Intonation: Tonality, Tonicity, Tone & the Nucleus
Tonality, Tonicity, and Tone — Meanings and Relevance
Tonality: Refers to the segmentation of speech into Intonation Phrases (IPs). It’s about where the boundaries (pauses, pitch breaks) are placed. Changing tonality changes meaning.
Relevance: Determines the chunk of speech over which a pitch pattern operates.
Tonicity: Refers to the placement of the nucleus (the main pitch movement) within an Intonation Phrase.
Relevance: Indicates the focus or information structure.
Tone: Refers to the choice of
Read MoreUnderstanding English Intonation
Key Concepts
Intonation: The melody of speech; the musical pattern of sounds.
Pitch: Variation in the voice’s frequency.
Stress: A combination of loudness, pitch, and duration applied to a syllable or word.
Tone: Differences in the pitch of the voice used to convey meaning or attitude.
High, mid, and low tones are produced by variations in vocal cord vibration.
English is not a tone language; it is an intonational one. Meaning is often conveyed not just by *what* you say, but by *how* you say it.
The Three
Read MoreUnderstanding Intonation and Rhythm in Speech
Isochrony, Stress, and Intonation in Speech
Isochrony: It is the postulated rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language (syllable-timed, stress-timed).
Lexical Stress: This is a property of words.
Rhythmic Stress: Sentence Stress. Rhythmic beat. It varies according to the speaker’s communicative intentions.
These are the systems of choice available to a speaker when deciding on the intonation of a bit of speech (a text).
Intonation Components
- Tonality (Chunking): How many intonation patterns.