SATHIYAKALA900907035708001

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FACULTY OF EDUCATION

SEPTEMBER/ 2013

HBET 1203

ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

MATRICULATION NO : 900907035708001
IDENTITY CARD NO : 900907035708
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E-MAIL : shiktaras@ymail.com
LEARNING CENTRE : SEREMBAN
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CONTENTS PAGES

Part 1

Question a 3-5

Question b 6-8

Question c 9-10

Part 11

Question b 11-15

Question c 16

Reference 17-18
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a) Verdugon and Trilo (2005: 151-152) give a brief explanation of how intonation interacts
with grammatical, pragmatic and affective levels of language. What is your understanding
of this explanation?

According to Verdugon and Trilo intonation is a linguistic system that interacts with
grammatical, pragmatic and effective level of language. Intonational and lexicogrammatical
form varies from language to language. Slight changes in intonation, implies some changes in
the semantic and pragmatics of the final message as perceived by interlocutors. In addition,
deviant intonation patterns may negatively affect comprehension and provoke pragmatic
consequences on the spoken discourse. Intonation system of language is one of the first
phonetics features acquired by a child is mostly rely on prosodic prompts , in later stages once
children have acquired more syntactic, semantic, pragmatic competence, intonation becomes
subconscious and automatic to the message. Furthermore, grammatical changes in the sentences
presented for readings aloud had fairly predictable effects on the intonation of the readings
elicited.

Grammatical functions do overlap with attitudinal function, only a different label or perspective
of the function is involved. Normally asking questions and an uncertain disposition are obviously
related. For a example

Table 1.1 Grammatical functions of intonation

Form Functions/ Attitude Example

fall To state
He is Amin
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In addition, Intonation is used to carry a variety of different kinds of information. It signals
grammatical structure, though not in a one-to-one way; whilst the end of a complete intonation
pattern will normally coincide with the end of a grammatical structure such as a sentences or
clause, even quite major grammatical boundaries may lack into national marking, particularly if
the speech is fast. Intonation can reflect the information structure of an utterance, highlighting
constituents of importance. (Francis Nolan)

In other hand, pragmatic is intonation within a larger context of the utterance. Intonation
plays main role in social interaction and the act of communication. Broadly defined, pragmatics
as a discipline can be conceived of as the study of language from the point of view of the users,
especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social
interaction, and the effects their use of language has on the other participants in an act of
communication (Crystal 2003: 364). Leech (1983: 10f.) distinguishes between two components
of general pragmatics. First, he defines socio-pragmatics as the sociological interface of
pragmatics that focuses on the conditions of language use which derive from the social
situation, i.e. the social setting of language use, including variables such as cultural context,
social status or social distance of speakers. Second, pragmalinguistics is the more
linguistic end of pragmatics, considering the particular linguistic resources
which a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions, i.e. the
range of structural resources from which speakers can choose when using
language in a specific communicative situation, e.g. speech act verbs,
imperatives, politeness markers, pragmatic markers etc. For a example

Table 1.2 Pragmatic functions of intonation

form Functions / Attitude example

fall Turn taking: completion of
turn to talk. Information
He is arriving on Thursday
giving new or unknown
information
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Another pragmatic of intonation is the use of intonation for emphasis. This is done by locating
the tonic syllable on the word that is emphasised. For a example

They wanted to walk to the market (not me)

The affective level of language interact intonation by express emotions attitudes of the
speakers, such as friendliness, enthusiasm, or hostility; and listeners can use intonation-related
phenomena in the voice to make inferences about a speakers state, including excitement,
depression, and tiredness. Intonation can also, for instance, help to regulate turn-taking in
conversation, since there are into national mechanisms speakers can use to indicate that they
have had their say, or, conversely, that they are in full flow and dont want to be interrupted. A
neutral sentence can be uttered using different intonation to convey different emotional
meanings. For an example:

Table 1.2 Pragmatic functions of intonation

form Functions / Attitude example

Rise Unsure
Are you going?
encouraging
Have a go
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b) How far do you agree with Verdugo and Trillo (2005) that the choice of intonation
patterns plays major role in the understandings and interpretation of the pragmatic
meanings of spoken discourse?

