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Intonation and pragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Geoffrey Lindsey
Geoffrey Lindsey
Affiliation:
(University College London and UCLA)
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Extract

The aim of this essay is to argue that English intonation has broadly two functions. On the one hand it picks out a particular item or items in every sentence in order to give it or them semantic prominence; on the other hand, the pitch CONTOUR of an utterance also contributes to meaning and this contribution may itself be divided into two types: firstly, the height of pitch and the degree of its variation in a given utterance reflect speakers' ‘involvement’ or ‘interest’, and, secondly, the direction of the pitch contour towards or away from a neutral low pitch indicates the degree of ‘completeness’ or ‘incompleteness’ of an utterance in a discourse. I shall argue that the division of intonation into these two main subparts, an ‘accent’ function corresponding to what Halliday calls ‘tonicity’ and an ‘attitude’ function corresponding to Halliday's ‘tone’, is valid since it correlates with the division of meaning analysis into semantics and pragmatics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , June 1981 , pp. 2 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1981

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References

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