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91THE LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONS OF INTONATION COMPONENTS
Shahlo Ravshanjonovna Karimjonova shahloxonkarimj onova@gmail .com Ferghana State University
Abstract: In this article are analyzed linguistic functions of Intonation components. The author observes components of Intonation in English.
Keywords: Speech melody, word stress, sentence stress, functions
Intonation is a complex unity of speech melody, sentence stress, tempo, rhythm and voice timbre, which enables the speaker to express his thoughts, emotions and attitudes towards the contents of the utterance and the hearer.
Speech melody or pitch level is regarded one of the primary or main components of intonation. Its chief function is to distinguish communicative types of sentence and to divide a sentence into sense-group or intonation groups.
The four functions of intonation (constitutive, delimitative, distinctive and recognitive) are performed by a number of pitch patterns and their distribution in a sentence.
R.Nash distinguishes the following five basic functions of speech melody: (1) the identity function, the ability of listeners to recognize a language without understanding what is said and to pronounce utterances with a foreign accent; (2) the presentation function, in every language any utterance is pronounced with some degree of pitch inflection; (3) the structural function, the speech melody is used to signal structure boundaries and relationships across boundaries; (4) the deictic function, a certain degree of speech melody, intentionally altered by the speaker, is used to emphasize a particular lexical item of an utterance; (5) the expressive function of speech melody signals the presence of a speaker's emotion. If the emotion is strong, other prosodic elements such as tempo, loudness and voice quality are added. This shows a close relationship of all prosodic elements and intonation components. As stated above English has terminal tones such as the falling tone, the rising tone, the rising-falling tone and the falling-rising tone among which the first two are called tonemes or intonemes. Each terminal tone has two of more variants, called by V.A.Vassilyev, allotones: the principal one is realized in the accentual nucleus alone, and is, therefore, represented by the nuclear tone as such (nuclear allotone); the subsidiary ones are realized simultaneously in the nucleus and the tail (nuclear, post-nuclear allotones). The principal and subsidiary variants of a terminal tone are in complementary distribution.1
1Vassilyev V.A. English Phonetics. Theoretical Course. -Moscow, 1970. -P.301
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V.A.Vassilyev's phonological terms toneme (intoneme) and allotone coincide with M.Romportl's terms "melodeme" and allomel though the phonological treatment of the latter different in some respects.
Comparing Czech, Polish, Russian, German, French, Hungarian M. Romportl establishes that these languages do not all exploit the means of melody in quite the same way which is determined by the difference in the place of melody and by means of differentiation of utterances and not only by prosodic means (stresses, pauses) and lexica-grammatical means (using question words, special imperative forms, word order). The similarity and difference in the realization of melodic forms are termed "homonymy and synonymy of means of intonation".
Some foreign linguists in their latest works are beginning to define sentence intonation also as something more than just variations of pitch. Thus, L.S. Hultzen in his article "Grammatical Intonation" published in 1964 in the collection of papers "In Honour of Daniel Jones" writes: "I use the term intonation in a somewhat different way from that in which it is often used... An intonation is a pattern of accent; an accent is a composite of relative pitch, loudness, and length. "
Since those who equate intonation with pitch variations recognize at the same time, openly or implicitly, the latter's inseparable connection with the other suprasegmental characteristics of the sentence; the two definitions of the sentence intonation differ mainly terminologically. They can be easily reconciled in one of the following three ways: by using and qualifying each time the use of the term intonation both in the narrow sense (pitch variations, speech melody) and in the broad sense (a complex unity of the four components); by giving up the use of the term in the narrow sense altogether and replacing it by such terms as speech melody, the pitch (fundamental frequency) component of intonation; by adopting a special term to replace the term intonation in the broad sense as a complex of the four suprasegmental, i.e. prosodic, features of the sentence, e.g. prosodization, or prosodation.
Although the four components of intonation function all together, and none of them can be isolated or separated from the others in actual speech, it is possible to single out each component for purposes of analysis. Then it will be seen that an individual component of intonation, though inseparable from the others, performs a special function of intonation as a whole, while the other of its components play a subordinate and auxiliary part in implementing this particular function. In most general terms, intonation as a whole and at least some of its components perform the same three functions that are fulfilled by the other phonetic and phonological units of language-constitutive, distinctive and identificatory (recognitive) - although each individual component of intonation performs these functions in its own way.
