Intonation Statemens and Questions

Falling Intonation

Lower your voice at the end of the sentence to produce a “falling intonation.” This intonation

is used for a variety of reasons:

Statements

Falling intonation is used in simple sentences that are not questions. For example:

1. My name is John.

Questions

Falling intonation is also used when asking questions if they contain interrogative words such

as where, what, why, when, how, and who. For example:

1. What’s his name?

Rising Intonation

Raise the pitch of your voice at the end of a sentence to create “rising intonation.”

 Yes / no questions

 Rising intonation is used in yes/no questions.

Non-final Intonation

With “non-final intonation,” the pitch rises and falls within the sentence or word.

  

Unfinished Thoughts

Non-final intonation is often used to indicate that you have not ended a thought. To

indicate that you have something more to say, raise your pitch at the end of the phrase.

For example, “When I saw him...” or “If I study hard...”

Introductory Words

Non-final intonation is also used with introductory words, such as actually or by the way.

Since these types of words indicate that a thought is not finished, the non-final intonation

is appropriate.

Series of Words

Non-final intonation is used in words and phrases that are listed in a series. The voice rises

at the end of each item, but falls with the final item.

Expressing Choices

Finally, non-final intonation is used when giving a choice between two or more things.

1. Do you want to eat in or eat out?

Questions and Intonation

Rising Tone Exercise

‍This tone conveys an impression that something more is to follow.

‍It can be used while:

‍-making general questions.

‍-listing things.

‍-encouraging someone.

‍This tone is also used when asking for repetition or clarification, or indicating disbelief.

‍Now, listen and pronounce.

‍Falling Tone Explanation

‍This is the tone that is usually regarded as more or less neutral. If someone is asked a question and the reply is yes or no, it will be understood that the question is now answered and that there is nothing more to be said. Thus, the falling tone gives an impression of finality.

‍Now, listen and pronounce:

‍Falling-Rise Tone

‍The use of this tone involves a moderately high to low fall, followed by rise in the pitch from low to medium. This tone is used forr special implications not verbally expressed.

‍The term "special implications" can include insinuations, veiled insults, apology, unpleasant news, happiness, reassurance, or doubt on the part of the speaker as to the validity of his remark. This tone shows limited agreement, response with reservation, uncertainty, or doubt.

‍Now, listen and pronounce:

INTONATION LINE

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTONATION

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTONATION

Intonation is fundamental to genuine communication because communicative competence is the ability not only to formulate grammatical correct utterances, but also to signal interactional strategies, such as interrupting, asking for clarifcation, taking the floor, changing the subject, concluding and argument, or constraining a hearer to reply.

Intonation is is a powerful tool for negociating meaning,managing interaction, and achieving discourse coherence.

Intonation Contours

Lesson 10c - INTONATION - English Pronunciation4

Lesson 10c - INTONATION - English Pronunciation3

Lesson 10c - INTONATION - English Pronunciation2

Lesson 10c - INTONATION - English Pronunciation

What is Intonation?

What is Intonation?

It is generally believed that spoken sounds occur strung together, one after the other. More precisely, speech is a continuum; a continuous flux of initiatory, phonatory, and articulatory states and movements, constantly changing, often overlapping and interpenetrating and influencing each other.

According to Catford (1992), when people look at isolated sounds, they are artificially cutting up that flowing chain of events into a series of segments or segmental sounds. In reality, these segments are the speech-sounds that are isolated out of the continuum. Although the segmentation of speech is an artificial procedure, linguists are obliged to do it to arrest the flow, as it were, in order to pin down individual sounds for detailed study.

However, one must also give attention to those phonetic phenomena that are characteristic not so much of individual segments as of their relations to each other, or of stretches of the speech continuum that are greater than one segment in length. Since such phenomena take account of more than just segments, they are sometimes called suprasegmental or prosodic features. According to Kreidler (1989), it is well known that English utterances are seldom spoken in monotones. For one, native English speakers produce melodies of varying kinds, with the voice rising and falling. Such melodies are technically called intonation.

Opinions do differ when defining intonation. Ladd (1980), an eminent Canadian scholar of phonology, defines it as “The use of suprasegmental phonetic features (pitch) to convey postlexical or sentence-level pragmatic meanings in a linguistically structured way” (p. 6). On the other hand, in

Word Stress: Dropped Sounds

PATTERNS SYLLABLES

EXAMPLE WORD DROPPED

EXAMPLE WORD DROPPED

Name dropping

Name dropping

 In my reading for an English literature course, I’ve been noticing nicknames like “Ned” (for “Edward”), “Dick” (for “Richard”), “Hal” (for “Harry”), etc. In The School for Scandal, the Sheridan play, I came across “Noll” – apparently a diminutive of “Oliver.” What is the story behind these nicknames?

A: “Noll” used to be a common nickname for “Oliver.” (One of Oliver Cromwell’s nicknames among the English people, when they weren’t calling him something worse, was “Old Noll.”)

In a custom dating from medieval times, people used to add an affectionate “mine” before first names starting with a vowel, and they often dropped syllables as well. Thus “mine Oliver” led to “Noll”; “mine Abel” led to “Nab”; “mine Ann” led to “Nan”; “mine Edward” led to “Ned”; and “mine Ellen” led to “Nell.”

English nicknames are a fascinating subject. The word “nickname” itself is derived from an extremely old word, “ekename” (an “eke” is an addition or a piece added on).

The first published reference to “ekename,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, appeared in 1303. The pronunciation of the expression “an ekename” was misunderstood as “a nekename,” which in turn led to the modern word “nickname,” first recorded in the 17th century.

One common way nicknames were formed was by dropping syllables from the front: “Drew” (for “Andrew”); “Beth” (“Elizabeth”); “Fred” (“Alfred”); “Tony” (“Anthony”); and “Derick” (“Theoderick” or “Roderick”).

