The pitch component of intonation/Static and kinetic tones. Anatomy of a tune

The pitch component of intonation

Static and kinetic tones. Anatomy of a tune

Speech melody (the pitch component)

• Variations in the height of the voice during speech, described in terms of pitch-changes and levels.
• pitch-changes – perceptible variations in the height of the voice, based on changes of the fundamental frequency of voice within vowels and sonorants

Pitch-level

• – a certain height within the speaker’s voice-range during the pronunciation of the given utterance
• Zones within the speaker’s voice-range

___________________

- high

___________________

• Mid the speaker’s voice-range

___________________

• Low

___________________

Pitch-level

______________________

Very high

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Fairly high

______________________

Mid high

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ the speaker’s voice-range

Mid low

______________________

Fairly low

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Very low

______________________

Functions of the pitch-level

• Marks the degree of semantic prominence attached by the speaker to this or that word or phrase in an utterance
• Conveys various shades of modal-attitudional meanings and emotional colouring

Pitch-changes

– perceptible variations in the height of the voice, based on changes of the fundamental frequency of voice within vowels and sonorants

• May change in two directions: upward and downward.

Pitch-change fall rise fall-rise rise-fall

tone

• A cooperation of pitch change or a pitch contrast, increased force of articulation and increased duration on phonetically prominent (stressed) elements of the speech chain.
• Static (level) tone – tone of unvarying pitch produced by keeping the vocal cords at a constant tension
• Kinetic (dynamic) tone - tone of varying pitch produced by varying the tension of the vocal cords

Static tones

• High

• Very high
• Fairly high

• Mid

• Mid high
• Mid low

• Low

• Fairly low
• Very low

Functions of tones

• Static tones give prominence to words in an utterance.

(the higher varieties give greater prominence and signifies greater semantic importance)

Kinetic tones

• Indicate the communicative type of an utterance
• Express the speaker’s attitude towards the subject matter, the listener and the situation
• Single out the centre of new information in an utterance or the point of greater semantic importance as viewed by the speaker

• The nuclear tone – the tone carried by the most important word (generally the last notional word)
• The terminal tone – the last tone in an intonation group that serves as its boundary marker
• The tune – the pitch pattern of the whole intonation group