Лекция. Феодальное государство и право Англии
The punctuation marks used at the end of sentences— the full stop, the question and exclamation marks — do double duty: (1) they delimit sentences not only visually, but also by signalling their intonational delimitation (change of pitch and a pause), and (2) they simultaneously indicate different syntactic types of sentences and, consequently, the specific intonation of each type.
On the perceptual level, sentence intonation is a complex unity of four components, formed by communicatively relevant variations in:
(1) voice pitch, or speech melody;
(2) the prominence of words, or their accent;
(3) the tempo (rate), rhythm and pausation of the utterance,
and (4) voice-tamber, this complex unity serving to express adequately, on the basis of the proper grammatical structure and lexical composition of the sentence, the speaker's or writer's thoughts, volition, emotions, feelings and attitudes towards reality and the contents of the sentence.
This definition of sentence intonation differs radically from the one given by the overwhelming majority of foreign linguists, who, as has already been mentioned, reduce intonation to only one of its components, viz. variations in voice pitch.
Thus, D. Jones writes: "Intonation may be defined as the variations which take place in the pitch of the voice in connected speech, i.e. variations in the pitch of the musical note produced by the vibration of the vocal cords. Regarding intonation as "quite a different thing from stress" D. Jones has, nevertheless, to admit that "there are, however, important relations between intonation and stress in English, as indeed in all 'stress languages'. The effect of prominence is often produced by certain combinations of the two."
Lilias Armstrong and Ida Ward define intonation as follows: "By intonation, we mean the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice when we speak."
They also point out the inseparable connection between what they define as intonation and stress: "In addition to stress, other elements go to make a word more prominent than its neighbors, the chief being a change in pitch, or intonation. These two elements, stress and intonation, are very closely connected. So close is the connection, indeed, that it is often difficult to decide whether stress or intonation or a combination of the two is responsible for certain effects.
The American descriptivists also speak of "stress and intonation", from which it follows that they do not consider stress as a component of intonation, although they, too, regard both as closely connected with each other.
Now it should be concentrated on the three prosodic components of intonation, that is pitch, loudness and tempo and on the way they are realized in speech.
Each syllable of the speech chain has a special pitch colouring. Some of the syllables have significant moves of tone up and down. Each syllable bears a definite amount of loudness. Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness. Together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of intonation.
An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus. The boundaries of an intonation pattern may be marked by stops of phonation that is temporal pauses. Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in oral speech. It may be well to remind here that the syntagm is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete. In phonetics actualized syntagms are called intonation groups (The other terms used in linguistics are "sense-groups", "tone-groups", etc.)
Each intonation group may consist of one or more potential syntagms, e.g. the sentence "I think he is coming soon" has two potential syntagms: "I think" and "he is coming soon". In oral speech it is normally actualized as one intonation group.
The intonation group is a stretch of speech which may have the length of the whole phrase1 But the phrase often contains more than one intonation group. The number of intonation groups depends on the length of the phrase and the degree of semantic importance or emphasis given to various parts of it, cf.: This bed was 'not 'slept xin. — This bed \ was not 'slept, in.
An additional terminal tone on "this bed" expresses an emphasis on "this bed" in contrast to other beds. Another example:Last .summer | we went to 'stay with my 'sister in the Crivmea. || — Last .summer \ we went to 'stay with my .sister | in the Crivmea. ||
The phrases above might be pronounced with either two or three intonation groups which obviously affects the meaning.
Now we shall dwell on each of the prosodic constituents of intonation and see how they actualize such language units as syntagms, sentences, syntactic wholes. Among the pitchparameters we shall concentrate on the three of them, i.e. the distinct variationsin the direction of pitch, pitch leveland pitch range.Though pitch changes are of primary linguistic significance they should be viewed together with the variations of loudness,the second component of intonation, since it is clearly not possible to separate pitch and loudness in creating the effect of accentuation. That is why our first task is to discuss the anatomy of pitch-and-stressstructure of the intonation pattern.
Not all stressed syllables are of equal importance. One of the syllables has the greater prominence than the others and forms the nucleus, or focal pointof an intonation pattern. Formally the nucleus may be described as a strongly stressed syllable which is generally the last strongly accented syllable of an intonation pattern and which marks a significant change of pitch direction that is where the pitch goes distinctly up or down. The nuclear tone is the most important part of the intonation pattern without which the latter cannot exist at all. On the other hand an intonation pattern may consist of one syllable which is its nucleus.