In analyzing the three functions of speech melody it is necessary to distinguish between the roles at its end. The constitutive function of the pitch component of intonation throughout the whole of a sentence manifests itself in the fact that each syllable in it has a certain pitch and cannot exist without it. Simultaneously, this constitutive function of pitch manifests itself in the delimitative function, both within a sentence and at its end.
Within a sentence this delimitative function consists in delimiting from each other its portions which are variously known as sense-group, breath-groups and intonation-groups. Breath-group is employed by some linguists to denote a complete sentence that can conveniently be said with a single breath, or in the case of very long sentences, the longest portions that can conveniently be said with single breath.
A breath-group usually coincides with a sense-group because "pauses for breath are normally made at points where pauses are necessary or allowable from the point of view of meaning.
However, two or even more potentially delimitable sense-groups or breath-groups may be pronounced together without being actually delimited from each other. Therefore there may be potential and actual sense-groups and potential sense-groups have no formal phonetic indicators of their boundaries.
An intonation-group, on the other hand, is a unit in the actually realized division of a sentence into sense-groups. In other words, an intonation-group is an actualized sense-group.2
American descriptivists use the term clause to denote both an actual sense-group within a sentence and a sentence representing a single sense-group.
Thus, H.A. Gleason writes that the term clause is used by him "to refer to a unit in the spoken language which is evident from the pronunciation only. It may frequently prove to be equivalent to a clause in a conventional grammatical sense, but it will often be different".
The delimitation of two adjacent actual sense-groups or sentences is effected principally by a change of pitch direction or pitch level. By delimiting a sense-group or sentence such a change of pitch gives them final shape thus completing the constitutive function of the pitch component of intonation.
A change of pitch at the junction of two sense-groups or sentences is called a terminal tone by Russian linguists and a clause-terminal by American descriptivists. In RP such terminal tones are the falling tone, the rising tone, the rising-falling tone, the falling-rising tone.
In the case of these tones their delimitative function is performed by a change of pitch direction; these tones are, therefore, called kinetic (by R. Kingdon). In English, there is also the so-called even, or level, tone, which R.Kingdon calls static. In the
2 Jones D. An Outline of English Phonetics. -Cambridge, 1960. - P.274
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case of this tone the delimitation of sense-groups or sentences is effected by a change of pitch level: the following sense-group or sentence begins at a different (usually higher) pitch level. All terminal tones perform their delimitative function in conjunction with other phonetic means of delimitation. The first of these is open, or plus, juncture, which always occurs between two actual sense-groups or sentences. The second is a pause of different durations: a long pause always separates two sentences, while a short one may, but need not, occur between two sense-groups within a sentence. Besides, kinetic and static terminal tones are inseparably connected with the other components of intonation. Their connection with the force component consists in that they usually occur within the last stressed syllable of an intonation-group or sentence.3
The last stressed syllable of a sense-group or sentence is often called their accentual nucleus; for this reason a tone associated with it is called a nuclear tone (by British phoneticians). Thus the pitch prominence of a syllable bearing a nuclear tone is supported by the stress prominence of this syllable. The degree of stress itself often depends on the kind of the nuclear tone used. For instance, the use of a falling-rising tone usually entails a very strong stress.
The use of this or that nuclear tone determines the duration of the nuclear syllable. A syllable containing a high fall is longer than one with a low fall, whereas a syllable with a falling-rising tone, or a rising-falling -rising tone is much longer than one with any other nuclear tone.
American descriptivists, e.g. H.A.Gleason, distinguish clause terminals of three kinds: fading: a rapid trailing away of the voice into silence. Both the pitch and volume decrease rapidly; rising: a sudden, rapid, but short rise in the pitch. The volume does not trail off so noticeably, but seems to be comparatively sharply cut off; sustained: a sustention of the pitch accompanied by prolongation of the last syllable of the clause and some diminishing of volume.4
British phoneticians distinguish more terminal tones in English than their American colleagues do and use different graphical means of representing both these tones and intonation in general. In the existing systems of representing intonation graphically only its pitch and force components can so far be indicated. These can be shown either by placing special signs on an interlined scale, or stave, between or beside the line of text itself, which may be written or printed both in conventional spelling and in phonetic transcription.
