Phonetics - Intonation

What is Intonation? In communication, intonation is a vital key. Without it, it is difficult to determine or understand the expression that is within a sentence. Try listening to someone else talking; the tune that we hear is what we call intonations. Intonation happens in every language. It is the music of a language. Referring to how the rise and fall of our voice goes when or as we talk. In linguistic, the main purpose of intonation is to convey personal attitude or grammatical information’s.

How intonation interacts with grammatical, pragmatic and affective level of a language

Intonation marks the constructions of a grammar. The most notable functions of intonation are as a punctuation of spoken language. It shapes the category of the grammatical units and by large helping listeners to understand to the sounds of the words. Usually the end of a complete intonation pattern will match the end of a grammatical structure. Examples like a clause or a sentence. But, if the speech is fast, it will lack intonational markings and grammatical boundaries. The most notable function of intonation is to as a ‘punctuation’ of spoken language, by shaping the category of the grammatical units and by large to help listener to understand the sound of the words.

Intonation indicates discourse functions. For instance “This is a chocolate cake”. By using one type of intonation, the sentence above can make a statement. By using another type of intonation, it will form a question. 

Pragmatic is a way of how a context contributes to meaning, pragmatic analyses not only by way of structural and linguistic knowledge, between both speaker and listener, but al so from the perspective of utterance. From the way of the intonation, we will have a little knowledge on or about the speaker’s intention, feelings or other factors. Basically, pragmatic is needed when we want fuller, deeper and generally and more reasonable account of human language.

Without intonation, the sentence does not have meaning. It would be ambiguous.

For example, “Sherlock saw the man with binoculars”. This sentence could have meant that Sherlock saw the man, and he has a binocular with him. Or, Sherlock saw the man using his own binoculars. By putting intonation in it, then only we can figure out what that sentence really mean.

Another example. “Flying plane can be dangerous”. Ambiguous. This sentence could mean that planes that are flying are dangerous or flying a plane is dangerous. This is where again we see, how intonation is important. To address to listener of what we intend to say, for them to understand and act back to what we say, correctly.

"For a pragmatician, this is, of course, glorious nonsense. In real life, that is, among real language users, there is no such thing as ambiguity—excepting certain, rather special occasions, on which one tries to deceive one's partner or 'keep a door open.'"

(Jacob L. Mey,2001)

It is said there that and it is agreeable that, intonation is important for us to understand and interpret meaning of what one is trying to say. Basically saying is that, intonation is important when learning English. It is the way how our voice rises and falls during a conversation. Intonation often changes the key impression of what we speak or mean. It can go beyond the literal gist of what the speaker is trying to tell. Intonation and stress are the melody of an English language. When putting intonation and stress on the correct word during spoken discourse are the basic and are crucial in order to understand the meaning of a sentence. Often same sentences within the same structure can result in different meaning from what is said. That is just by emphasizing of one word to the other. For example;

            She isn’t flying to Spain tomorrow.

By emphasising on the word “she”, will have the meaning that, she is not flying to Spain tomorrow, maybe someone else is, maybe her colleague.

            She isn’t flying to Spain tomorrow

Here, the intonation is emphasized on the word “Spain”, the meaning has changed. The sentence is pointing that “Spain” is not the actual destination, maybe somewhere else.

            She isn’t flying to Spain tomorrow

By emphasising the word “tomorrow”, it will change again the meaning of the same sentence. High intonation on the word “tomorrow” will take meaning that, she isn’t flying to Spain tomorrow, it maybe some other day.

By some of the examples from above, by having pronouncing and putting the intonation stress on different words, it will actually make to mean something else. Why is it important? Because by being aware on the variety of intonation form, will enable us to extend to our listeners of what we really want to express. If one is presenting a speech, one could prepare a greatly written speech with good presentation and all, but if there is no emotion, no passion and sounded like a robot speaking and sounding like as if one was reading a script, the presentation would be destroyed within 30 seconds, if one did not use intonation and rhythm in the presentation.

Every language has various intonations. Pointed out by Meyers and Holt (2001), should you be in an international environment, we will easily recognize out native language. It is not because we hear it by the individual words, but by the intonation that is uttered. It is the music of our own language. This is important for the teachers to be aware of. It is because that even if the words are in grammatical sound, but if the students are following the pattern of their native language, then the meaning could be immensely diverted. Because it is not what you say, but it is the way you say something that is more powerful.

                                 “…. when grammar and intonation are at odds, the intonation directly carries the illocutionary force of the speech act”

(Wennerstorm, 2001)