According to R.Kingdon the most important nuclear tones in English and the only ones one need to distinguish in teaching are:
Low Fall — vNo.
High Fall — vNo.
Low Rise — 'No.
High Rise- ,No.
Fall-Rise — vNo.
The meanings of the nuclear tones are difficult to specify in general terms. Roughly speaking the falling tone of any level and range expresses "certainty", "completeness", "independence". Thus a straight-forward statement normally ends with a falling tone since it asserts a fact of which the speaker is certain. It has an air of finality, e.g. Where's John? — He hasn't come yet. What's the time? — It's nearly 'five o\clock.
A rising tone of any level and range on the contrary expresses "uncertainty", "incompleteness" or "dependence". A general question, for instance, has a rising tone, as the speaker is uncertain of the truth of what he is asking about, e.g.
I think I'll go now. — Are you .ready?
Michael is coming to London. — Is he 'coming .soon?
Parenthetical and subsidiary information in a statement is also often spoken with a rising tone, or a mid-level tone, because this information is incomplete, being dependent for its full understanding on the main assertion, e.g.
I'm not sure I can join you now. — If you > like \ we can go to the 'picnic vlater.
Encouraging or polite denials, commands, invitations, greetings, farewells, etc. are generally spoken with a rising tone.
What shall I do now? — Do go, on. Could you join us? —Not .now.
A falling-rising tone may combine the falling tone's meaning of "assertion", "certainty" with the rising tone's meaning of dependence, incompleteness. At the end of a phrase it often conveys a feeling of reservation; that is, it asserts something and at the same time suggests that there is something else to be said, e.g. Do you like pop-music? —Sometimes, (but not in general)
At the beginning or in the middle of a phrase it is a more forceful alternative to the rising tone, expressing the assertion of one point, together with the implication that another point is to follow:
Those who 'work in the voffices | ought to take 'plenty of vexercise.
The falling-rising tone, as its name suggests, consists of a fall in pitch followed by a rise. If the nucleus is the last syllable of the intonation group the fall and rise both take place on one syllable — the nuclear syllable. Otherwise the rise occurs in the remainder of the tone unit, cf.:
Do you agree with him? —Yes.
What can I do to mend matters? — You could apxologize ,to her.
Where the Rise of the Fall-Rise extends to a stressed syllable after the nucleus we signal the falling-rising tone by placing the fall on the nucleus and a rise on the later stressed syllable. This will make it easier for you and your pupils to follow the intonation contour in the text.
In English there is often clear evidence of an intonation-group boundary, but no audible nuclear tone movement preceding. In such a circumstance two courses are open: either one may classify the phenomenon as a further kind of head or one may consider it to be the level nuclear tone.The weight of evidence seems to force the second solution, for the following reasons:
1. The final level tone is always more prominent than the others, e.g.I'm afraid I can't manage it. —In view of 'all the >circumstances | why not 'try axgain?
Also the syllable on which it occurs is lengthened substantially, and there is a clear rhythmic break between what precedes and what follows.
2. This tone nearly always occurs on the last lexical item (which is not obligatory in spontaneous speech) before a phonetic boundary and this is distributionally similar to a nuclear tone.
3. In subordinate structures this tone may be replaced by a rising-type tone.
4. In non-subordinate structures this tone has a particular range of meaning (boredom, sarcasm, etc.) which is very similar in force to other nuclear semantic functions.
Low-Level tone is very characteristic of reading poetry. Though occasionally heard in reading Mid-Level tone is particularly common in spontaneous speech functionally replacing the rising tone. That is why it should be by no means ignored in teaching.
There are two more nuclear tones in English: Rise-Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise. But adding refinement to speech they are not absolutely essential tones for the foreign learner to acquire; Rise-Fall can always be replaced by High Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise by Fall-Rise without making nonsense of the utterance in the way in which a foreign or other unsuitable intonation does.
