Pitch and intonation Kuiper and Allan Chapter 6

Pitch • People only rarely speak on a monotone. • Pitch changes take two

Creating pitch • Pitch is created by the rate of vibration of the vocal

Exercise Say the following first as a statement and second as a question. Listen

Intonation • is created by pitch movements. • Intonation is suprasegmental in that it

Tones • When the pitch of the voice changes during the production of a

Exercise Listen to the following sentence and see if it divides intonational sections. How

Tone groups • Speech is divided into tone groups. • Each tone group has

An analogy • Think of speaking as rather like singing where each syllable has

The musical notation of intonation • The normal pitch range • A tone group

Where are tone group boundaries? • In continuous speech tone group boundaries tend to

The functions of intonation • attitudinal I’ll see you behind the bike sheds afterwards.

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Pitch and intonation Kuiper and Allan Chapter 6. 2

Pitch • People only rarely speak on a monotone. • Pitch changes take two forms in languages: – phonemic in tone languages – intonational in all languages

Creating pitch • Pitch is created by the rate of vibration of the vocal cords. • You can make your vocal cords vibrate at different rates when you sing. • You have a natural pitch span or pitch range when speaking.

Exercise Say the following first as a statement and second as a question. Listen carefully for the pitch of your voice at the end of the utterance. You left the train.

Intonation • is created by pitch movements. • Intonation is suprasegmental in that it is an overlay over the segmental phoneme sequence.

Tones • When the pitch of the voice changes during the production of a syllable we are hearing a tone. • Types of tones: – – falling rise fall rise $ € ﬂ ‡

Exercise Listen to the following sentence and see if it divides intonational sections. How many tones does each section have? After eating her breakfast, Joanna went out.

Tone groups • Speech is divided into tone groups. • Each tone group has one tonic syllable in which there is a tone.

An analogy • Think of speaking as rather like singing where each syllable has a note. • A tone group is a musical phrase. • The nuclear tone involves a pitch change on the syllable; all other syllables are sung without a change in pitch.

The musical notation of intonation • The normal pitch range • A tone group Are you at home

Where are tone group boundaries? • In continuous speech tone group boundaries tend to come at grammatical phrase boundaries. • The tonic syllable (the one having the pitch change) is usually the last stressed syllable in the tone group. • Tone group boundaries are marked by a vertical slash in a text.

The functions of intonation • attitudinal I’ll see you behind the bike sheds afterwards. You? • accentual – contrastive stress I want a big icecream. • grammatical Those who work slowly get to the top.