I agree with Verdugo and Trillo (2005) that the choice of intonation patterns plays major
role in the understandings and interpretation of the pragmatic meanings of spoken discourse.
Intonation has long held a fascination for linguists and language teachers alike. The intricate
modulations of the voice, with its ranges and movements of pitch, its subtle nuances of voice
quality, and its expressiveness of staccato or lengthened syllables have often seemed to hold the
key to language meaning. Early pedagogical material on Pike (1945) and OConnor (1973) for
example argued that speakers attitude was especially tied to intonation and that skillfully use of
intonation was necessary to communicate effectively. It is now commonly accepted that crucial
elements of into national meaning can only be understood with reference to connected discourse.
Research on discourse intonation has led to the recognition that there are consistent, systematic
difference between the way of intonation functions in discourse and how its function in isolated
phrases and sentences.

Furthermore, Roach (1992) says intonation has:

"...two rather different meanings: (1) in a restricted sense, the variations in the pitch of a
speaker's voice used to convey or alter meaning. (2) in a broader and more popular sense,
equivalent to prosody, where variations in such things as voice quality, tempo and
loudness are included . . . The approach most widely used in Britain takes the tone
unit as its basic unit and looks at the different pitch possibilities of the various
components of the tone unit" (p. 56).

While our learner's pedagogic needs will undoubtedly cause us to include prosodic
features (voice quality, stress, rhythm, loudness, tempo, etc.), for better understanding Brazil's
system, we will focus on intonation's restricted sense.

Brazil, building on the work of Halliday (1973) and Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), has
developed his own unique way of analyzing and transcribing tone units. Brazil defines a tone
unit as "the basic building block of speech," which consists of "either one or two prominent
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syllables" (1994:8-9). According to Coulthard (1985:101) Brazil's tone unit consists of four
options: prominence, tone, key, and termination.

Prominence refers to the changes in stress, pitch or emphasis that allows for added meaning to be
inferred in what is being spoken. The last prominent syllable in a tone unit is called the tonic
syllable. Brazil defines it as " . . . the place at which a significant pitch movement or tone begins"
(1994:8). Tone is divided into five types: Falling, Rising, Rise-Fall, Fall-Rise, and Level. Similar
to Halliday's system, these tones either proclaim some new information, or refer to a common
experience already shared between the speakers.

Brazil's system contains three levels of Key: High Key, Mid Key, and Low Key. Coulthard
(1985:111) explains that High Key conveys the meaning that something has happened contrary to
one's expectations. Mid Key signals that a person has completed a series of tasks simultaneously:
"he did this and that." Low Key implies that an action resulted in something that was already
expected. The choices a speaker makes in tone, key and prominence are all decided beforehand
in what Brazil calls termination.

In addition, the British tradition shows that Hallidays systemic functional account of English
intonation as a reference framework (1970; 1994). The are three hierarchical intonation systems
and their pragmatic meaning in discourse useful for the phonological analysis of the present
investigation: tonicity, tonality and tone. Tonicity refers to the construction of feet into tone
groups, showing how the tone group serves to organize discourse into information units
(Halliday 1994:292); within each unit of intonation, the most prominent word receives the tonic
prominence indicating the focus of information. Tonality refers to the system thatdivides speech
into its separate individual tone groups or intonation units. Each intonation unit contains a
single unit of information and represents the speakers perception and management of the whole
message. Finally, tone, to refer here also as F0 contour, is defined as the system of contrasting
pitch movements in each unit of intonation.
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A slight change in intonation, which may initially appear to be insignificant, implies some
changes in the semantics and pragmatics of the final message as perceived by interlocutors
(Kelm19955: 435). Even, mistakes in the pronunciations of segmental sounds are generally
overlooked; deviant intonation patterns may negatively affect comprehension and provoke
pragmatics consequence on the spoken discourse. (cf Andereson Hsieh et al.1992: Derwing
Munro 1997).

Furthermore, Experimental studies showed that pitch and pause structure were significant in the
production and processing of both local (utterance-level) and global (discourse-level)
information structure (Grosz and Sidner, 1986). Chun (1988) expanded discussion of the
functions of intonation and investigated its systematic use in indexing sociolinguistic information
and controlling interactive structure. Models of discourse intonation in English (Brazil, 1997;
Gussenhoven, 1983; Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg, 1990) proposed that isolated contours or
tones form part of a larger organizational structure through which they acquired their full
significance.

So, intonation patterns plays major role in the understandings and interpretation of the pragmatic
meanings of spoken discourse. Intonation is complex in its phonetic, phonological and functional
nature, but necessary for language to be understood in spoken discourse. Future research is
needed in order to gain further insight into the way speakers are subconsciously able to use
intonation to structure and mark the main burden of the information in their messages and
interactions. This knowledge, I believe, may help us to also understand the way learners acquire
a foreign language, and hence, propose possible remedial strategies for improving the acquisition
of foreign language intonation, reducing as much as possible the learners communicative in
accuracies in their speech.
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Support your discussion with suitable examples drawn from the ESL context in Malaysia
and relevant ideas taken from at least two related theories of / Studies on English phonetics
and phonology.

