INTONATION STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH
Keywords:
Keywords: Tone, Attitude, Nucleus, Tone Group, Tonic SyllableAbstract
Intonation plays a vital role in the spoken and conversational English. It gives
an eminent space to the contemporary English. It has been observed that when the vocal
cords are kept loosely together, they vibrate and that the vibration of the vocal cords
produces a musical note called voice. During normal speech, in the case of an adult
male, the vocal cords vibrate between 80 to 120 times a second and between 150 to
200 times a second in the case of an adult female. The rate at which the vocal cords
vibrate is called the frequency of vibration and this determines the pitch of the voice.
The more rapidly the vocal cords vibrate, the higher will be the pitch and vice versa.
The patterns of variation of the pitch of the voice constitute the intonation of a
language. The pitch at which stressed syllables are uttered in natural speech can be
high, low or it can change from high to low or low to high. Any change in the pitch. of
accented syllables in spoken sentences is known as intonation or tone. Intonation
indicates the sentence type (e.g., statement or question) as well as the attitude of the
speaker.
References
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