The tone of a nucleus determines the pitch of the rest of the intonation pattern following it which is called the tail. Thus after a falling tone, the rest of the intonation pattern is at a low pitch. After a rising tone the rest of the intonation pattern moves in an upward pitch direction, cf.:
vNo, Mary. — .Well, Mary.
The nucleus and the tail form what is called terminal tone.
The two other sections of the intonation pattern are the head and the pre-head which form the pre-nuclear part of the intonation pattern and, like the tail, they may be looked upon as optional elements, e.g. Lake .District | is one of the loveliest 'parts of ^Britain.
The pre-nuclear part can take a variety of pitch patterns. Variation within the pre-nucleus does not usually affect the grammatical meaning of the utterance, though it often conveys meanings associated with attitude or phonetic styles. There are three common types of pre-nucleus: a descending type in which the pitch gradually descends (often in "steps") to the nucleus; an ascending type in which the syllables form an ascending sequence and a level type when all the syllables stay more or less on the same level:
|
| Descending type Ascending type Level type |
For example:
|
| -Why are you 'making such a xmess of it? |
|
| _»Why are you 'making such a xmess of it? |
VWhy are you 'making such a vmess of it?
As the examples show, the different types of pre-nucleus do not affect the grammatical meaning of the sentence but they can convey something of the speaker's attitude.
Generalizing we may say that minimally an intonation pattern consists of one syllable, which is its nucleus, and in this syllable there is a melodical glide of a particular sound. Maximally it consists of three other segments: the head, the pre-head and the tail.
Two more pitch parameters which can considerably modify the pitch contour of the pitch-and-stress structure are pitch ranges and pitch levels of the whole intonation pattern or of each of its sections.
Variations in pitch range occur within the normal range of the human voice, i.e. within its upper and lower limits. For pedagogical expediency three pitch ranges are generally distinguished: normal, wide, narrow:
The pitch range of a whole intonation unit is in fact the interval between the highest-pitched and the lowest-pitched syllables. Pitch levels may be high, medium and low.
The meaning of the intonation group is the combination of the "meaning" of the terminal tone and the pre-nuclear part combined with the "meaning" of pitch range and pitch level.
The parts of the intonation pattern can be combined in various ways manifesting changes in meaning, cf.: the High Head combined with the Low Fall, the High Fall, the Low Rise, the High Rise, the Fall-Rise.
It should be noted that the more the height of the pitch contrasts within the intonation pattern the more emphatic the intonation group sounds, cf.:
The number of possible combinations is more than a hundred but not all of them ate equally important. Some of them do not differ much in meaning, others are very rarely used. That is why in teaching it is necessary to deal only with a very limited number of intonation patterns, which are the result of a careful choice.
The tempo of speech is the third component of intonation. The term "tempo" implies the rate of the utterance and pausation.
The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. The parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower. Unimportant parts are commonly pronounced at a greater speed than normal, e.g. “My mother thinks him to be a common labouring boy," said Betty with a sad smile.
The word combination ".a common labouring boy" expresses the main idea of the phrase and is the slowest part of the utterance; "My mother thinks him to be" is pronounced at normal speed; the author's words "said Betty with a sad smile" are pronounced very quickly to underline their secondary importance for the utterance.
Any stretch of speech can be split into smaller portions, i.e. phonetic wholes1, phrases, intonation groups by means of pauses. By "pause" means a complete stop of phonation. For teaching expediency it is sufficient to distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:
1. Short pauses which may be used to separate intonation groups within a phrase.
2. Longer pauses which normally manifest the end of the phrase.
3. Very long pauses, which are approximately twice as long as the first type, are used to separate phonetic wholes.
Functionally, there may be distinguished syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses.
Syntactic pauses separate phonopassages, phrases, intonation groups.
Emphatic pauses serve to make especially prominent certain parts of the utterance, e.g.
She is the most \ charming girl I've ever seen.
Hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain some time to think over what to say next. They may be silent or filled, e.g. She is rather a ... good student.
— Where does she live? — Um, not very far from here.
The communicative function of intonation is realized in various ways which can be grouped under five general headings. Intonation serves:
1. To structure the information content of a textual unit so as to show which information is new or cannot be taken for granted, as against information which the listener is assumed to possess or to be able to acquire from the context, that is given information.
