THE PITCH COMPONENT OF INTONATION Olga Kolomiychuk 4

THE PITCH COMPONENT OF INTONATION Olga Kolomiychuk 4 -B

The core component of the intonation structure is the pitch. The PITCH COMPONENT or SPEECH MELODY is the variations in the pitch of the voice in the connected speech. Pitch parameters include - the direction of the pitch (напрям мелодики); - the pitch level (мелодійний рівень); - the pitch range (мелодійний діапазон).

THE PITCH DIRECTION • Not all stressed syllables are equal. One syllable has a greater prominence. It forms the nucleus (the focal point) of an intonation pattern. The NUCLEUS is a strongly stressed syllable which is generally the last stressed syllable of an intonation pattern. It is the most important part of the intonation pattern. Phoneticians single out from 4 till 12 nuclear tones.

There are the following types: the Low Fall, the High Fall, the Low Rise, the High Rise, the Fall-Rise, the Rise-Fall, the Mid-Level. There also distinguished STATIC TONES (статичні тони), in which the voice remains steady on a given pitch throughout the duration of the tone: the High Level Tone, the Low Level Tone.

There are three PITCH LEVELS: high, medium, and low. In emphatic and emotional speech an extra high and an extra low pitch levels may be distinguished additionally to three unemphatic pitch levels.

The SEMANTIC MEANINGS of nuclear terms are difficult to specify in general terms. Usually falling tones imply the sense of finality. The rising tones carry the sense of incompletion. Level tones express hesitation and uncertainty.

RHYTHM: DEFINITION. KINDS

TEMPO OF SPEECH is the relative speed of utterance which is measured by the rate of syllable succession, and the number and duration of pauses in a sentence. The average rate of delivery may contain 2 to 4 syllables per second for slow speech (lento), from 3 to 6 syllables per second for normal speech, and 5 to 9 syllables per second for fast speech (allegro).

PAUSE is an act of stopping in the flow of speech. Acoustically, a pause is the absence of sound. Physiologically, it is the absence of articulation. Pauses are used for physiological purposes (to inhale the air), for semantic purposes (to show the link between phrases or syntagms), and for emphatic purposes (e. g. to express surprise, bewilderment, astonishment, etc. ).

VOICE TIMBER is the ‘colour’ or ‘tonal quality’ of voice. Timbre depends on the physiological properties and psychological state of a person.

INTONATION: STYLISTIC USE

Phonostylistics is the study of intonational functional styles. It's of common knowledge that much of what people say depends on the situation they are in. A person speaks differently on different occasions (e. g. when you're talking with your bosom friend or an official person; delivering a lecture or reading news on TV or over the radio; reciting a piece of poetry on the stage). That means that every functional style is situationally determined.

The choice of a proper style is also associated with social context or social identity of the speaker (their social status, occupation) as the language of an educated person differs greatly from the language, for example, of a cockney even if the speech situation is similar. Phonostylistic differences are conditioned by such extralinguistic factors as age, sex, personal characteristics, purpose, and emotional state of the speaker.

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