Nicknames that use only the first syllables include “Eliza” (“Elizabeth”); “Alex” (“Alexander”); “Fred” (“Frederick”); “Sam” (“Samuel”), and dozens of others, including my own nickname, “Pat” for “Patricia.”

There are even nicknames taken from the middle: “Liz” and “Lisa” (“Elizabeth,” “Elisabeth”); “Della” (“Adelaide”), “Trish” (“Patricia”), and others.

Sometimes nicknames were formed by adding “in” to a first syllable. This is how we got “Robin” as a nickname for “Robert.” And sometimes an “r” in the middle of a name would somehow become an “l,” as in “Hal” (“Harry”), “Mol” (“Mary” or “Martha”); “Dolly” (“Dorothy”); or “Sally” (“Sarah”).

But in our time most nicknames are mere shortenings or are formed by adding “ie” or “ey” or “y” to the first syllable of a longer name. This is how we get “Chris/Christie,” “Dave/Davie,” “Jamie,” “Charlie,” “Johnny,” “Pat/Patty,” “Rosie,” “Gracie,” “Marty,” and a slew of others.

Nobody’s sure how “Margaret” gave us “Peggy,” “William” gave us “Bill,” “John” gave us “Jack,” “Robert” led to “Bob,” “Richard” ended up as “Dick,” or “Edward” led to “Ted.” (My grandfather was a “Ted” but his real name was “Theodore.”)

Words with Dropped Syllables

Words with Dropped Syllables

In many common 3-syllable words, the second syllable is dropped in spoken American English. Most American speakers do not pronounce these syllables when they speak.

Read the words in the chart below and drop the syllable as indicated in the second column. If you can remember to drop these syllables when you speak, your speech will sound much more natural.

Practice saying these words aloud, then click below to hear the correct pronunciation.

Word	Dropped syllable
aspirin	as-prin
average	av-rage
Barbara	Bar-bra
business	bus-ness
camera	cam-ra
different	dif-rent
evening	eve-ning
every	ev-ry
family	fam-ly
favorite	fav-rite
federal	fed-ral
general	gen-ral
interest	in-trest
Margaret	Mar-gret

Dropped syllables, syncope

Dropped syllables, syncope

Read word interesting have three syllables or four? How many syllables in the word favorite, every, and different?

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English Pronunciation Podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is our 71st episode.

Way back in mid-June, a question was asked on the forums about the number of syllables in the word interesting. Dictionaries show it both as a three and four syllables, as in in-tres-ting and in-ter-es-ting. The discussion about that word led to things other than the number of syllables in the word, but it is only the optional number of syllables in the word interesting, as well as other common words, that I'm going to talk about today.

The linguistic term for the loss of a syllable in spoken word is syncope, but I simply refer to it as dropped syllables.

Other examples of dropped syllables are the words every, favorite, and different.

That was:

ev-er-y  versus  ev-ry

or

fav-o-rite  versus  fav-rite

or

dif-fer-ent  versus  diff-rent

Dropping syllables occurs mostly on high-frequency words, and dictionaries are pretty good about showing both options when two choices of pronunciation are available.

The syllable that can be dropped, not surprisingly, follows a pattern. The syllables before or after a stressed syllable in a word are often unstressed. (This is opposed to a secondary stress that can occur two syllables apart from a stressed syllable.) Only the vowel sounds of unstressed syllables can get dropped, and usually the original word needed to have at least three syllables to begin with. I mentioned four words above, which I'll repeat now.

interesting

every

favorite

different

Here are some more examples. (I'm only going to pronounce these the less formal way, with the dropped syllable):

laboratory

family

vegetable

camera

mystery

beverage

restaurant

I also want to tell you the most common 2-syllable word can be reduced to a single syllable: s'pose (for suppose), as in "I s'pose I can help you tomorrow."

Also, like most informal options of pronouncing English, they may go away is the word is emphasized in a sentence. For instance, the word every. In normal speech, it drops to 2 syllables, every. However, if I were emphasizing that word, it may go back to the more proper 3 syllables, every. For example, in the sentence:

You don't need to practice every day, but you should try to most days.

I stressed the word every, and it was said with three syllables, as ev-e-ry.

Now, I do need to say, North Americans and British do this differently. So if you are more exposed to British English, you will not notice this to the same extent.

One last thing I found interesting when double checking facts for this episode, when I went to Merriam Webster Online to listen to their audio, they almost always pronounce the word with the less formal pronunciation. However, they sometimes show the syllabic breakdown with the extra syllable, and the phonetic transcription with the dropped syllable. It's an interesting discrepancy.

Well, that's enough information for one day.

As always, you can read the transcripts for this podcast for free at www.pronuncian.com. That is also the place you can buy either of my books, "Pronunciation Pages, Sounds of American English," or "Rhythm and Intonation of American English" as either a physical book, or a downloadable PDF book. You purchases directly support creation of these podcasts and Pronuncian content.

You can also support this show by leaving a review wherever you go to download these shows, whether it is from iTunes, Zune, Podcast.com, or anywhere else. Those reviews really help other people find this show, and we appreciate the reviews more than you can imagine. Plus it is free to do, so why not help spread the word!

Don't forget, you can also visit the forums from Pronuncan.com and post questions and comments there for free as well.

That's all for today. Thanks for listening everyone.

This has been a Seattle Learning Academy digital publication. SLA is where the world comes to learn.

Bye-bye.

What are dropped syllable

What are dropped syllable

Dropped syllables are syllables which are not pronounced. For example the word "chocolate" would appear to have 3 syllables but in fact the middle syllable is dropped and we only pronounce the first and the last.

example; choc -late 

There are many examples: aspirin

business

Wednesday