What is the term for intonation patterns that span across entire sentences?
ASentence stress
BIntonational contour
CProsodic markers
DPitch variation
Answer:
B. Intonational contour
Read Explanation:
Understanding Intonational Contour
- An Intonational Contour refers to the overall pattern of pitch changes, stress, and rhythm that spans across an entire sentence or utterance, rather than just individual words. It is a crucial aspect of prosody.
- It encompasses the entire melodic shape of a spoken sentence, indicating how the speaker's voice rises and falls, often conveying meaning beyond the literal words.
Key Aspects and Functions
- Grammatical Function: Intonational contours can differentiate between sentence types, such as statements (often ending with a falling contour) and yes/no questions (typically ending with a rising contour). For example, "You are going?" versus "You are going."
- Pragmatic Function: It conveys the speaker's attitude, emotion, and intent. A contour can express surprise, sarcasm, enthusiasm, boredom, or doubt.
- Information Structure: It helps in highlighting new information versus old information, or emphasizing particular words within a sentence. Words with higher pitch peaks or stronger stress often carry new or important information.
- Cohesion and Coherence: In longer stretches of speech, intonation helps to signal the relationship between clauses and sentences, contributing to the overall flow and understanding of a discourse.
Related Concepts for Competitive Exams
- Prosody: This is the study of elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Intonational contour is a primary component of prosody.
- Stress: While related, stress refers to the prominence given to specific syllables within a word (e.g., PREsent vs. preSENT) or words within a phrase. Intonational contour operates at a higher level, encompassing the entire sentence.
- Pitch Accent: This term refers to the prominence assigned to a particular syllable within an utterance due to a significant change in pitch. These pitch accents contribute to the overall intonational contour.
- Boundary Tones: These are pitch movements (rises or falls) that occur at the end of prosodic phrases or sentences, marking their completion or continuation. They are integral to the perception of intonational contours.
- Tone Languages vs. Intonation Languages: In tone languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), pitch changes on a syllable alter the word's lexical meaning. English, however, is an intonation language, where pitch changes primarily affect sentence-level meaning or emotion, not individual word meanings.