SUBJECT: PHONETIC TOPIC: INTONATION CURVE; KIND OF CURVE INTONATION; SOFTWARE FOR THE TEACHING OF INTONATION TEACHER: GLORITA

AGUILAR. STUDENTS: MARIA CENTENO WASHINGTON ERAZO CARLOS ROMERO

MAJOR OBJECTIVE:  Study intonation to determine the basic components and improve the correct pronunciation of the English Language SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:  Study intonation for the people understands you.  Study intonation to give the correct meaning that you want to say.

JUSTIFICATION In this study we attempt to identify the basic components of statement intonation as related to focus, accent and lexical stress in English. The term intonation refers to a means for conveying information in speech which is independent of the words and their sounds. However, the patterning of pitch in speech is so closely bound to patterns of timing and loudness, and sometimes voice quality, that we cannot consider pitch in isolation from these other dimensions.

THEORETICAL MARK Definition of Intonation: At least two definitions of intonation are current in English language teaching. In what can be called the broad definition, Allen (1971) says that intonation is a quality of language that includes both rhythm and melody and is produced by tonal height and depth along with stress, volume and varying lengths of pause. In this definition, intonation means something like prosody or supra-segmental. The broad view of intonation is widespread, as intonation is often used to refer to the way someone says something. In English, the way something is said includes not only pitch movement but also length, intensity, and a host of other factors, such as voice quality A second, more narrow, definition of intonation restricts its meaning to significant, linguistic uses of pitch. Ladd (1996) defines intonation as one of the suprasegmental features [of language] to convey sentence level pragmatic meanings in a linguistically structured way. Significant Pitch A fundamental concept in intonation is that, although every voiced sound in an utterance inherently carries pitch information, not all syllables are associated with pitch in a significant way. This concept fits with the intuition that only certain syllables stand out in a given phrase.1 Curve intonation: The American structuralists divided intonation into three independent domains or subsystems, which they called pitch, stress and juncture, and for which they describe phonemic entities. Pike (1945, 25) describes the intonation contour (or pitch) as consisting of four level tones: Pitch phonemes or level tones of Pike (1945, 25) and American English as follows: /1/: extra high /2/ high (usual stressed tone) /3/: mid (normal) /4/: low pitch (low, final)

QUARTERLY Volume 33, Number 1 h Spring 1999

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A vertical line indicates that the pitch changes between syllables. l la l

A diagonal or sloping line indicates that the pitch changes within a syllable l la

The contour in (1a) starts with a high pitch on the stressed: (I), and has another high on the stressed one. The first man before the break has a low and a mid pitch. The second part of the utterance has an extra high on this and a final low on the second man (Pike 1945, 47):
o2-

(1a) I didn't say one man, I said this man. -3 o2- -4-3/ o2- 3- o1- -4//

The level tones do not express meaning by themselves, but they express meaning differences in the contour. In other words, the level tones are understood as phonemes. The pitch phonemes combine in different ways yielding intonation morphs, linguistic units with meaning: "For intonation, this use of the morpheme is helpful, since the meaningful contours are composed of meaningless subunits, the pitch levels (and so paralleling the meaningful parts of words made up of meaningless sounds.)" (Pike 1945, 177, fn. 40) If we imagine an utterance such as He wanted to do it with a fall like in (2a), Pike would describe this as a /2-4/ contour, as in (2b). However, this contrasts with a /1-4/ contour, as in (2c).2

The particular diagrams are quoted from Couper-Kuhlen (1986, 65).

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The meanings of the tones are extracted by the contrasts that results from applying different tones to one and the same syntactic structure.

KIND OF CURVE INTONATION: We have many types of curve intonation but the most common are the following: The 2-4 Intonation Curve:

The sequence of pitches or the rise and fall of the voice in a sentence is the intonation of the sentence.

The

lesson is difficult

The accented syllable is pronounced on pitch 2. The syllable that follows is pronounced on pitch 4. This is called 2-4 intonation. We can emphasize the most important part of a sentence by using the 2-4 intonation. In English the change of tone or pitch on the last emphasize word is most important. The 2-3 Intonation Curve:

When we want to pronounce longer sentences more rapidly and we want to emphasize more than one word, we use the 2-3 intonation.

The professor teach the lesson

The 3-2 Intonation Curve:

The 3-2 Intonation is frequently used to indicate something which is incomplete. It is used in a series of words or phrases. This intonation is used in counting. w n tu ri

The 3-2 Intonation is something used to indicate a series of things. [m n wImIn nd Ildr n ]

The 2-4-3 Intonation Curve in combination of sentences: The 2-4-3 intonation curve goes at the end of the first part of the sentences and the pronunciation of these sentences is slowly. When you meet him, tell him what I said.

ANALYSIS SOFTWARE FOR THE TEACHING OF INTONATION

In the last fifteen years, there have been major paradigm shifts in both general and applied linguistics toward acknowledging intonation as an indispensable component of language and communication. In addition, the hardware and software for conducting acoustic phonetic signal analysis have recently become more accessible. The purpose of with this research is double: (1) to briefly describe and critique some of the software previously available for this purpose; and (2) to suggest criteria for the conceptualization of multimedia software and concomitant research on the teaching of discourse-based phonology and intonation. PERCEPTUAL AND ARTICULATORY TRAINING BEYOND SEGMENTALS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH The traditional theoretical linguistic basis for the learning and teaching of pronunciation was a focus on the segmentals, that is, the articulatory phonetics of individual sounds. Methods making use of visualisation as an aid in intonation learning wrongly imply, that visualisation by itself is useful in teaching. Experimental phonetic research has shown that there is no empirical basis for a number of assumptions made in these methods. Especially, the tacit assumption that the pupil is an unbiased perceiver of whatever the teacher is presenting leads to many problems, because the perceptual abilities of the pupils in general have not been developed sufficiently and specifically enough for the perception of intonation. An example of a program that displays visual pitch curves is a product from Kay Elemetrics called Visi-Pitch that has been available for a number of years for DOS-based personal computers (PCs) (Abberton & Fourcin, 1975; Fischer, 1986; James, 1976, 1979; Molholt, 1988).2 With Visi-Pitch, students are able to see both a native speaker's and their own pitch curve simultaneously.

Students first speak a sentence into a microphone; their utterance is then digitized and pitch-tracked, and they can see a display of their pitch curve directly under a native speaker's pitch curve of the same sentence.

Currently we count with many kind of programs but now we are going to study the next: tell me more

I didnt understand you!

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CONCLUSIONS:  Intonation refers to a means for conveying information in speech which is independent of the words and their sounds.  Intonation changes the meaning the sentences in English. RECOMMENDATION:  If you do not use the accepted intonation forms, people will not understand you then you need put in practice all the kind of curve intonation.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:  Language Learning & Technology-July 1998, Volume 2, Number 1 http://llt.msu.edu/vol2num1/article4/  Intonation Components in short English Statements Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Northwestern University, Evanston  Intonational phonology  A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect. Volume 33, Number 1

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