10 August 2014

Rhythm and intonation

Rhythm = the arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.
English has stress-timed rhythm = stressed syllables tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not so the times from each stressed syllable to the next will tend to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. English rhythm has a characteristic isochromy (stejnočasovost) that goes from stress to another stress while the number of syllables is of no importance to the rhythm. The typical poetic rhythm in English poetry is iamb (da-DUM -> A man put on his hat.) and English language is based on it.

Czech has different rhythmical structure called syllable-timed rhythm where all syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur at regular time intervals. In Czech we always start with a stressed syllable so we are fond of trochee and dactyl.

Intonation
Intonation = the melody of speech, the use of the pitch of the voice to convey meaning. The pitch of the voice is described in terms of high and low. The tone itself can be a carrier of meaning. Intonation can sometimes go into a lexical level where an utterance can mean something different if said with various melodies which is a feature of so called tonic languages like Chinese.
Intonation's function is to show attitude (angry, neutral, prideful, happy) which adds a special emotional meaning to spoken language. It has also grammatical function since sometimes the meaning depends on where you make a pause or which word you stress.
Those who sold quickly made a profit. = all those who sold made the quick profit
Those who sold quickly made a profit. = only those who sold quickly made their profit

There are 5 tone variants:
Fall \– declarative, definite, to confirm something is true. (\Yes = I indeed am.)
Rise / – to express wonder resulting in question (/Yes = Why are you asking?)
Rise-fall – the pitch rises and then descends again. Less frequently used in English to convey rather strong feelings of approval, disapproval or surprise. Considered aggressive or theatrical.
Fall-rise – the pitch descends and then rises again. Frequently used in English for a limited agreement, doubts or reservations.
Level_ – neutral, used for formal routine utterances (Czechs tend to pronounce English only in level tone because we are not able to perceive it emotionally.)

Tone unit
We have to analyze intonation in terms of larger units called tone units (melodická jednotka). The third syllable of the tone unit is more prominent than first two and has rising tone. Such a prominent syllable which carries a tone is called tonic syllable (melodická slabika). Tone unit can consists of up to 4 components but only a tonic syllable is obligatory.
                                   pre-head (PH)       head (H)          tonic syllable (TS)          tail   (T)

The head is all that extends from the first stressed syllable up to but not including a tonic syllable.
‘Give me \those = “Give me” is head, “those” is a tonic syllable because it has melody.

The pre-head is composed of all unstressed syllables preceding the first stressed syllable.
In an hour = “In an” is an unstressed pre-head, “hour” is stressed tonic syllable.

The tail consists of any syllables between the tone syllable and the end of the tonic unit.
Look at it. = Look is stressed tonic syllable, “at it” is a tail.

What did you say? with a fall tone has WHAT as a tonic syllable so the rest is its tail. On the other hand the same utterance with rise tone and tonic syllable on “say” does not have any tail.

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