Intonations and its Functions

Use of intonation in the English Language

In Linguistics, intonation refers to the melody of the pitch the rise and fall of the voice while speaking which conveys different meanings of the speech. Like, finality, attitude, intentions and emotions. Intonation is very important because, without it, it is impossible to interpret the intention of the speaker. It suggests the meaning and it explains the context behind what is being said. Intonation is not concerned with what is being said; rather it focuses on how is it is said. The pitch of the voice implies the hidden meaning of the speech. Intonation is a very important factor in speech. We examine the speech on the basis of the quality of sound and pitch. For instance

Tone or Quality of Pitch

These tones imply the mood, interest and the intention of the speaker. Pitch is divided into high and low based on which we define the meaning of how is something being said. But it is very important to interpret speech on linguistic bases. Because it might happen that someone is speaking while running and the rise and fall in his pitch or sound would not be easy to interpret because of his physical state. This irregular movement is something which is not under control by a speaker and is linguistically not important. Also if we are in some meeting and we hear different conversations we cannot interpret those speeches based on the pitch because some people are habitual and they speak slowly with variable pitch.

Types of Intonation.

Moreover, the pitch should not confuse with the quality of voice rather it should be considered as the rate of vibration of vocal cords. It is the sensation that is heard by a listener in speakers tone.

English is a language where intonation is considered a very important element of speech. It includes our tone and mood it expresses the feelings and attitude towards someone. Anger, frustration, guilt and annoyance can also be detected just by concentrating on the intonation of the speaker. The four different types of intonation are as:

1.Attitudinal intonation:

It enables us to understand the expressions, mode and attitude of the speaker.

2. Accentual intonation:

Accentual intonation determines the stress and somehow it interprets accents.

3.Grammatical intonation:

It helps a listener to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is being said.

4. Discourse intonation:

It analyses the speech and context. As the word discourse implies its meaning.

 

• The attitudinal function of intonation

The Attitudinal function is one of the most significant functions in speech. Because it determines the mode and attitude of the reader. It somehow overlaps with discourse intonation. Because it also tries to interpret the meaning of the speech by focusing on how something is being said. The mood like happy or angry, grateful or annoyed and bored can be understood by understanding the attitudinal pitch. There are four types of the pitch which are responsible for the attitude of the speech

 

 

Attitudinal intonation also has three different variables as follows

• Sequential

It interprets the tone- unit boundaries, pauses in speech and pre heads, heads or tonic syllables.

• Prosodic

These are simply noticeable factors of speech. which includes the width of pitch range, key, loudness, speed and voice quality.

• Paralinguistic

Body language for activities like laughs and sobs are paralinguistic factors of speech.

• The accentual function of intonation

The term accentual is basically from the word accent and it refers to as the stress in speech. Some writers attach the accent with the stress of the word. The most common position of tonic stress is to put stress on the last word. The stress focuses the attention on some important lexical item. Placing out tonic stress on different syllables helps to mark out the word as most important in tone-unit.

 

 

• The grammatical function of intonation

It tends to illustrate the grammatical function and investigates the sentences to find ambiguity in their lexical structure.

For example the sentence “those who sold quickly made a profit. can have two different ways

Those who sold quickly | made a \ profit

Those who sold | quickly made a \ profit

Moreover, the grammatical intonation draws a clear line between restrictive and non-restrictive clause, also to the relative clause. It identifies the question tags based on different meanings such as isn’t, can’t, should and won’t etc. It is not always necessary to use a rising tone for questions in English. Native speakers use falling tone to ask WH-questions.

 

• Discourse intonation

Furthermore, the discourse function of intonation digs deep into the context of the speech. Because without context it is almost impossible to understand someone’s speech. without context, it is most likely to misinterpret a text. When there is a conversation between two speakers there is a lot of presupposition and some background knowledge and several references.

For example:

A: Are you going to that party?

B: Probably, I don’t like her

A: I have heard that he has been out lately

B: maybe, I don’t know about him that much.

Although, It implies that both the speakers know about the party. But if someone tries to read these sentences without digging into the context it will look kind of ambiguous statement.

Collectively, these all functions of intonation help us to understand the implied meaning of the speech. It helps a reader to understand the in-depth meaning of the dialogue. Intonation helps to interpret and to address the meaning of speech based on the context.