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Intonation in a written language12.02. Intonation performs its sentence-constitutive function not only in oral speech, but also in written language. • Intonation is implicitly present in any written sentence. It is the writer who puts it there in the process of expressing in written form his thoughts, emotions, feelings and attitudes. • When writing he intends his intonations to be reproduces by readers (both in silent and loud reading) as closely to the original as possible.
(13) Role of punctuation marks 12.03. Intonation in a written sentence is provided by the use of punctuation marks. v Of course, they cannot represent exactly the whole gamut [‘gæmәt] of the extremely rich and varied intonations of living speech.
(14) Punctuation marks 12.03. (continuation) The following punctuation marks are used within a sentence:
(15) A full stop 12.04. If a written sentence has no punctuation mark at he end, its syntactic type and the intonation determining it remain unknown.
Îí ↘äîìà.
(16) Question and exclamation marks 12.05. The question mark will signal a different type of a sentence with a different intonation, viz. an interrogative sentence expressing the so-called general (“yes” or “no”) question: Îí ↗↘äîìà? § There is only one difference between the declarative and interrogative intonations, viz. that in pitch direction (downward vs. upward) within the same range. 12.07. If an exclamation mark is placed at the end of a sentence, e.g. “Îí äîìà!” it will signal a third type of sentence whose intonation is different from that of both declarative and interrogative sentences. This is another manifestation of the sentence-distinctive function of intonation. § But intonation of exclamatory sentences differs from intonation of the other two types. The range of fall in the exclamatory sentence is wider. The force of utterance, the resultant loudness and the average length of syllables are usually greater in pronouncing an exclamatory sentence than they are in saying a declarative or interrogative one. Cf. Îí äîìà. Îí äîìà? Îí äîìà! § In the latter case the sentence-distinctive function of intonation is performed not by only one of its components, but by a combination of them.
(17) Sentence intonation 12.08. On the perceptual level, sentence intonation is a complex unity of four components formed by communicatively relevant variations in: 1) Voice pitch, or speech melody; 2) The prominence of words, or their accent; 3) The tempo (rate), rhythm and pausation of the utterance, and 4) Voice-tamber.
(18) Other definitions of intonation 12.09. However, this definition of sentence intonation differs radically from the one given by the overwhelming majority of linguists, who reduce intonation to only one of its components, viz. variations in voice pitch. § Thus, D. Jones writes: “Intonation may be defined as the variations which take place in the pitch of the voice in connected speech…”. (Jones D. An outline of English Phonetics, 9th ed. Cambridge, 1960) § Lilias Armstrong and Ida Ward define intonation as follows: “By intonation we mean the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice when we speak. … stress and intonation are very closely connected.”. (Armstrong, L. and Ward, I. A Handbook of English Intonation. Cambridge, 1926.) § The American descriptivists also speak of “stress and intonation”, i.e. they do not consider stress as a component of intonation, although they, too, regard both as closely connected with each other. 12.12. All four components of intonation cannot be isolated or separated from the others in actual speech. However, it is possible to single them out for purposes of analysis. Then it will be seen, that an individual component of intonation, though inseparable from others, performs a special function and thus is crucial in implementing this or that function of intonation as a whole, while the other of its components play a subordinate and auxiliary part in implementing this particular function.
(19) Delimitative function of intonation 12.13. Each syllable in the sentence (i.e. its vocoid elements) has a certain pitch and cannot exist without it. § Simultaneously, the pitch manifests itself in the delimitative function, both within a sentence and at its end. 12.14. Within a sentence, such delimited portions of a sentence are known as sense-groups, or intonation groups. Date: 2016-01-03; view: 3893
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