Теоретическая фонетика английского языка (803492), страница 21
Текст из файла (страница 21)
Organizing functionAs it was already mentioned, intonation serves to structure the text. Onthe one hand, it delimitates the text into smaller units, on the other hand, itties together smaller units into bigger ones. These two processes take placesimultaneously.When we speak about delimitation (or segmentation) we mean that intonation can divide the text into phonopassages (or dialogue blocks), phrases,intonation groups. In spoken English the smallest piece of information isassociated with an intonation group, that is, a unit ofintonation containinga nuclear tone. There is no eXact match between punctuation in writing andintonation groups in speech.
Segmentation ofspeech into intonation groupsdepends on a number of factors, such as the length of syntactical units, theintention of the speaker to give emphasis to particular parts ofthe message,the degree of formality ofdiscourse, the tempo of speech and others. A single phrase may contain just one intonation group, but when its length goesbeyond a certain point, it is difficult not to split it into two or more chunksof information.The man told us we could park it here. IThe man told us I we could park it at the railway station.
IIThe man told us I we could park the car I in front ofthe pub I in the streetover there. IIAs we have already mentioned, the number of intonation groups in anutterance may affect its meaning. Compare:86Chapter IV. Intonation"'Jane 'put the 'book on the .table.Jane I "'put the 'book on the .table.IISO, together with nuclear tones pauses perform the function of delimitation, dividing the text into smaller units.Intonation also serves to combine smaller units and organize theminto bigger ones: intonation groups - phrases phonopassages texts.Intonation shows what things belong more closely together thanothers. It also shows what is subordinate to what. Thus, intonation connects textual units with other textual units and contributes to the cohesion of the spoken text, thus performing the integrative function.
Admittedly, integration and delimitation are not formal things, these processesare the realization of the information content of the text.Now, we will consider in more detail the role of intonation in conveying the information content of an utterance. Intonation highlights themost important information in an utterance, which helps to distinguishwhich information is new and which information is known to the listener.The information in a message is divided into new (the rheme) andgiven (the theme).
Given information is something that, as the speakerassumes, the listener already knows. New information is something thatthe speaker thinks the listener does not know. Here is an example:What did John say to you?He was talking to ,Mary I not to ,me.In the response "he was talking" is given information. It should bementioned that "given information" can be retrieved not only from theverbal context (something that was already mentioned or referred to) orthe situation. It is also associated with the knowledge that the speaker andthe listener share.
For example, if both participants know that severalpeople are expected to come, the phrase "The doctor has come" will bepronounced with the nuclear tone on the word "doctor", though no verbalcontext preceded it. So the context here is to be taken in a very broadsense.New information is the most important part of the message.
It is concentrated in the information centre, which may consist of a single word orbe spread over a number ofwords. The nuclear tone marks the nucleus ofthe information centre, 1. e. the information focus.Jack went to Paris. III'd like a new DVD. II4.5. Functions ofIntonation87Notice that the decision as to whether some information is retrievable ornot has to be made by the speaker on the basis ofwhat he thinks the addresseecan take for granted from the situation, etc.
The speaker must, in framing theutterance, make many assumptions, and he does this rapidly and to a largedegree unconsciously. He then arranges his intonation groups and assigns nuclear tones accordingly. But in any particular situation, the speaker's assumptions run the risk ofbeing wrong: what he takes to be retrievable informationmay not in fact be retrievable for the addressee. In this case there is a breakdown of communication, and the listener will probably seek clarification:I'd like a new DVD.The position ofthe nuclear tone on the last notional word ofthe intonation group (end-focus position) is viewed as the basic, neutral, unmarked.In actual speech the rheme and the nuclear tone may be placed differently.
Such position of the nuclear tone is called marked.Did Jack go to Paris? - No, Mark went to Paris.The nuclear tone is shifted when the speaker wants to give focus to aparticular part ofthe intonation group, usually to contrast it with somethingalready mentioned, or understood in the context. In the marked positionthe nuclear tone is sometimes called contrastive focus or logical sentencestress. Compare the placement of the nuclear tone in the following dialogues:Where was he born? - He was born in London.Did your brother study in London? - No, he was born in London.Any part ofspeech (even pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries) may carrynew information and be in the focus position.It's not vour book, it's ours.The book is not on the table, it's in the tab/e.Whlch syllable ofthe word is stressed, ifit has more than one syllable, isdetermined by ordinary conventions of word stress: to'morrow, 'picture,,demon'stration.An important conclusion to be made here is that intonation plays a veryimportant role in structuring the discourse: it organizes words into a meaningful phrase, it ties phrases together within a text, showing in the processwhere divisions come, which things are more important, what is subordinate to what and so on.
In other words, intonation signals how phrases go88Chapter IV Intonationtogether in a spoken discourse. At the same time intonation reflects the influence of the context, both verbal and extralinguistic, on the speech realization.Let us consider the sentence "It was an unusually rainy day". At the beginning ofa story the last three words would be particularly important, theyform the semantic centre with the nucleus on the word "day".
The firstthree words playa minor part. The listener would get a pretty clear pictureofthe story's setting if the first three words were not heard because of someoutside noise and the last three were heard clearly. If the last three wordswhich form the semantic centre were lost there would be virtually no information gained at all.The same sentences may be said in response to the question "What sortofday was it?" In this case the word "day" in the reply would lose some ofitsforce because the person who asks the question already possesses the necessary information.
In this situation there are only two important words"unusually rainy" and they would be sufficient as a complete answer tothe question. The nucleus will be on the word "rainy". In reply to the question "Did it rain yesterday?" the single word "unusually" would bear themajor part of the information, would be, in this sense, more important thanall the others and consequently would be the nucleus of the intonation pattern.The word "was" has little value in the previous examples, but ifthe sentence were said as a contradiction in the reply to "It wasn't a rainy day yesterday, was it?", then "was" would be the most important word of all andindeed, the reply might simply be ((It was" ,omitting the following words asno longer worth saying.
In this phrase the word "was" is the nucleus of thesemantic centre.These variations of intonation achieved by shifting the position of theterminal tone show how the opposition ofthe distribution ofterminal tonesfulfils integrating function. Together with delimitation, integration can beviewed as the basic aspect of discourse.In the next section we will view the functions ofintonation with reference to discourse.4.5.4. Intonation in discourseWe have so far confined our description ofthe functional aspect ofintonation to phrases, now we want to look at the functions of intonation withreference to discourse.4.5. Functions oflntonation89In recent years there has been an increasing interest of linguists inanalyzing "the way sentences work in sequence to produce coherentstretches oflanguage" (D. Crystal, 2007). Linguistic disciplines that dealwith these problems are called text linguistics and discourse analysis.Some scholars apply the term "discourse" to spoken language, while theterm "text" is used to describe the structure of written language.
![](https://s.studizba.com/z.php?f=/templates/si/i/noavatar.png&w=100&h=100&t=1"){kind=avatar}
