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Nuclear tone
The kinetic tone carried by the most important word (which is generally the last notional word) is
called
the nuclear tone.
Nuclear tone-shift
When it is desired to reinforce the semantic weight of the nuclear word it can be done by using the
so-called
nuclear tone-shift, which means displacing the nuclear tone from its normal position – on
the last notional word in an utterance – to a word at the beginning or in the middle of it. The effect
of a departure from final position is that of special semantic prominence or contrast. The effect of a
contrastive tone-shift is always greater when the nuclear stress is given to a function word.
O
One-peak (compact) head
The first semantic tem of an utterance bears a full stress, i.e. becomes the onset of the head, and all
the other content or potentially prominent form words are given partial
stresses to show their
smaller semantic importance, or they may be left altogether unstressed. The whole head in this case
produces the impression of a closely-knit semantic unit with one peak of prominence in the initial
position –
one-peak, or
compact,
head.
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