The functions of speech melody become clear owing to the joint operation of its constituents such as pitch levels (high, mid and low), pitch range (interval between
3 Jun Sun-Ah. Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. -Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. -P.128
4 Gleason H.A. An introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. -N.Y., 1961. -P. 46
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two pitch levels or two differently- pitched syllables or parts of a syllable which may be wide and narrow) and rates or angles of pitch change (manifestation of time and tempo). Ranges used in emphatic and unemphatic speech are divided into upper, normal and lower ranges. Graphically, they may be indicated by horizontal lines5.
In a sentence or an intonation group some of the words are of greater importance than the others. This largely depends on the situation or context. Words which provide most of the information are brought out in speech by means of sentence-stress. Thus sentence stress is a special prominence given to one or more words according to their relative importance in a sentence.
The main function of sentence stress is to single out the communicative center of the sentence which introduces new information. The prominence is realized by variations of pitch, force, length and quality. The syllables of the words marked by sentence stress are pronounced with possible changes in pitch, greater force, greater length of vowels and their full quality, that is the stressed words are pronounced more distinctly. The most prominent part of a sentence is the last stressed word which takes the nuclear tone. It indicates the nucleus of the communicative center. The second in weight is the first stressed word which often has the highest pitch and is fairly loud, e.g.: The doctor 'says it's not \serious.
The adjoining unstressed words are called proclitics when they precede the stressed words and enclitics when they follow the stressed words. English unstressed syllables generally tend to be enclitics. Stressed words pronounced in one breath with proclitics and enclitics form rhythmic groups.
The distribution of stresses in a sentence depends on the semantic value of words and is closely connected with the lexical and grammatical structure of the sentence. The ability to move smoothly and steadily from one stress to the next and to fit in the unstressed syllables between them forms the basis of a good natural English accent. In most languages there is a natural tendency to subordinate form-words to content words in stress. This is especially the case in English.
We differentiate three types of sentence-stress: normal (syntactical) sentence stress; logical sentence stress; emphatic sentence stress.
Normal sentence stress is used to arrange words into sentences or intonation groups phonetically. Together with the lexical and grammatical means it expresses the general idea of the sentence and indicates its communicative center. The nuclear syllable is generally associated with the last content word of the intonation group.
Sentence stress in English is related to rhythm. It substantiates the rhythmical structure of the sentence. To make the intervals between the stressed segments regular content words often lose their normal stresses as a tendency to avoid two consecutively stressed syllables is found in English. For the same reason form-words
5Abduazizov A.A. English Phonetics. A Theoretical Course. -Tashkent, 2007. -P.191
may receive stresses. This realization of normal stress is called rhythmic stress.
The position of the last sentence stress determines the place of the nucleus of the communicative center. By shifting the position of the last stress we can change the place of the nucleus of the communicative center. The type of sentence stress which gives special prominence to a new element in a sentence or an intonation group is called logical stress. The word which is singled out by the logical stress is the most important in the sentence.
We can summarize intonation in the following way: intonation is significant and meaningful; intonation is systematic. It is not invented in speaking but produced according to the system of intonation structures of a given language; intonation is a characteristic feature of each concrete language and cannot be used in speaking another language.
References
1. Abduazizov A.A. English Phonetics. A Theoretical Course. -Tashkent, 2007. -P.191
2. Gleason H.A. An introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. -N.Y., 1961. -P. 46
3. Jones D. An Outline of English Phonetics. -Cambridge, 1960. - P.274
4. Jun Sun-Ah. Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. -Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. -P.128
5. Karimjonova, Shahlo Ravshanjonovna. "COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF THE CAUSATIVE VERB TO HAVE IN MODERN ENGLISH." CURRENT RESEARCH JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES (2767-3758) 2.11 (2021): 141-145.
6. Ravshanjonovna, Karimjonova Shahlo. "O'ZBEK VA INGLIZ TILIDAGI SIFATDOSHLARNING STRUKTURAVIY FUNKSIONAL XUSUSIYATLARI." Oriental Art and Culture 6 (2021): 153-158.
7. Vassilyev V.A. English Phonetics. Theoretical Course. -Moscow, 1970. -P.301
8. Wells J.C. English Intonation: An Introduction. -Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.-478 P.
9. Zawadski H. In Tempo: An English Pronunciation Course. -Sydney, 1994. -393 P.
