Attitudinal Function

Intonation is used to express emotions and attitudes, and this adds a special kind of “meaning” to spoken language. The same sentence can be said in different ways, which might be labelled “angry”, “bored”, “ironic”, “apologetic”, “happy”, “grateful”, “encouraging” and so on.

For example, the falling-rising tone in the following utterance makes it sound apologetic:

I hope I’m not late.

And the rise-fall in the context below shows that the speaker is greatly impressed:

A: Have you heard about Pat?

B: ^ Yes! Isn’t it ^scandalous!

Components of an Intonation Pattern/Tone-unit

THE PRE-HEAD

Unstressed or partially stressed syllables which precede the head are called the pre-head. In short intonation groups where there is no head and these syllables precede the nucleus they are called the pre-nucleus.

There are two types of pre-head or pre-nucleus.

a) If unstressed or partially stressed syllables are pronounced lower than the first stressed syllable of the head, the pre-head is called low.

E.g. There was something wrong with the trains.

In low pre-nucleus these syllables are lower than the start of the nuclear tone.

E.g. It was obvious.

The Low Pre-Head may occur before any head and the Low Pre-Nucleus is usually heard before all the nuclear tones.

b) If unstressed syllables or partially stressed syllables are pronounced higher or on the same level as the first stressed syllable of the head the pre-head is called high. In High Pre-Nucleus these syllables are higher than the start of the nuclear tone or they are pronounced on the same level.

E.g. ˉ I don’t want to watch this movie.

ˉ I want it.

The High Pre-Head usually occurs before descending and high or medium level heads. The High Pre-Nucleus can be heard before almost any nuclear tone.

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