2. To determine the speech function of a phrase, i.e. to indicate whether it is intended as a statement, question, command, etc.
3. To convey connotational meanings of "attitude" such as surprise, annoyance, enthusiasm, involvement, etc. This can include whether meaning are intended, over and above the meanings conveyed by the lexical items and the grammatical structure. For example, the sentence: "Thanks for helping me last night" can be given more than one meaning. The difference between a sincere intention and a sarcastic one would be conveyed by the intonation. Note that in the written form, we are given only the lexics and the grammar. The written medium has very limited resources for marking intonation, and the meanings conveyed by it have to be shown, if at all, in other ways.
4. To structure a text. As it is known, intonation is an organizing mechanism. On the one hand, it delimitates texts into smaller units, i.e. phonetic passages, phrases and intonation groups, on the other hand, it integrates these smaller constituents forming a complete text.
5. To differentiate the meaning of textual units (i.e. intonation groups, phrases and sometimes phonetic passages) of the same grammatical structure and the same lexical composition, which is the distinctive or phonological function of intonation.
6. To characterize a particular style or variety of oral speech which may be called the stylistic function.
British phoneticians distinguish more terminal tones in English than their American colleagues do and use different graphical means of representing both the tones and intonation in general.
In the existing systems of representing intonation graphically only its pitch and force components can so far be indicated. These can be shown either by placing special signs on an interlined scale, or stave, between or beside the line of text or by inserting tone and stress indicators in the line of text itself, which may be written or printed both in conventional spelling or in phonetic transcription.
In representing intonation on the staves the following signs are used in different systems of tonetic transcription.
In the system introduced by L. Armstrong and I. Ward and most widely used in countries where RP is taught, including the Soviet Union, a dash represents a stressed syllable pronounced with a static tone, a curve a stressed syllable with a kinetic tone, and a small dot an unstressed syllable. In the system used by D. Jones, A. C. Gimson, J. O'Connor and G. Arnold a stressed syllable with a static tone is denoted by a large dot, a stressed syllable having a kinetic tone by a large dot with a tail-like curve attached to it, and an unstressed syllable by a small dot.
In R. Kingdon's system wedge-like signs are used instead of dashes and curves.
R. Kingdon sees the following advantages and disadvantages of representing intonation on the staves.
Advantages. Pitch changes and stress can be shown with considerable accuracy.
Disadvantages. The exact correspondence between the pitches shown and the syllables of the text is not always easy to see at first glance. The drawing and filling-in of the staves is too slow a process for extensive use in class, while the staves occupy a lot of space and add disproportionately to the cost of book production. Lengthy tonetic texts using this system are fatiguing to read and uneconomical to produce."
In indicating intonation in the line of text itself it is H. Palmer's system which has been most widely used so far in the Soviet Union and other countries where RP is taught. It consists of stress marks and a number of arrows of different shapes and sizes which indicate kinetic tones and are placed before the syllabograph of nuclear syllables. These signs give a good visual aid, but they make the printing and writing processes inconvenient and disfigure the text.
R. Kingdon has recently introduced his "tonetic stress-mark system", which is free from the above-mentioned drawbacks, and being rather precise, into the bargain, is rapidly coming into general use. This ingenious system uses ordinary stress-marks which are placed vertically or slant-wise above or below the line of print before syllabographs.
These tonetic stress-marks have the great advantage of showing both stress and tones in the line of print itself. Texts in this system can be written with great speed and ease, and can be read rapidly and comfortably.
By way of illustration, D. Jones' and R. Kingdon's systems of representing intonation on the staves and R. Kingdon's tonetic stress-mark system of indicating it in the line of print itself will be used in the following analysis of English intonation instead of the systems current in this country.
The following nuclear tones may be distinguished in RP: —
(1) The high-falling tone (from the highest pitch of the speaking voice to the lowest)
| or be on a mid or low level note |
These tones may be made emphatic: "when it is desired to call special attention to some word in a sentence, making it more prominent even than words which are taking full stress (whether static or kinetic), it may be given a degree of stress beyond the normal. This extra or emphatic stress is usually accompanied by some tonal modification, which will take the form of a bodily rising or lowering of the static tones, and an increase in the pitch range used by the kinetic ones.
