Lecture 7 Intonation 2

Tone Unit

For the purpose of intonation analysis, a unit which is generally greater in size than the syllable is
required – tone- unit (In its smallest form it may, however, consist of one syllable only).

is an utterance of 3 syllables, consisting of _______ tone-unit and the only syllable which
carries a tone is the ______ one.

Thus, a syllable which carries a tone is called a _____________________. Such syllables have a high

degree of prominence and also carry a type of stress – ____________________________.

Some authors use terms nucleus and nuclear stress for tonic syllable and tonic stress.

Example:

The Structure of the Tone-unit: The Head

Example:

The rest of the tone-unit in this example is called ________________. The head is all of that part of a

tone-unit which extends from the 1st stressed syllable up to, but not including, the tonic syllable.

In this example, the head consists of the first ______ syllables:

If there is no stressed syllable before the tonic syllable, there is no head.

For example:

The Structure of the Tone-unit: The Pre-head

The _________________________ consists of all unstressed syllables in a tone-unit preceding the 1st

stressed syllable.
Pre-heads can be found:

1. ______________________________________________________________________________

for example:

2. _______________________________________________________________________________

for example:

The pre-head consists of _______, and the head consists of ______________________________.

The Structure of the Tone-unit: The Tail

It often happens that some syllables follow the tonic syllable. Any syllables between the tonic syllable
and the end of the tone-unit are regarded as the ________________.

These examples demonstrate initial tonic syllable and a tail:

If it is necessary to indicate stress in a tail, a __________________________ is used:

Thus, the tone unit can be summarized as:

Example

Roach, 2009, p. 132

Pitch Possibilities in the Simple Tone-unit

If there are other syllables which follow the tonic syllable (if there exists a tale), the pitch movement
of the tone does not seem to be _______________________ on the tonic syllable.

If a tail follows a tonic syllable, almost always the tail syllable/syllables continues to move
_________________from the pitch of the tonic syllable.

For example, the pitch movement of could be displayed like this:

Thus, the 4 syllables in may be diagrammed like this:

Obviously, the pitch of the syllables in the tail is getting progressively ___________________. Thus,
the pitch movement is completed over the rest of the tone-unit (the tail), not within the tonic
syllable.

The similar situation can be found within the falling tone. On a single syllable the pitch

movement might be:

If there are syllables which follow, the fall is not completed on the tonic syllable.

Fall-rise Tones Followed by a Tail

Fall-rise and rise-fall tones can be difficult to recognize if they are extended over tails because their
typical pitch movements are frequently broken up by the structure of the syllables they occur on.

For example:

If a syllable is added, the fall is carried by the _____________ tonic syllable and the rise part by the
____________________one.

For example:

If the _________________________ of voicing is broken, it looks more like this:

Rise-fall Tones

The situation is similar with rise-fall tones

If there are 2 or more syllables in the tail, the syllable which immediately follows the tonic syllable is
always ________________________ and other syllables which follow are __________________.

High and Low Head

Different pitch possibilities in the head can be observed, although they are limited to two:

__________________________ and __________________________.

The stressed syllable which begins the head is high in pitch within the high-head case.

The stressed syllable beginning the head is low within the low-head case. To mark such stressed
syllable a symbol as in ”low” is used.

Fall-rise Tones Followed by a Tail

If there is a tail of 2 or more syllables the normal pitch movement falls on the tonic syllable and

remains _______________ until the last stressed syllable in the tail. The pitch subsequently
________________from that point to the end of the tone-unit. If there is no stressed syllable in the

tail, the rise occurs on the ___________________________.

It is normal for unstressed syllables to continue the pitch of the _____________________ syllables:

If there is more than 1 stressed syllable:

List of resources:

Cruttenden, A. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. Hodder Education, 2008.

Crystal, D. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackvell Publishing, 2008.

Davenport M. – Hannahs S. Introducing Phonetics and Phonology. Hodder Arnold, 2005.

Richards, J. – Schmidt, R. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.

Longman, 2010.

Roach, P. English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Underhill, A. Learning and teaching pronunciation. Macmillan, 2005.