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; and as they complicate the learning of the tones it is advisable not to teach them at any rate until the student is well advanced in his mastery of intonation. Rise-Fall can always be replaced by High Fail 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, as you probably remember. 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. As you know, we? hope, 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 j is one of the loveliest 'parts of vBritain.
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:
As the examples show, the different types of pre-nucieus 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.
High
Medium
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 in the phrase "Not at all!"
Not atxall. (reserved, calm)
Not at vall.
-•Not at'all. (questioning)
-*Notat,all.
(intensely encouraging, protesting)
(encouraging,
friendly)
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.:
Fantastic. "Fantastic.
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 pausatkm. The rate of speech can be non^al, silov/ 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 wholes', phrases, intonation groups by means of pauses. By "pause" here we mean a complete stop of phonation. For teaching expediency it is sufficient to distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:
Short pauses which may be used to separate intonation
groups within a phrase.
Longer pauses which normally manifest the erld of the
She is the most I 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.
It is well to point out here that our ear can also perceive a pause when there is no stop of phonation at all. It may happen because a stop of phonation is not the only factor indicating an intonation unit boundary. The first and the main factor is a perceivable pitch change, either stepping down or stepping up, depending on the direction of nuclear tone movement. The other criterion is the presence of junctural features at the end of each intonation group. This usually takes the form of a pause but there are frequently accompanying segmental phonetic modifications (variations in tempo, aspiration etc.) which reinforce this. So the intonation unit boundary is not necessarily indicated by a complete stop of phonation.
The changes of pitch, loudness and tempo are not haphazard variations. The rules of change are highly organized. No matter how variable the individual variations of these prosodic components are they tend to become formalized or standardized, so that all speakers of the language use them in similar ways under similar circumstances. These abstracted characteristics of intonation structures may be called intonation patterns which form the prosodic system of English.
Some intonation patterns may be completely colourless in meaning: they give to the listener no implication of the speaker's attitude or feeling. They serve a mechanical function — they provide a mold into which all sentences may be poured so that they achieve utterance. Such intonation patterns represent the intonational minimum of speech and are very helpful for beginners in language learning.