PLINP202 ENGLISH INTONATION

2 Intonational systems. Tone. 2.01 Intonational systems: Last week we looked at the structure of completeintonation patterns in English. This lecture is the first of three concerned withthe systems of choices available to a speaker when "deciding" on theintonation of a bit of speech (a text). Essentially, these choices are of threekinds. First, the speaker must decide how many complete intonation patternsto associate with the text. This system of choices is known as tonality.Secondly, within each intonation pattern the speaker must decide whichsyllables are to be stressed, which accented and which one is to be thenucleus. This system of choices is known as tonicity. Finally, the speakermust decide how to realise each accent, that is what sort of pitch pattern thenucleus, the onset and other accents are to have. This is the system ofchoices known as tone. We shall look at tonality and tonicity in greater detailin later lectures. For the remainder of this week's lecture we shallconcentrate on tone. Notice that the analysis we shall develop below is onlyone of a great many competing analyses that have been proposed for Englishintonational tone. Our analysis is based on that proposed by O'Connor J D &Arnold G F in the Intonation of Colloquial English (ICE), but with some minorsimplifications. This analysis is widely known and is not too abstract to be ofuse in practical intonation notation. Section 2.02 presents a summary of thetone marks used by ICE. Section 2.03 gives interlinear graph examples ofthe tonal categories of ICE.

2.02 Summary of Intonation Marks

NUCLEAR TONES

High Fall \No High pitch on nucleus falling to low. All tailsyllables low & level

Low Fall \No Mid pitch on nucleus falling to low. All tail syllableslow and level.

Low Rise /No Low pitch on nucleus, rising steadily to the end ofthe intonation pattern.

High Rise /No Mid pitch or above on nucleus, rising steadily toend of intonation pattern.

Mid Level >No Mid pitch on nucleus, sustained to end ofintonation pattern.

Fall-Rise No High pitch on nucleus, falling to low, levelling outand rising towards end of tail.

Rise-Fall ^No Mid or lowish pitch on nucleus, rising to high byend of nucleus or next syllable, falling to low andthen levelling out to end of intonation pattern.

2.1

SIMPLE HEADS

High No First syllable of head high in pitch. All subsequentsyllables in in head high and level.

Falling No First syllable in head high in pitch. All subsequentsyllables lower than preceding syllable.

Rising No First syllable in head low in pitch. Allsubsequent syllables higher than precedingsyllable.

Low No First syllable in head low in pitch. All subsequentsyllables in head low and level.

COMPLEX HEADS

Stepping I didn't know First syllable in first accent group high inpitch and following unaccented syllables atsame level. Each subsequent accent groupbegins at slightly lower level than end ofpreceding.

Sliding I didn't know First syllable in first accent group high andfollowing unaccented syllables in fallingpattern. Each subsequent accent groupbegins slightly higher than end ofpreceding.

Climbing I didn't know First syllable in first accent group low andfollowing unaccented syllables in risingpattern. Each subsequent accent groupbegins slightly lower than end of preceding.

STRESS

Rhythmically stressed but unaccented syllables are marked with o. In ICEhigh pitched stressed syllables are marked with o and low pitched ones aremarked with o. As the pitch of a stressed syllable is completely predictablefrom the preceding accent mark, we shall ignore this distinction in this course.

PREHEADS

Low Prehead No mark

High Prehead Marked with

BOUNDARY

2.2

Intonation pattern boundaries are marked │. ICE uses both this mark andalso ║. We shall ignore the distinction and use the first mark only.

2.03 Interlinear graph examples:

NUCLEAR TONES

HIGH FALL

LOW FALL

LOW RISE

2.3

HIGH RISE

FALL RISE

2.4

NUCLEAR TONES CONTINUED

RISE FALL

MID LEVEL

HEADS

HIGH

STEPPING

2.5

RISING

CLIMBING

FALLING

SLIDING

LOW

2.6

2.04 Head and nucleus combinations: in theory any head can combine withany nucleus. In practice, however, some combinations are more frequentthan others. Table 2.1 below shows the most commonly occurringcombinations. A tick in parentheses indicates a combination which issomewhat less frequent.

N Tone Head

HighFall

LowFall

HighRise

LowRise

FallRise

RiseFall

MidLevel

High ()

Stepping ()

Rising ()

Climbing ()

Falling

Sliding

Low

Table 2.1 Common head/nucleus combinations

You should now be ready to have a try at the following web page:

http://www.btinternet.com/~eptotd/vm/toni/tonimenu.htm