In R. Kingdon's tonetic stress-mark system these emphatic tones are indicated by doubling the first stress-mark of the corresponding unemphatic tone, e.g. "No. (an emphatic high-fall) 'vNo. (an emphatic fall-rise), etc.
In a special table R. Kingdon shows his complete set of tonetic stress-marks applied to the sonorant [m]. Each [m] in the table represents a separate syllable. In the case of Tune IV the three m's represent successive syllables, but in Tunes III and V the two syllables shown may be separated by others.
The High Normal tones are in most frequent use, and may be considered as the basic variety.
The High Emphatic tones have greater stress and a wider range than the normal ones. In order to obtain this wider range the tones that begin with a rise start from a lower pitch and those that begin with a fall, from a higher pitch, besides extending the pitch range at the other end.
The Low Normal tones usually show a diminished stress, and in particular the Low Level Tone generally indicates a partially stressed syllable.
The Low Emphatic tones are used mostly in utterances having an impatient or dramatic nature.
The raised dot, which indicates partial stress on a syllable, means that the stress is given to that syllable without any modification of the tone pattern. Thus, if it occurs in a rising series, the rise continues smoothly through the partially stressed syllable, which is merely given some extra prominence above the surrounding unstressed syllables.
The constitutive function of the pitch component of intonation manifests itself also in the fact that each syllable before and after the nuclear one has a definite pitch. The pitches of the pre- and post-nuclear syllables are not haphazard in their distribution: they form definite structures in respect of their levels. In this case pitch levels are also inseparably connected with sentence stress. The stress-and- pitch pattern of each intonation-group has easily definable sections.
One such section is formed by any unstressed or partially stressed syllable or syllables preceding the first fully stressed syllable of an intonation-group. R. Kingdon and other British phoneticians after him (J. O'Connor, G. Arnold) call it the prehead.
In unemphatic speech three main types of prehead may be distinguished in RP. According to L. Armstrong and I. Ward, the pitch of initial unstressed syllables may either rise gradually to the pitch of the first stressed syllable or be a mid or low level note.
The last type is considered by R. Kingdon to be by far the commonest and is called by him the Normal Prehead. It is pronounced on a uniform pitch a trifle above the bottom of the normal voice range.
The next section is formed by the first fully stressed syllable of the intonation-group and is called its head. Palmer distinguishes three main types of head: (1) inferior, (2) superior, and (3) scandent.
The third section of an intonation-group is formed by the stressed and unstressed syllables lying between the head and the nucleus of the group. R. Kingdon and other British phoneticians after him call this section the body.
Soviet phoneticians call it the scale, and distinguish the following main types of scale in RP: (l)the regular descending, (2) the broken descending scale, i.e. one with so-called special rise, (3) the ascending scale and (4)the scandent scale, i.e. one with each posttonic syllable pronounced on a slightly higher pitch than the preceding syllable.
When the nuclear syllable is followed by any unstressed or partially stressed syllable or syllables, this section of the intonation-group is called its tail.
One may distinguish three types of tail: (1) descending,(2)level, and (3) ascending.
The occurrence of this or that type of tail is determined by the kind of the nuclear tone used. The descending tail occurs when the fall of the nuclear tone does not reach the lowest level. The level tail occurs when the preceding fall is complete, or when the nuclear tone is even but on a mid level. The ascending tail is observed when the nuclear tone is even and on the lowest level or when it is a falling or rising one.
Speech melody in its constitutive function within the stress-and-pitch pattern of an intonation-group must be expressed in terms of pitch levels, pitch ranges and rates or angles of pitch change. Within the normal range of the speaking voice, i.e. within the interval between its lower and upper limits in unemphatic speech, most phoneticians distinguish three pitch levels: low, mid, and high. These pitch levels are, of course, relative, not absolute in terms of cps: a man's voice produces the three in a lower register than a woman's, and the same individual speaks now in 'one 'key', now in another, with varying intervals between the pitch levels.
In emphatic and emotional speech an extra high and an extra low pitch levels may be distinguished in addition to the three unemphatic pitch levels.
Each pitch level may be determined by the interval between it and the next level or the lowest normal level. These intervals may be measured in cps. The pitch level of a whole intonation group is determined by the pitch of its highest-pitched syllable which, in unemphatic speech, is usually the head of the intonation-group.
