllables that establish a pitch that stays constant up to the tonic syllable are called onset syllables. These ideas belong to the approach to intonation based on grammar.

22. THE COMMUNICATIVE VALUE OF LOUDNESS (Whisper>Loudness)

The vocal cords produce vibrations. The amount of horizontal opening of the cords that is the amplitude of vibration, relates to loudness.The further the VC more apart in the open phase, the louder the resulting sound and the smaller the gap, the softer the sound. So loud sounds will have large amplitudes, soft sounds will have smaller amplitutes. Ff - very loud (forti) f - loud (forissimo) p - soft (piano) pp - very soft (pianissimo)

For purposes of communication all of us are capable of varying the general loudness of our speech. We can also vary our loudness from utterance to untterance or within utterances for effect. In saying 'It was terrible' the syllable [ter-] will be pronounces with a much greater amount of energy if we wish to express outrage.

Differences in loudness are indicative of differences in strength of feeling. Extraloudness may influence whole sequences of only stressed syllables. So in 'It was very pleasant' there may be a generally increased loudness over the whole utterance or effecting only the 1st syllables of 'VEry' and 'PLEAsant'. And we quite often find a contrast between particularly loud stressed syllables. As in the utterance 'She was absolutely marvellous'
Where 'ab-' and 'mar-' are made especially loud and the remaining syllables are virtually whispered. THAnk you - frankly. Thank yOU - formally.
THAnk you VERy MUCH! Said extra loudly sounds angry- outrage.

Abnormally reduced loudness in the utterance 'it was horrible' signals anguis rather that anger.

In saying something like 'Jonh told me - John Smith that is - that he…' the parenthetical expression will often be said more quietly than what surrounds it simple to underline that it is a parenthesis(вв слова)

The same happens in the utterance 'I'd like - it won't take me long - to tell you a story' The interpolation 'it won't take me long' is accompanied by reduced loudness. To express direct quotations BBC news readers use extra loudness. E.g. 'Mr. Smith expressed the view that it was a gross extravagance (extra loud)'.

Among the functions of the vocal cords we mention whisper. For a very quiet whisper the vocal cords come close together so that some friction is caused as breath passes between them. For louder whispers the VC themselves are brought closer and closer together so that more friction is caused, until for the loudest one there's only a narrow chink left open between the VC through which air is forced under great pressure causing maximum friction.

Whisper may be used to express the speaker's attitude. Whisper over sequences is generally conspiratorial. It may also be used on unstressed syllables in contrast with normal or creaky voice on the stressed syllables as in the word 'fantastic' where 'fan-' and 'tic' are whispered.

24. METHODS OF PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN DEFINING PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

Phoneme - is the shortest functional unit of a language. Each phoneme exists in speech in the form of mutually non-distributive speech sounds called allophones. Each speech sound is an allophone of some phoneme. Allophone (or variant) of a certain phoneme is a speech sound which is a realization of 1 and the same phoneme and which, therefore, can not distinguish words. Allophones are positional variants of a phoneme, they never occur in identical positions. The fact that speech is comprised of a great variety of allophones complicates the identification of phonemes in connected speech. To solve the difficulty the method of phonological analysis is employed.

The 1^st and one of the most significant problems of phonological analysis is to establish the phonemes in a definite language. This can be carried out only by phonological analysis based on phonological rules. There are 2 methods to do that: 1) the distributional method and 2) the semantic method.

The distributional method is based on the phonological rule that different phonemes can freely occur in one and the same position, while allophones of one and the same phoneme occur in different positions and, therefore, cannot be phonologically opposed to each other:

e.g. as /p/ and /b/ can freely occur in the same phonetic context (“pea” - “bee”, “rope - robe”), they are consequently different phonemes. But one cannot find [p] aspirated and [p] non-aspirated in one and the same position in English, therefore in English they are allophones of one and the same phoneme (unlike in Chinese for instance).

T w o L a w s of of phonemic and allophonic distribution (distributional method)

1) allophones of different phonemes always occur in the same phonemic context

2) allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonemic context and always occur in different positions. If more or less different speech sounds occur on the same phonetic context, they should be allophones of different phonemes.

The distribution method of analysis is a purely formal method of identifying the phonemes of a language. That’s why this method works even when one doesn’t know the language at all. The method is widely used by the American linguists who study the language of Red Indians. But it appears to be complicated and the investigators very often can not do without native speakers to confirm their conclusions concerning the phonemic status of certain speech sounds.

The semantic method, in its turn, is based on the phonological rule that a phoneme can distinguish words when opposed to another phoneme or zero in an identical phonetic position.

The opposition /z/ versus /t/ is called a phonological opposition. The opposition /z/ versus /-/ is called a zero (phonological) opposition. The pairs of words which differ only in one speech sound are called minimal pairs.

This method consists:

1) In finding minimal pairs of words and their grammatical forms

2) In replacing one sound of the member of the pair by other sounds of the same language and seeing whether the substitution results.

a) the pronunciation of a different word form

b) the pronunciation of a meaningless sequence of sounds

c) a different repetition variant pronunciation of the same word or form.

The semantic method of identification of the phonemes in a language attaches great significance to meaning. The investigator studies the function of sounds by collecting minimal pairs of words in the language, if 2 speech sounds distinguish words with different meanings, they form a phonological opposition and are realizations of 2 different phonemes, if not, they are allophones of 1 and the same phoneme:

e.g. English /s/ and /t/ are realizations of 2 different phonemes (“sea” - “tea”, “so” - “toe”), while [t] aspirated and [t] non-aspirated are allophones of 1 and the same phoneme, as they can not distinguish words. Such analysis is sometimes referred as “minimal pair test”.

The semantic method is widely used by scholars all over the world.

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