Introduction to Linguistics

What is meant by the term intonation’?

There are many different aspects of English that have been analysed in depth by
Phoneticians. Phonetically, speech cannot be characterized just by sequences of phonemes, syllables and words. There are additional properties of speech: pitch, duration and stress. These are the suprasegmental properties of speech. Prosody is the music’ of a language and shows the characteristics of melody and rhythm. A supra-segmental features is a phonetic feature that spans more than a single speech segment, these typically includes voice pitch, loudness or vocal effort and length or relative duration of a syllable. The English language is made up of three prosodic systems, stress, which is the relative prominence of a syllable. Rhythm, which is the patterns of stress and intonation, the pitch pattern of an utterance.

One particular suprasegmental feature that hasn’t been analysed and looked at in as much depth as others is intonation. This suprasegmental feature has many aspects that must be considered when analysing and transcribing intonation. These include tempo, pitch, volume and rhythm.

The vocal folds are constantly moving and vibrating when we speak or make a noise. This vibration can be at different frequencies (the fundamental frequency or F ) and it is this change in frequencies that change the pitch. According to Catford, our pitch can change in one of two ways, “1 – By stretching and tensing the vocal folds – the tenser the folds, the higher the pitch, or 2 – By changing the pressure below the vocal folds, the sub glottal pressure. The higher the sub glottal pressure, the higher the pitch.” (Catford: 172).

Because the vocal folds are continuously vibrating, they can produce different pitches. If the vibrations are slow, then the pitch is low. The pitch is high if the vibrations are faster. However, the vocal folds are constantly being challenged as the pitch may rise, fall or stay level in any given exclamation. The pitch may also employ a combination of any of these. For example, It may rise – fall, or fall and then rise.

Different languages use pitch for different reasons. Tone languages, were the tone is linked to a particular word, means that the pitch is used to signal lexical differences or grammatical differences. These languages make use of a different number of tone levels. For example, the language Ewe which is spoken in Ghana and Togo is a three tone language: