Rising-falling tones

Classification of vowels and consonants.

Consonants

Acc to the type of obstruction	Occlusives: plosive (p, b, t, d, k, g) Nasal sonorants (m, n, ŋ)
	Constrictives: fricative (f, v, s, z, Ө, ỏ, ш, ж, h) Medial sonorants (r, w j) / lateral sonorant (l)
	Affricates (тщ, дж)

INTONATION AND ITS FUNCTIONS

Effective communication depends to a significant degree on such features of speech as variations in the pitch, loudness, tempo and timbre of the voice. These are prosodic, or non-segmental, features, which form a complex unity of properties commonly referred to as intonation -an indispensable characteristic of connected speech and its basic unit - an utterance in particular. Intonation constitutes a constant structural element of an utterance and performs a number of important communicative functions.

First of all, intonation delimits utterances and parts of utterances in the speech flow. Indeed, from the point of view of the listener, connected speech is a chain of relatively self-contained semantic blocks, the internal formation of which, as well as their linking with one another, is actualised in oral speech with the help of prosodic means: each of the blocks has some obligatory prosodic features organized into a certain prosodic structure. In other words, each of the semantic blocks singled out of the speech flow presents a prosodic, or intonation, unit. Since the segmental base of such a unit often comprises a group of words, it is usually defined as an intonation group.

Structurally intonation groups can be compared to syntactic constructions: some of them bear special prosodic signals of semantic incompleteness, while others are marked as more or less semantically independent and complete.

Ли intonation-group with the highest degree of semantic completeness is generally found in a stretch of speech coextensive with an independent grammatical sentence and is perceived as a complete utterance.

On the other hand, as is clear from the above examples, a complete utterance can be made up by two or more intonation-groups, while none of them taken separately arc semantically independent. The reasons for it are not only of a lexical-grammatical kind. Moreover, the lexical-grammatical markers can be actually missing as, e.g., in.1 compound sentence, where the clauses are structurally equal, so to speak.

Perception of semantic incompleteness is apparently determined by the difference between the prosodic structures of a non-final and final intonation-groups, reflecting j|j their specific roles in the utterance: initiating or continuing information, on the one hand, and completing it, on the other.

The division of an utterance into intonation-groups in English, as in other language correlates with the semantic and syntactic relations between the words in it. Sometimes it is only through the placement of intonation boundaries: (markers of intonation division) that the actual kind of relationship is revealed in oral speech. It is possible to say, then, that the delimiting function of intonation (prosody) often becomes grammatical (syntactic).

Although the principle of the speech flow division by prosodic means has a universal nature, there may be difficulties for a foreign learner of the English language, especially in reading a text aloud, since the wrong placement of intonation boundaries may lead to an ambiguity of meaning or even sense confusion. Appropriate intonation division of an English text requires a profound understanding of the sentence structure which is often more difficult in English than, e.g., in Russian because of the smaller number of morphological and punctuation prompts.

Apart from indicating boundaries both between utterances and within them, intonation gives precision to the information being conveyed: it signals the central point of information, marking more and less important elements within the utterance through contrasts in the degree of prominence. This function of intonation is called а с с e n t u a 1. Compare, e.g.

Another important function of intonation is to show the aim of communi­cation, i.e. to indicate the type of a speech act, or in other terms, the communicative type (a statement, a question, an imperative, an exclamation) or subtype of an utterance (e.g. a reply or an announcement within a statement; an instruction or an order within an imperative, an alternative question with a complete/incomplete list of choices or a certainty/uncertainty disjunctive question within interrogative utterances). Often, intonation is the only marker of the speaker's communicative intent.

Widely recognized is the important role of intonation in conveying the speaker's attitude to the subject matter and to the speech situation, as well as his relations with the listener and his emotional state at the moment of communication. This is the attitudinal, or modal-emotional, function of intonation.

General Analysis of the Pitch Component

The pitch component of intonation, or speech melody, is commonly referred to as variations in the height of the voice during speech, and is generally described in terms of pitch-changes and levels.

A pitch-level is a certain height within the speaker's voice-range. The notion of a level may be applied to the whole stretch of an utterance, and then it means the average height of the voice during the pronunciation of the given utterance. In a narrower sense a pitch-level is associated with some particular point in an utterance, generally the boundary points of pronunciation units: syllables, rhythmic groups, intonation-groups. The starting, mid and ending points of a unit, particularly, those of a syllable may coincide in their height and then the syllable is pronounced on a steady, unchanged pitch. In such cases the most significant perceptible characteristic is the actual height of the unit in relation to the speaker's voice-range. If the voice at the beginning of a unit is higher (or lower) than at its end, there is an effect of a falling or a rising pitch change. The height of the voice within a unit may change in two directions: upward and then downward, or vice versa - a Rise-Fall or a Fall-Rise, respectively; sometimes there may be even three changes - Rise-Fall-Rise.

Perceptible variations in the height of the voice may be based on actual changes of the fundamental frequency of voice within vowels (and sonorants) as in the examples above, or result from a contrast between the pitch-levels of the adjacent syllables, as in the examples below.

A pitch-change (whether a real glide or the result of a pitch contrast) is a feature perceived more easily than a pitch-level. Priority in identification is usually given to the direction of the pitch movement rather than to the height of the beginning and ending points of the pitch movement. However, variations within pitch-changes of the same directional type can be captured and summed up only by introducing gradations according to their initial and final levels.

Pitch-levels can be conveniently described in terms of three relevant zones within the speaker's voice-range: high mid low

Any height within the voice-range is determined by the zone it belongs to: it is identified as a low pitch-level within the low zone; as a mid level within the median zone and as a high pitch-level in the high zone. Each of the pitch zones can be further subdivided, and the number of pitch levels thereby increased: fairly high and very high, rather low and very low, mid high and mid low

In reality, of course, there are many more gradations of pitch-height than is shown in the above scheme, but they are not all of them significant for perception and can therefore be regarded as irrelevant for linguistic purposes.

From the functional point of view the pitch-level plays an important role in marking the degree of semantic prominence attached by the speaker to this or that word or phrase in an utterance.

Pitch level is also significant for conveying various shades of modal-attitudional meanings and emotional colouring.

Static and Kinetic Tones. Anatomy of a tune

Listening and speaking practice shows that we tend to single out from an utterance stretch only some of its elements while others are more or less overlooked as insignificant. The reasons for it lie in the specific contrastive character of the speech chain: some of its elements stand out phonetically and functionally among the others, i.e. they are prominent, or stressed. Prominent segments are usually associated with a pitch change or a pitch contrast of some kind combined with increased force of articulation, or loudness, and increased duration. Such a cooperation of different prosodic parameters is reflected in the notion of t h e t о n e - the basic element of

English intonation.

Tones are divided into two classes since they may be produced in two quite distinct ways: 1) by keeping the vocal cords at a constant tension thus producing a tone of unvarying pitch; 2) by varying the tension of the vocal cords thus producing a tone of varying pitch. Tones of the first type are known as static (level tones), while those of the second type are known as kinetic or dynamic.

According to the actual height within the speaker's voice-range static tones may be high, mid and low with two relevant gradations within each type - very high, fairly high; mid high, mid low; fairly low, very low. In fact, the number of static tones corresponds to the number of significant pitch gradations, or levels.

Kinetic tones are generally classified according to the following criteria:

1) direction of the pitch change;

2) width of the pitch change, or its interval;

3) relative position of the pitch change within the speaker's voice range.

The last two factors are obviously closely interrelated: both of them derive from the pitch-level characteristics of the initial and final points of the utterance stretch embraced by the kinetic tone. It should be noted in this connection that although a tone is associated with a stressed syllable, its realization often involves the unstressed syllables attached to the stressed one, particularly those following it. Thus a rising pitch change is always carried by the unstressed syllables and not by the stressed one, whenever there are one or more enclitics in the stress-group (see below).

Of the parametres involved in the analysis of kinetic tones, direction of the pitch change is evidently the most significant characteristic. The number of kinetic tone types corresponds to the relevant directional types of pitch-change, whereas variations in the width of the pitch change and its register are responsible for further subdivision of each of the tone-types into subtypes (variants). Not all of these, of course, arc equally important for semantic contrasts. And only the variants which are distinctly different in their functions, have the status of tonetic units. Thus, the general classification of English kinetic tones may be represented as follows.

Static and kinetic tones differ in form and in their function in speech.

Static tones give prominence to words. In general, the degree of prominence is proportional to the pitch-height of the static tone:, the higher varieties are usually associated with greater prominence, which, in turn, signifies greater semantic importance.

Kinetic tones are more significant to the utterance. Besides giving prominence to a word, kinetic tones perform a number of other functions pertaining to the overall communicative meaning of an utterance. They

a) indicate the communicative type of an utterance;

b) express the speaker's attitude towards the subject-matter, the listener and the situation;

c) single out the centre of new information in an utterance or the point of greater semantic importance as viewed by the speaker.

It's easy to notice that the functions of static and, especially, kinetic tones largely overlap with the functions of intonation as a whole, which testifies to the role of the pitch component and of the tones, in particular, as the most active elements of intonation.

Because of their communicative relevance kinetic tones are virtually indispensable for the prosodic organization of speech: practically any utterance / intonation-group has a kinetic tone*.

The total number of tones (static and kinetic) in an utterance or part of it forming a separate intonation-group is determined by the number of important (prominent) words, and most typically there are from 1 to 5 tones.

The tone carried by the most important word (which is generally the last notional word) is called the nuclear tone. The nuclear tone may be called terminal, since it is always the last tone in an intonation-group and serves as its boundary marker.

The term tone should be distinguished from the term t u n e, which is used to refer to the pitch pattern of the whole intonation-group. It is obvious that the notion of tune /.v wider than that of tone and the tune may comprise several tones while a tune of a minimal size coincides with a tone realized in a monosyllabic utterance.

The stressed and unstressed syllables within the tune are distinguished according to their position and function in the tune.

Unstressed or partially stressed syllables which precede the first full stress (the onset) form the p r e h e a d. The portion of the tune extending from the first stressed syllable up to, but not including, the nuclear syllable is referred to as the h e a d. It consists of any number of stressed or unstressed syllables (at least one of the former). The syllable bearing the nuclear (terminal) tone is called the nucleus of the utterance. Unstressed or partially stressed syllables following the nucleus are called the t a i 1.

The number of the component parts in a tune may vary. The only indispensable element of a tune is the nucleus. The other components may or may not be present in a tune. It depends on the length of the utterance, the phonetic structure of the words (monosyllabic or polysyllabic) and the number of prominent words in it.

The Structure and Functions of Utterance-Stress. Peculiarities of English Utterance-Stress

Utterance-stress (sentence-stress) is a prosodic phenomenon of speech with a linguistic function of indicating the relative importance of various elements in an utterance. This function is manifested through phonetic contrastivity of successive syllables in an utterance perceived as their different phonetic prominence.

Importantly, phonetic contrasts between stressed und unstressed syllables in an English utterance are more conspicuous than in many other languages, includini Russian and Belarusian.

The effect of phonetic prominence is based on a complex of prosodic modifications which can be in a general way described as an increase of the force of articulation (intensity), length (duration) and pitch level (fundamental frequency of the voice). Besides, the articulation of a vowel (formant structure) also plays a role in the perception of utterance-stress: a syllable prominent on utterance level always has a full quality vowel The reason for it lies in the close relationship between utterance-stress and word-stress: it is the stressed syllable of a word that carries prominence when the word is felt to be important in an utterance. However, not all the syllables that are stressed when the word is pronounced in isolation retain prominence in connected speech. Compare, e.g.:

' well-read

He's amazingly well- Vead.

He is an a'mazingly ' well -read ⁴person.

On the other hand, a syllable which is unstressed in an isolated word may become stressed in an utterance. Compare, e.g.:

un' plea sant

I Midn't say it was,pleasant. Quite on the contrary, I said it was Hmpleasant

Again, monosyllabic words, of which there are a great number in English, often take utterance-stress, although such words are said to have no word-stress pattern as there can be no contrast in phonetic prominence between syllables within these words. Compare, e.g.:

'Not', 'wait'.

I'm 'not going to ' wait any Monger.

11 must be pointed out that the identification of utterance stress depends on pitch modifications more than on any oilier prosodic parameter. A word carrying utterance

stress is at the same time the carrier of fl tone which is defined as a combination of a pitch change (or pitch contrast) with the force of articulation, and the number of stresses in an utterance coincides with the number of tones.

It must be made clear, too, that although utterance-stress is realised through syllabic prominence, it actually embraces the whole word. That is, when we deal with utterance-stress we speak about the prominence of words carrying greater semantic weight for the message being conveyed. Consequently, it would be more accurate to define peculiarities of English utterance-stress in terms of contrasts between prominent and non-prominent words.

The occurrence and the distribution of utterance-stress in an English utterance are determined by factors of two kinds: semantic and rhythmic.

The influence of the rhythmic factor manifests itself mainly in the placement of prenuclear stresses, the number and the distribution of which depend not only on the semantic weight of the words in this part of the intonation-group but also on the ten­dency towards alternating prominent and non-prominent elements in the speech flow.

The assumption that utterance-stress in English (as in Russian, Belarusian and many other languages) is predicted semantically means that its placement in a given sentence is determined by the circumstances of the speech situation and speech context. It is, nevertheless, possible to postulate some rules for a 'normal' stress-pattern of an English utterance. This possibility is based on some of the inherent properties of lexical units: in English, as in other languages, words have different potential accentability and are subdivided into ' stressable', or protected, and 'unstressable or unprotected.

The classification of English words according to their accentability as in most other languages is based on the following general principle: stress on notional words and absence of stress on function words. However, the purpose of ensuring confidence in the choice of utterance-stress patterns in connected speech requires that a foreign learner should be aware of the specific properties of different word-classes in English and of the conditions, under which deviations from the 'normal' stress-pattern of an utterance may occur.

A peculiarity of English and, at the same time, one of its potential difficulties for a foreign learner is a great number of form-words, or function words, and their extremely high frequency in speech.

Another difficulty is that monosyllabic function words, when unstressed, have in many cases a weakened vowel in English. In other words, the use of a vowel of full quality (or quantity), i.e. the use of a strong form, in this position leads to a considerable foreign accent and can even hamper correct understanding. The list of function words includes articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions, some pronouns, auxiliary and modal verbs.

According to their pronunciation in an unstressed position function words can be divided into several groups. The first group consist of words that are never used in their strong form in an unstressed position in an utterance. The second group includes auxiliary and modal verbs as well as prepositions which are reduced when unstressed at the beginning or in the middle of an utterance, but retain their strong form when unstressed at the end of an utterance (or for some of the function words at the beginning of it). The third group is for words that retain their strong form regardless of stress or utterance position (see the list below). As you will notice, some of these words do not belong to function words. They are notional words, particularly, adverbs and main verbs, sometimes nouns*. Yet, they are often unstressed in speech and, therefore, can be erroneously reduced, if the learner does not take care to preserve their full pronunciation.

Rising and Falling Tones in English

RISING TONES

The rising type of pitch-change in English has two structural varieties: a) the rise of the voice takes place on the stressed syllable; b) the rise is carried by the unstressed syllables following the stressed one while^the latter is pronounced on a steady pitch, The two varieties are mutually exclusive: the first one occurs when the nuclear syllable is the last syllable of an intonation-group, i.e. when there is no tail; and the second is found in intonation-groups having a tail.

When there is a tail the effect of a rise may be the result of a pitch contrast between the low or mid level of the stressed syllable and the mid or high level of the unstressed syllables; in other words, there may be no actual pitch glide. This is often the case when there is one syllable in the tail and its vowel is short.

Apart from structural variation depending on the syllabic composition of the nuclear word and its position in an intonation-group the rising tone, as any other kinetic tone, has functional variants (see the previous chapter about it).

For practical teaching / learning purposes four variants of a nuclear rise should be distinguished in English.

1. The Mid Wide Rise. The voice rises (on the nuclear syllable or on the tail) from a mid-low to a high pitch-level. The given variety of the rising tone is called wide because the pitch change actually covers two zones of the voice range: the mid and the high zones.

2. The High Narrow Rise. The ending pitch-level of the High Narrow Rise is llie same as for the Mid Wide Rise: near the top of the voice-range. But the High Narrow Rise begins rather higher: at a mid-high level, which accounts for a much narrower interval of the pitch-change: one zone (high) as compared with two zones of the above variety.

3. The Low Wide Rise (/m). The rise of the voice in this case starts from the bottom of the voice-range and ends above the middle of it. The low and the mid zones of the voice-range are thus embraced by the rising pitch movement.

4 The Low Narrow Rise (,m). The starting point of this tone coincides with that of the Low Wide Rise: it is pitched at the bottom of the voice-range. The pitch interval is, however, rather narrower here since the rise ends about the mid-low pitch-level.

The difference in form as well as in meaning and usage is most conspicuous between the two narrow varieties: the High Narrow and the Low Narrow Rise. The former has || a marked interrogative force bordering on surprise, incredulity, etc., and is typically heard in all kinds of interrogative repetitions, while the latter is most readily associated j§ with non-assertiveness and lack of interest. It is used in various casual reman afterthoughts, etc

The meaning and usage of the two wide rising tones - mid and low - can be specified in terms of incompleteness in the most general sense of the word. The Low Wide Rise is commonly pronounced in unfinished parts of sentences indicating that a continuation is going to follow. When it is used in independent utterances there is an effect of the speaker s interest in the situation and in the listener s response.

With an increase of the relative height of the rise the effect of its stimulating the response is still greater, and, therefore, the Mid Wide Rise is a typical nuclear tone of general, alternative {the first part) and disjunctive (the second part) questions.

The discrimination between the Mid Wide and the Low Wide Rise is not always easy since there may be a considerable degree of overlap, particularly, in the initial pitch level. Yet, keeping the possibility of the above distinction in mind is useful as an aid for the foreign learner's work on imitation and performance.

From the Mid Wide and the Low Wide Rise there is only a small step to the Full Wide Rise covering the whole of the voice-range. This kind of the rising pitch-change is very often associated with an emotional colouring such as surprise, protest, enthusiasm, etc.

FALLING TONES

The falling type of nuclear pitch-change in English is realized by a downward move ment of the voice on the stressed syllable, while the syllables of the tail (if there arc any) form a level series on the pitch to which the nucleus has fallen, or they may continue the fall slightly to a still lower pitch. The difference, however, is not relevant since it can hardly be perceived by the listener.

Sometimes, when the stressed vowel is short, the impression of a fall is the resul a pitch contrast between the level of the stressed syllable and that of the tail.

Functional variation within the falling tone is based (as with the rising tone) on the initial pitch-level and the interval of the pitch-change, the ending point of the Fall being more difficult to discern perceptibly.

According to the width of the fall and its position on the speaker's voice-range the following varieties of the given type of pitch-change are distinguished in this book.

1. The Mid Wide Fall This is the most commonly used variety. It starts about the high-mid level and ends at the bottom, thus covering the mid and the low pitch zones of the speaker's voice-range.

2. The High Wide Fall The voice falls from a high or very high to a rathei pitch, so that the pitch-change embraces the high and the mid /ones of the voice-range and sometimes it is as wide as the whole of the voice-range.

3. The High Narrow Fall The difference between the two high varieties is that the Narrow Fall ends rather higher: about the middle of the voice-range or even higher than that.

4. The Low Narrow Fall This tone begins about the mid-low pitch level and ends at the bottom of the voice-range.

The two narrow varieties of the falling pitch-change, as is clear from the description of their form, display the greatest contrast. Neither the beginning nor the ending points of these tones coincide, whereas with the two wide falling tones the ending pitch point can be common for both members of the pair being contrasted and, consequently, there is a possibility of overlapping of some kind..

A falling pitch-change is usually associated with finality and completeness, decisive­ness, assertiveness, etc. Each of the falling tones, naturally, has some peculiarity as far as its meaning and usage are concerned. The High Narrow Fall has the least degree of finality of all the falling tones. It sounds light and airy. It is typically used in direct address (the so-called calling tone) and short comments expressing agreement, etc.

The general meaning of a falling pitch-change can in full degree be applied to the Mid Wide Fall which is the most neutral (unmarked) variety. The term neutral here means, firstly, that this tone is commonly used in the so-called unemotional speech and, secondly, that its usage is least of all limited to a specific situation.

The High Wide Fall, alongside completeness, finality, etc., often conveys additional connotations of an emotional kind, such as insistence, protest, personal concern, and involvement.

The Low Narrow Fall is the opposite of the High Wide Fall in that it completely lacks personal interest or enthusiasm and often sounds phlegmatic, calm and rather dogmatic. As compared with the High Narrow Fall the Low Narrow Fall is much more independent: no continuation is signalled and the utterance sounds cool and reserved rather than light and airy.

10 FALLING-RISING TONES

The falling-rising tone (sometimes called complex) is a bi-directional tone which means that there is a change in the direction of the pitch movement associated with one stressed syllable.

The fall and the rise may be combined within one syllable, the pitch-change begin­ning about the high level (or slightly above or below it) and ending about the mid-low level, with an intermediate low pitch point which is a boundary between the two elements of the glide.

When the nuclear syllable is not the last syllable of the intonation-group the Fall-Rise is split in form, the fall being carried by the nucleus and the rise - by the tail (compare it with a similar role of the tail in the realization of the rising tones).

It should be noted that the first element of the Fall-Rise - the fall - is phonetically more prominent that the second. The beginning and ending points of the Fall-Rise arc not on the same level, and this relation is stable regardless of the pitch height of the beginning of the glide.

According to the latter feature it is useful to distinguish between high and low

varieties of the falling-rising tone.

It is clear that there can be further gradations depending on the intervals of the fall and the rise which can be widened or narrowed.

From the semantic point of view the falling-rising nuclear tone has an implicatory meaning: utterances with this nuclear tone give the impression that the speaker intends the hearer to understand more than the words themselves convey. The implication expressed in an utterance may be that of emphasis, contrast, contradiction, correction, hesitation, doubt, uncertainty, warning, apology, etc. In each case the exact implication is prompted by the contest.

The falling-rising tone has an important modification: the so-called Fall-Rise Divided. The two elements of the Fall-Rise in this case are realized on two different words, which both acquire nuclear prominence.

A sequence of two kinetic pitch movements can be taken as one formal and functional unit, because firstly, there is no intonation-group boundary between the tones and, secondly, because the syllables between the Fall and the Rise (if there are any) display an evenness of pitch pattern and a strong rhythmic unity. The falling-rising divided I tone thus allows a larger stretch of utterance to fall under the semantic range of the I nucleus.

It must be emphasized that functionally the divided variant of the Fall-Rise is very j similar to the undivided falling-rising tone: it also imparts an implicatory meaning to the utterance.

Fall-Rise Divided makes two ideas prominent instead of one.

RISING-FALLING TONES

The rising-falling tone is a bidirectional, or complex, tone (like the Fall-Rise), because it comprises two elements - a rise and a fall - which can be combined within one syllable: the voice first rises from a fairly low (or mid) to a high pitch and then quickly falls to the bottom of the voice-range.

However, the rising-falling glide may be distributed between two or even three syllables. According to the number of syllables involved in the pitch change three structured variants of the nuclear rising-falling tone are distinguished: one-syllable tvne, two-syllable type, three-syllable type.

