Functions of intonation.

• Emotional function's most obvious role is to express attitudinal meaning -sarcasm, surprise, reserve, impatience, delight, shock, anger, interest, and thousands of other semantic nuances.

• Grammatical function helps to identify grammatical structure in speech, performing a role similar to punctuation. Units such as clause and sentence often depend on intonation for their spoken identity, and several specific contrasts, such as question/statement, make systematic use of it.

• Informational function helps draw attention to what meaning is given and what is new in an utterance. The word carrying the most prominent tone in a contour signals the part of an utterance that the speaker is treating as new information.

• Textual function helps larger units of meaning than the sentence to contrast and cohere. In radio news-reading, paragraphs of information can be shaped through the use of pitch. In sports commentary, changes in prosody reflect the progress of the action.

• Psychological function helps us to organize speech into units that are easier to perceive and memorize. Most people would find a sequence of numbers, for example, difficult to recall. The task is made easier by using intonation to chunk the sequence into two units.

• Indexical function, along with other prosodic features, is an important marker of personal or social identity. Lawyers, preachers, newscasters, sports commentators, army sergeants, and several other occupations are readily identified through their distinctive prosody.

24.

The Nuclear Tone

The nuclear tone is the most important part of the intonation pattern without which the intonation cannot exist. Phoneticians single out from 4 to 12 nuclear tones, but the majority of them agree that the following nuclear tones are most frequent and make up core intonation:

§ The Low Fall (LF)

§ The Low Rise (LR)

§ The High Fall (HF)

§ The High Rise (HR)

§ The Fall-Rise (FR)

§ The Rise-Fall (RF)

§ The Rise-Fall-Rise (RFR)

§ The Mid-Level (ML)

These tones are called kinetic or moving because the pitch of the voice moves upwards or downwards.

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