Pitch range is the interval between two pitch levels or two differently-pitched syllables or parts of a syllable.
The whole range which is in common use in both emphatic and unemphatic speech is divided by R. Kingdon into three portions, a central one which is used in normal unemphatic delivery, and above and below it narrower bands which are brought into use when emphatic syllables are being uttered. The full range of pitches which can be used by the human voice for speaking purposes can therefore be represented as follows:
Upper emotional range, upper emphatic range, normal unemphatic range, lower emphatic range, lower emotional range.
These ranges, even in the case of an individual speaker, are not fixed either absolutely or relatively to one another they may, according to circumstances, be shifted slightly up or downer expanded or contracted to moderate degrее.
Another point to be remembered is that there exist not only the obvious differences the occurrence of this or that type of tail is determined by the kind of the nuclear tone used. The descending tail occurs when the fall of the nuclear tone does not reach the lowest level. The level tail occurs when the preceding fall is complete, or when the nuclear tone is even but on a mid level. The ascending tail is observed when the nuclear tone is even and on the lowest level or when it is a falling or rising one.
This conditioning of the types of tail by nuclear tones suggests that tails are not independent elements of the stress-and-pitch pattern of an intonation-group: each type of tail is a kind of the continuation of a particular nuclear tone, and the two together constitute a variant of a terminal tone.
Thus, the terminal tone is a broader unit than the nuclear tone. Each terminal tone has two or more variants, or allotones: the principal one is realized in the accentual nucleus alone, and is, therefore, represented by the nuclear tone as such (nuclear allotone); the subsidiary ones are realized simultaneously in the nucleus and the tail (nuclear-postnuclear allotones). The principal and subsidiary variants of a terminal tone are in complementary distribution.
The pitch range of a whole intonation-group is the interval between the highest-pitched syllable and the lowest-pitched one within it. Pitch ranges may be wide or narrow, and they may be expressed in cps or in musical notes. For instance, the pitch range equal to an octave is the interval between a given tone (pitch) and the eighth note above or below it. Pitch ranges should not be confused with pitch levels, although the two are closely interdependent.
Closely connected with pitch levels and ranges is another constituent feature of the stress-and-pitch pattern of an intonation group in general and of its nuclear and terminal tones in particular. This is the rate, or angle, of pitch change, which is simultaneously a manifestation of the temporal, or time, component of intonation. Suppose two falls or two rises are effected within the same period of time, say 500 msecs (half a second), but the range of one fall or rise is different from that of the other. Then the wide-range fall or rise will be steeper, the angle of pitch change different as compared with a narrow-range fall or rise.
Different rates, or angles, or pitch change are also observed when the pitch ranges are the same, but the time intervals are different, cf.
The rate, or angle, of pitch change is calculated by measuring the pitch range in cps., the duration of the pitch change in msecs and then dividing the number of cps. by the number of msecs and thus finding the number of cps. per msec. For instance, if the range of pitch change is 50 cps. and its duration is 500 msecs, then its rate is 0,1 cps. per msec.
The stress-and-pitch pattern of an intonation-group is called by the American descriptivists an intonation contour, which consists of two, three or four pitch phonemes representing pitch levels and of one clause-terminal.
The American descriptivists distinguish four pitch levels in GA, which they consider to be distinctive and call pitch phonemes. The normal pitch of the voice of the speaker is /2/, called mid. It varies from speaker to speaker. Pitch /2/ is relatively common and serves as a standard of comparison for the others. Pitch /1/, called low, is somewhat lower, perhaps two or three notes below /2/, but the interval will vary from speaker to speaker and from time to time. Pitch /3/, called high, is about as much higher than /2/ as /2/ is above /1/. Pitch /4/, called extra high, is higher than /3/ by about the same amount, or may even be somewhat higher. /4/ is much less frequent than the other three. In any utterance of any length /1, 2, 3/ will all be heard. Some variation of pitch within these four levels will be noticed by some observers. But it is not a significant variation because no minimal contrasts are found by American descriptivists for any other pitches, whereas they are found by them between these four pitches, which are, therefore, considered phonemic.