An essential common feature of these variants is that they are associated with one stressed.syllable, yet the unstressed syllables involved in the glide (two for the three syllabic type and one for the two-syllable type) also belong to the nucleus which in that case is expanded.

Three-syllable type. It's natural that this type of the rising-falling tone may occui only when the last stressed (nuclear) syllable of an utterance is followed by no less than two unstressed syllables. The stressed syllable is uttered on a steady mid-low pitch while the first of the unstressed syllables is pitched high and the second is pitched at the bottom of the normal voice-range.

The effect of a rise {the first element of the complex rising-falling movement) is thus conveyed by the 'jump' in the pitch-level from the first (stressed) to the second (unstressed) syllable. The effect of a fall {the second element of the rising-fall \щ movement) is suggested by the contrast between the pitch-level of the second and the third syllables (both unstressed).

When the syllable bearing the nuclear stress mark is followed by more than two unstressed or partially stressed syllables, the nuclear tone still embraces only three syllables and the remaining syllables form the tail and are pronounced as a low level scries. The beginning of the tail is marked with a low pitch mark or, if the syllable happens to be partially stressed, with a low stress mark

Two-syllable type. In this type the Rise-Fall is spread over two syllables, the first or which is stressed and pronounced on a steady mid-low pitch, while the second starts at the top of the normal voice-range and falls without stress to the bottom.

Like in the three-syllable type the effect of a rise (the first element of the given tone) is produced by the pitch contrast between the first (stressed) and the second (unstressed) syllable, but in the two-syllable type it is only the beginning point of the second syllable which is in contrast with the first, since the second syllable carries the fall (the second clement of the tone) and ends at a low pitch-level.

This type of the rising-falling tone occurs when the nuclear syllabic is followed by no less than one unstressed syllable. If there arc more than one, the nuclear pitch change still embraces only two syllables (the stressed syllable and the immediately following unstressed one), the remaining unstressed and partially stressed syllables following the tail, The beginning of the tail is marked, as in the case of the three syllable type by a low pitch mark or a low stress mark for a partially stressed syllable

One-syllable type. In this type the entire Rise-Fall is concentrated on one syllable which carries both the rise and the fall.

When the syllable bearing the nuclear stress mark is followed by any unstressed or low-stressed syllables, the fact that the nucleus is of one-syllable type must be indicated by marking the syllable immediately following the nuclear one with a low pitch mark or, if the syllable happens to be partially stressed, with a low stress mark.

The difference between the three structural variants is not confined to the form of the rising-falling nuclear tone. There is a certain functional difference as well: the unstressed syllables involved in the rising-falling movement get their share of semantic prominence if these are separate words, or, when we deal with a polysyllabic nuclear word, the prominence of this word seems to be increased by spreading the segmental base of the pitch change.

This is why the unstressed syllables involved in the Rise-Fall are integral parts of the nucleus and must not be considered to be part of the tail which will consist of any further unstressed or partially stressed syllables.

The second element of the rising-falling tone - the fall - is phonetically more prominent than the first element - the rise: the interval of the fall is wider than that of the rise. The falling element is also more important functionally. The rising-falling tone can be used in most utterances for which a falling tone would be fundamentally suitable: it has all the definiteness wad finality of a falling tone, but the substitution would add more expression to the utterance and change the feeling of it, giving the conversation a much more lively and emotional style.

The rising-falling nuclear tone can be compared with the falling-rising nuclear tone both in form and in function. The complex nature of their form leads to a specific functional characteristic, which might be called implicatory. The implications of the two tones, however, arc of a different kind: in the Fall-Rise it is basically a continuation of the information already contained in the utterance, it is so-to-speak lexically predicted. In the Rise-Fall the implication is basically of a modal attitudinal kind: t Rise-Fall often gives the impression that what the speaker admits or denies is conflict with his own or his interlocutor's previous opinion. That is why it is sometimes called a quizzical tone.

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