Белорусский государственный
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| 4. Rising-Falling Tones
The rising-falling tone can be used in most utterances for which a falling tone would be fundamentally suitable: it has all the definiteness and finality of a falling tone, but the substitution would add more expression and liveliness to the utterance. The rising-falling nuclear tone can be compared with the falling-rising nuclear tone both in form and in function. The complex nature of their form leads to a specific functional characteristic, which might be called implicatory. The implications of the two tones, however, are of a different kind: in the Fall-Rise it is basically a continuation of the information already contained in the utterance, it is, so-to-speak, lexically predictable. In the Rise-Fall the implication is basically of a modal-attitudinal, or pragmatic, kind: the Rise-Fall often gives the impression that what the speaker admits or denies is in conflict with his own or his interlocutor’s previous opinion. That is why it is sometimes called a quizzical tone. TOPIC 2 BASIC INTONATION PATTERNS OF ENGLISH 1. Classification of Basic Intonation Patterns The number of actual utterances produced by native speakers of English is obviously unlimited, yet they can be reduced – as far as intonation goes – to a comparatively small list of basic intonation patterns. The word ‘basic’ is used here to denote several ideas. First of all, it implies meaningfulness; the replacement of one pattern by another causes a change (greater or smaller) in the total meaning of an utterance. All the basic intonation patterns can be contrasted to one another both in form and meaning. Secondly, the basic intonation patterns are pronounced and used in much the same way by all the educated English speaking people; in other words, they are typical. Thirdly, the basic intonation patterns are associated with a complete communicative unit. Their identification is based on the possibility of semantic differentiation of utterances by means of intonation only. So the notion of a basic pattern refers to a simple tune functioning within an independent utterance. It follows then that an intonation-group in a combined tune represents one of the basic patterns and is one of its modifications in connected speech. In the description of the English intonation system intonation patterns are traditionally presented as pitch-patterns, or contours. Other prosodic parameters are also referred to and add to the complete characteristic of a pattern, but they are not decisive, as far as the differentiation of the patterns is concerned. Of course, pitch features are inseparable from stress and, consequently, from rhythm. Stress, furthermore, influences the speed of utterance and is, on the other hand, itself influenced by the tempo of speech. Variations within all these features are responsible for modifications of the basic patterns and may serve different meaningful purposes, but they do not change the essential nature of the basic pattern. The discrimination of the basic patterns relies primarily on the directional type of nuclear pitch change: the rising tone-pattern, the falling tone-pattern, the falling-rising tone-pattern and the rising-falling tone-pattern. Within each of the four tone patterns there is a further division in accordance with the accepted functional variation of the nuclear tones. Since the structure of an intonation-group is changeable each tone pattern is realized in a number of tunes. The most important subdivision is into tunes having a head and those without a head. The tail plays no significant role in the discrimination of intonation patterns. The list of intonation patterns below is composed only of tunes which have a head. It is assumed that, firstly, the tune variant without a head can be easily derived by omitting the head and, secondly, special indications as to the kind of prehead or tail are not needed, since they are 6 supposed to take the ‘normal’ form. The patterns are called contours to imply the shape formed by the movement of the pitch over the relevant points in an utterance. жүктеу/скачать 0,6 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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