Peculiarities of GA intonation. The most frequent intonation contour for statements and requests in GA is the tune, beginning low, rising to a high level

The most frequent intonation contour for statements and requests in GA is the tune, beginning low, rising to a high level, and then steadily falling.

E.g. He asked me to do it. He asked me to do it.

The same type of falling intonation contour may characterize the so called General Questions in GA.

Did he ask you to do it?

"Rising" tunes that rise from a low pitch level and end on a high pitch level occur with some General Questions, especially in situations where a very polite form is desirable.

E.g. Do you know him?

Though the so—called Special Questions are pronounced with a falling tone in both RP and GA, the difference lies in the pronunciation of the Scale. If in RP it is usually the Descending Scale, in GA the whole utterance is generally pronounced on a level tone.

E.g. RP Why haven't you told me about it?

GA Why haven't you to ld me about it?

Such questions sound dispassionate and disrespectful to an RP speaker.

The RP Special Questions pronounced with a rising tone (polite questions) are perceived by the Americans as questions implying curiosity.

Another frequent intonational characteristic in GA is to end a sentence with a high—pitched fall—rise.

E.g. Can you do it? We certainly can.

On account of the fact that the features which distinguish AE from Bri­tish English are so numerous, some linguists claim that AE can no more be con­sidered a variant of the English language.

But most of the linguists express the opposite point of view. It has been proved that the distinctions between AE and BE do not affect the inventory of the main lan­guage units. Those distinctions are but functional variations of language units which are common to both variants of the English language: AE and BE.

Thus, there is a wide range of pronunciation varieties of the English lan­guage. These varieties reflect the social class the speaker belongs to, the geo­graphical region he comes from, and they also convey stylistic connotations of speech. Some of these varieties are received pronunciations, others are not.

Every national variant of the English language has an orthoepic norm of its own: RP, or Southern English, for British English, GA for American English, the Australian Standard Pronunciation for Australian English. Each of these orthoepic norms tolerates a definite range of phonemic variation, and each of them has its own peculiarities of combinatory phenomena.

16. The syllable as a prosodic unit. Word stress, its nature and functions.

The syllable is widely recognized to be the smallest prosodic unit. It has no meaning of its own, but it is significant for constituting hierarchical­ly higher prosodic units. Prosodic features of the syllable (tone, stress, dura­tion) depend on its position and function in the rhythmic unit and in the ut­terance.

A rhythmic, or accentual, unit (or group) is either one stressed syllable or a stressed syllable with a number of unstressed ones grouped around it.

The stressed syllable is the nucleus of the rhythmic unit. There are as many rhythmic units in an utterance as there are stressed syllables in it. The unstressed syllables are clitics. Those preceding the stressed syllable are called proclitics, and those following it — enclitics.

The intonation group is hierarchically higher than the rhythmic unit. It has also been termed "syntagm", "sense-group", "tune". The term "intonation group" [110] better reflects the es­sence of this unit. It shows that the intonation group is the result of the division in which not only stresses, but pitch and duration (i.e. intonation in the broad sense) play a role.

So, a syllable can be defined as a phonetic unit, which is pronounced by one articulatory effort, by one muscular contraction, which results auditorily in one uninterrupted arc of loudness.

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