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Pitch-level
A pitch-level is a certain height within the speaker’s voice-range. The notion of a level may be
applied to the whole stretch of an utterance, and then it means the
average height of the voice
during the pronunciation of the given utterance. In a narrower sense, a pitch-level is associated with
some particular point in an utterance, such as, e.g., the beginning and ending points of
pronunciation units: syllables, rhythmic groups, intonation-groups. These points, especially in a unit
such as a syllable,
may coincide in their height, i.e. the syllable is pronounced on a steady,
unchanged pitch. Its most significant perceptible characteristic is the actual height of the unit in
relation to the speaker’s voice-range. From
the functional point of view, the pitch-level plays an
important role in marking the degree of semantic prominence attached by the speaker to this or that
word or phrase in an utterance. Pitch level is also significant for conveying various shades of
modal-attitudinal meanings and emotional colouring.
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