English Intonation Study on Male English Majors

鄒維康

1.Overview of English Intonation Research

Intonation is the melody of speech.Pitch changes on stressed syllables determine the intonation patterns of an utterance.Intonation is the combination of pitch variations and stress.Intonation is also interpreted by Halliday as a complex of three systemic variables，tonality，tonicity and tone.According to Halliday，intonation is not only a matter of making oneself understood or having a good pronunciation，but also a way of expressing different meanings.It is generally agreed that the earliest discussion of melody in spoken English starts from the work of John Hart.Hart attempts to outline the nature of stress in English.He distinguishes six diacritical marks for types of word-stress.The modern study of English intonation starts from the beginning of the twentieth century.In this time of study，there are two representative scholars— Halliday，who represents the study of British intonation and Chomsky，who represents the study of language in America.The former focuses on the structure and functions of intonation and the latter comes up with the idea of generative phonology.

2.Significance and Theoretical Basis of This Study

Studying English intonation of Chinese students is very useful for the second language learners learning English.It is also welcomed by English language teachers as an approach of better understanding this complex area language and developing teaching materials and techniques to convey thins to second language learners.One of the values of doing this experiment to both teachers and researchers is that it provides a manageable tool for analyzing and interpreting the intonation choices made by male speaker in different communicative events.

Intonation is correlated with sentence type.Stress is a property by syllables.Accent is the syllable which actually is highlighted in a sentence to show the importance of its words.Stress of the particular syllable in the word gets the accent if the word is important enough to get one.According to OConnor and Arnold，when words are important to the meaning in a particular situation they are accented and when words are not especially important they are not accented.The words that are accented in pitch tend to be the ones that are the most important to the meaning.

3.Research Design

3.1 Subject

Two Chinese freshmen English majors were involved in this study.Both of them are male students from Shanghai.In the intonation of questions in English，we should first separate two types of questions，particular questions and general questions.The former are said to be pronounced usually with a falling tone while the latter are with a rising tone.We should keep in mind.However，the issue is not so simple.The intonation of questions involved way too much factors.In this study I selected few questions uttered by the two subjects from the drama they played.Declarative sentences are the majority sentences I selected as corpus.

3.2 Instruments

In this study，phonetic analysis software Praat 5.3.57，a widely used phonetic labeling instrument，was used in labeling the selected sentences.In this study，statistics analysis software SPSS21.0.0.0，a widely used data analysis instrument，was used in analyzing the collected data.

In this study，phonetic labeling work was done by author herself with phonetic analyzing software called Praat.Sentences are selected from their speech drafts in presentation and actors lines in drama.Sentences are selected according to different sentence type by different male students in different contexts.

4.Data Analysis

4.1 Intonation analysis in sentences

One thing interesting about the first male speaker in his statements is that he likes raising pitch at the end of the sentence.The pitch contours of the sentences uttered by the first male speaker in his speech and drama can clearly show that his raising pitch at the end of the sentence.The visible pitch contours of the sentences uttered by the second male speaker in his speech.We can notice that the highest pitch always focus on the beginning of the sentence.When there are three words come out in paralleling，the first twos pitches are always raised，while the last ones goes down.In wh-question，the highest pitches also fall on those two words.The following pictures are visible pitch contours of the sentences uttered by the first male speaker in his drama.

The visible pitch contours of the sentences uttered by the male speakers in the drama.If the questions are started with the words “Do” the fist two words bear the highest pitch，and then the pitch goes down，but raises up at the end of the questions.As for the questions such as “Are you”，“Will you”，if the speaker already knows the answer and just wants to get a confirm from the other speaker，the highest pitch falls on the beginning few words，and goes down words by words； if the speaker does not know the answer and really wants to get it from the other speaker，the focus is on the end few words and the pitch constantly raised with the words uttered.The visible pitch contours of the sentences uttered by the first male speaker in the drama.The “Yes” word in answering a question may not be attached with the highest pitch if it is followed by other additional words.

4.2 Duration time analysis

I divided the duration time according to the place where duration happens.The first situation is when the whole sentence has no comma or connection words：

5.Conclusion

According to Halliday，intonation is not only a matter of making oneself understood by others or having a good pronunciation，but also a way of expressing different meanings.This is a variable we should take into consideration while analyzing those data collected.Although many scholars assign a broad universal character to intonation，the specific feature of a particular speakers intonation seems to be very much dependent on the mother tongue.

Reference：

[1]Bolinger，Dwight Le Merton.Intonation and Its Uses.Stanford University Press.1989.

[2]Clark，John and Yallop，Colin.An Introduction To Phonetics & Phonology.UK：Basil Blackwell Ltd Crystal，David.Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English.Cambridge Universtiy Press.1969.

[3]Halliday，M.A.K.and W.S.Greaves.Intonation in the Grammar of English.London：Equinox Publishing Ltd.2008.

[4]Hirst，Daniel and Albert Di Cristo.Intonation Systems： A Survey Of Twenty Languages.Cambridge University Press.1988.

[5]OConnor，J.D.& G.F.Arnold.Intonation of Colloquial English.London： Longman Group Ltd.1973.