However, the American descriptivists are not unanimous in numbering these four pitch levels, as they are not unanimous in the treatment of the segmental phonemes and distribution of the degrees of word-stress. Some of them use /1/ for extra high, /2/ for high, /3/ for mid, and /4/ for low.
An alternative graphic system, used mostly for teaching purposes, avoids the confusion of these competing notations. It is as follows:
This system has certain pedagogical advantages as well, since it gives a visual aid, but, on the other hand, it has various limitations; the drawing of these "stair-steps" across each sentence is a slow and laborious process, wasteful of space, raising the cost of book production and disfiguring the text.
The numerical system and this "stair-step" system are the only means of representing intonation used by the American descriptivists. The numerical system is used principally in theoretical linguistic works, whereas the graphic system is used in text-books of American English. The intonation of a sentence is represented in the numerical system by means of figures indicating the pitch levels, arrows indicating the clause terminals and the stress-marks over vowel letters indicating sentence-stress.
Intonation contours are, according to H. A. Gleason, not phonemes, but morphemes. This is rather a farfetched conclusion because a morpheme has a more or less concrete meaning, whereas an intonation contour divorced from the lexical composition and the grammatical structure of a sentence can hardly have any meaning at-all. Besides, a morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent part of a word or a grammatical form of a word and not directly that of a sentence, whereas the intonation contour of a word is absolutely meaningless since a word may have any intonation contour, and significant intonation contour is, therefore, a constituent part of a sentence.
Neither of the two systems of indicating intonation used by the American descriptivists is capable of showing it with such accuracy as is possible to achieve with the help of the British systems. This fact is another illustration of the American descriptivists' disregard for a faithful representation of living speech. H. A. Gleason writes: "The pitch is frequently the same over long sequences of syllables (phonemically the same, that is: there will usually be sub-phonemic variation from syllable to syllable)."
The numerical system only shows differences between pitch levels and does not show how and in which syllable the pitch falls or rises from level to level.
In other words, the American descriptivists treat pitch changes in terms of static tones disregarding the kinetic ones and thus distorting linguistic reality, although American speech, doubtlessly, has kinetic tones, too.
The numerical system does not show these and many other allotonic variations which the language learner must master if his intonation is to be as close to that of the native RP or GA speakers as possible.
Inseparable from its constitutive function is the distinctive function of the pitch component of intonation.
Having given final shape to an intonation-group which is equal to a sense-group within a sentence or to a whole sentence, it simultaneously distinguishes them from other sense-groups or sentences embodied in different intonation-groups. The pitch component of intonation may, therefore, perform a sense-group-distinctive function and a sentence-distinctive function.
However, not much is known yet about what exactly is differentiated by pitch alone on the sense-group and sentence levels and by which sections of the intonation-group (the prehead, the head, the scale, and the terminal tone with or without its tail).
The falling tones are generally believed to be associated with the expression of finality, the categoric nature of the utterance, its independence of a following utterance and, therefore, its greater semantic weight.
The rising tones are considered to be expressive of just the opposite: non-finality (continuation), the non-categoric nature of the utterance, its dependence on a following utterance or the reaction of the listener, its smaller semantic weight. These semantic characteristics of the fundamental RP tones determine their uses at the end of sense-groups and sentences, which are described in great detail in the Normative Course.
Communicatively different types of sentences constitute a broader category than do the four syntactically different sentence types. On the one hand, this is proved by the fact that one and the same syntactic type of sentence may express, through the use of a different intonation, two or more communicatively different sentence types.
On the other hand, one and the same communicative type of sentence may be expressed by two or more syntactically different sentence types. For instance, a yes-or-no question may take the syntactic form of an interrogative sentence (Isn't he there?) and the syntactic form of a declarative one (He isn't there?). There are, doubtlessly, many cases of such an overlapping of syntactically and communicatively different sentence types in Russian, English and other languages, and the problem requires a thorough investigation.
Sources:
1. Васильев В.А. "Фонетика английского языка" М; 1970г.
2. Васильев В.А. Теоретический курс "Фонетика английского языка" М; 1962г.
3. Леонтьев С.Ф. Теоретический курс английской фонетики. М; 1981г,1988 г.
4. Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П. "Фонетика английского языка". М; 1991г.