К практическому занятию № 4

По теме «Слово и звуковой строй языка»

 

 

1. What is the nature of stress from the point of view of production?

 

2. What is the nature of stress from the point of view of perception?

 

3. What are the factors of prominence?

 

4. What are the levels of stress?

 

5. What can influence the placement of stress within the word?

 

6. What are the types of complex words?

 

7. How do the affixes effect on word stress?

 

8. What are the compound words?

 

9. What part of a compound word is usually stressed?

 

10. What is the place of stress in word-class pairs?

 

11. What words have both strong and weak forms?

 

 

Test 4—I

 

1. What is the nature of stress from the point of view of production?

 

2. What are the factors of prominence?

 

3. What can influence the placement of stress within the word?

 

4. How do the affixes effect on word stress?

 

5. What part of a compound word is usually stressed?

 

6. What words have both strong and weak forms?

 

Test 4—II

 

1. What is the nature of stress from the point of view of perception?

 

2. What are the levels of stress?

 

3. What can influence the placement of stress within the word?

 

4. What are the types of complex words?

 

5. What are the compound words?

 

6. What is the place of stress in word-class pairs?

 

Test 4—III

 

1. What is the nature of stress from the point of view of production?

 

2. What is the nature of stress from the point of view of perception?

 

3. What are the levels of stress?

 

4. What can influence the placement of stress within the word?

 

5. What are the compound words?

 

6. What part of a compound word is usually stressed?

 

Test 4—IV

1. What are the factors of prominence?

 

2. What are the types of complex words?

 

3. How do the affixes effect on word stress?

 

4. What part of a compound word is usually stressed?

 

5. What is the place of stress in word-class pairs?

 

6. What words have both strong and weak forms?

 

 

Т Е М А

«Интонация английской речи.

Мелодия. Фразовое ударение»

 

Intonation

Intonation is a complex unity of speech melody, sentence stress, tempo, rhythm, voice timbre, which enables the speaker to express his thoughts, emotions and attitudes towards the contents of the utterance, towards the hearer and towards the situation.

1. Functions of Intonation in Speech

The intonation performs a number of functions:

 

1.The modal function is to convey the speaker’s attitude towards the subject matter or to the situation

׀ Where are you going? (serious or normal)

׀ Where are you going? (friendly or interested)

2.The accentual function of intonation is to single out the central point of an utterance or to indicate more or less important elements of an utterance.

We usually stay in the country in summer.

Are you going there next summer?

 

3.The syntactical (grammatical) function. This function is to differentiate syntactical types of a sentence and to show the syntactical relations between the words composing it.

Jane, ׀ said her mother, ׀ is fond of reading.

Jane said ׀ her mother is fond of reading.

 

4.The communicative function is to indicate the communicative type of an utterance (statement, question, command, imperative, etc).

Trafalgar square.

Trafalgar square?

 

2. The Pitch of the Voice/Speech Melody

The pitch of the voice plays the most important part in studying intonation. Only in very unusual situations we speak with fixed, unvarying pitch, and when we speak normally the pitch of the voice is constantly changing.

We describe pitch as high and low, and some people find it difficult to relate what they hear in someone’s voice.

We are not interested in all aspects of a speaker’s pitch, the only things that should interest us are those which carry some linguistic information. Individual speakers usually have control over their own pitch, and may choose to speak with a higher than normal pitch, these pitch differences are of linguistic significance.

We have established that for pitch differences to be linguistically significant, it is a necessary condition that they should be under speaker’s control. There is another necessary condition that a pitch difference must be perceptible

3. Tones and Pitch Height

An utterance is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear pause. We’ll begin studying intonation by the shortest piece of utterance - the single syllable. Two common one-syllable utterances are “yes” and “no”. We have a choice of saying them with the pitch remaining at a constant level, or with the pitch changing from one level to another. The changing of the pitch level is called a tone, so, a one – syllable word can be said with either a level tone or a moving tone. Moving tones are more common, if English speaker want to say “yes” or “no” in a definite, final manner, they will probably use a falling tone. If they want to say “yes?” or “no?” in a questioning manner they may say it with a rising tone.

We have mentioned three simple tones: they are level, fall and rise (level_yes _no, fallyes no , rise/yes /no). However, other more complex tones are also used. One that is quite frequently found is fall – rise, another complex tone, much less frequently used, is rise – fall.

Each speaker has his own normal pitch range, a top level is the highest pitch normally used by the speaker, and the bottom level that the speaker’s pitch normally does not go below. In ordinary speech , the intonation tends to take place within the lower part of the speaker’s pitch range, but in situations where strong feelings are to be expressed it is usual to use extra pitch height.

 

_______________________ _______________________

 

_______________________ _______________________

 

We’ll use a new symbol ↑ (a vertical arrow) to indicate extra pitch height.

yes ↑ yes.

 

4. Some functions of English Tones

We’ll now state in what circumstances the different tones are used, we’ll observe some typical occurrences.

Fall yes no

This is the tone about which least needs to be said, and which is usually regarded as more or less “neutral”. The fall could give an impression of “finality”.

Rise yes no

This tone coveys an impression that “ something more is to follow”, it is also used in” invitations to continue”.

Fall - rise _n yes _n no

The fall – rise is used a lot in English and has some rather special functions, it could be described as “limited agreement” or “response with reservations and hesitations”.

Rise – fall_L yes _L no

This tone is used to convey rather strong feelings of “approval, disapproval or surprise”

Level _yes _no

This tone is certainly used in English, but in a rather restricted context, it almost always conveys a feeling of “saying something routine, uninteresting or boring”.

A few “meanings” have been suggested for five tones that have been introduced, but each tone may have many more such meanings.

 

5. The Tone – unit

The tones can be identified on a small number of particularly prominent syllables, these syllables are called a tone – unit. The smallest form of the tone - unit may consist of only one syllable, but more often it is composed of more then one syllable. Let’s study a three – syllable tone - unit: is it you . The third syllable is more prominent than the other two and carries a rising tone. A syllable which carries a tone is called a tonic syllable. Tonic syllables have a high degree of prominence.

 

6. The Structure of the Tone – unit

Each simple tone – unit has one and only one tonic syllable , this means that the tonic syllable is an obligatory component of the tone – unit. We’ll see what the other components may be.

The head

׀ give me those

The rest of the tone – unit is called the head. The first syllable is stressed, this is important. A head is all that part of a tone – unit that extends from the first stressed syllable up to (but not including) the tonic syllable, if there is no stressed syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a head

The pre–head

in an hour

Neither of the two syllables preceding the tonic syllable is stressed. The pre – head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone – unit preceiding the first stressed syllable. The pre–head is found in two cases:

1) when there is no head

2) when there is a head

The tail

It often happens that some syllables follow the tonic syllable. Any syllables between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone – unit are called the tail. The syllables may have secondary stress and may not.

So, we can summarise tone – unit structure as follows:

(pre – head) (head) tonic syllable (tail )

(PH) (H) TS (T)

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