English was introduced into Malaysia by the British. In Malaysia, English plays a
significant and diversified role. It is the official second language and has a high social status.
According to Goh using Brazils discourse intonation framework, indicates that Singapore
English(SE) and Malaysia English(ME) do not conform to the patterns in Brazils model, which
describes standard British English (BrE), and that there is a high frequency of level tones as well
as rising tones compared to standard BrE. Although the intonation patterns are similar to BrE,
their meanings and communicative value may not necessarily be the same. In addition
Kirkpatrick [15] observed that, as most Asian languages were syllable-timed languages, Asian
English speakers tended to use syllable timing and avoided using reduced vowels; as in the case
of SgE [17] and Hong Kong English(HKE).

From the data analyzed so far, the most interesting feature found among the MSEs is the fluidity
or shift in the placement of stress and/or tonic syllable. The stress moves from one syllable to
another, even when the turns are very near to each other and sometimes in the same turn by the
same speaker. Here are some examples from MSE09, MSE03 and MSE08:
//o ER/ o white MOUNtain/p YES/ r+ you have to pass the white mounTAIN// {09-m08:
100}

The cause for this could be associated with transfer of prosodic features in Malay.

Furthermore, tonic syllable in a noun compound is often the stressed syllable in the first
element. As with variable word stress and tonic placement, the tonic in a compound can be
placed on a syllable in the last element, and the placement varies even with the same speaker. for
a example

// r+ its the ROCKFALL// {03-n03: 128}

//r+ CAN you see the ROCKfall// {03-n03: 132}
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Stress in the noun compounds could indicate transfer from Malay. Traditionally, stress in Malay
has been considered to be weak and in penultimate position but it are an ambiguous notion and
an area of much debate. Recent studies have told that stress as defined in languages such as
English may not even exist or be applicable in Malay.

Asian varieties tend to have a high frequency of rising tones, as found in SgE and ME and HKE,
the high occurrence of rising tones in the MSE data is quite significant. In comparison to Setters
HKE data, in which rising tones shows that 24.39% of all tones used , the percentage of rising
tones used in the MSE data analyzed so far is approximately 44.20%, almost double the
percentage found in the HKE data. Beside analysis is required to discover how the use of the
rising tone differs from Brazils framework.

The data also shows that the MSEs used a phrasal rising intonation on the second syllable for the
item and then. For a example
//r+ and THEN/ p you SEE/p banana TREE//

According to OConnor & Arnold [19], a rising head only occurs in BrE when there is a fall (p)
on the tonic syllable. However, based on the data so far, a rising head (highlighted in bold) can
also appear with a rising tone (r+) amongst MSEs. E.g.:

(17) // r+ oK / r+ and THEN /o ER / r+ you WALK STRAIGHT //

There are some distinct features in the intonation patterns of MSEs was showed. These features
include: a rising intonation on the second syllable for the item and then; a rising head which
appears with a rising tone (r+); and the fluidity of the word stress. At last conclude that, the large
number of rising tones in MSE data may not have the same meaning as assumed in the British
English Discourse Intonation model.
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Part 11
Verbatim transcription

Speaker One:, "Hi Mary.",

Speaker Two:, "Oh, hi.",

Speaker One:,"How are you doing?",

Speaker Two:, "I'm doing alright. How about you?".

Speaker One: ,"Not too bad. The weather is great isn't it?",

Speaker Two:, "Yes. It's absolutely beautiful today.",

Speaker One:, "I wish it was like this more frequently.",

Speaker Two:, "Me too.",

Speaker One: ,"So where are you going now?",

Speaker Two: ,"I'm going to meet a friend of mine at the department store.",

Speaker One:, "Going to do a little shopping?",

Speaker Two:, "Yeah, I have to buy some presents for my parents.",

Speaker One:, "What's the occasion?",

Speaker Two:, "It's their anniversary.",

Speaker One:, "That's great. Well, you better get going. You don't want to be late.",

Speaker Two:, "I'll see you next time.",

Speaker One:, "Sure. Bye.",

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Speaker One: "Hi Mary."

Speaker Two: "Oh, hi.

Speaker One: "How are you doing?"

Speaker Two: Im doing alright. How about you?

Speaker One: Not too bad. The weather is great isnt it,
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Speaker Two: "Yes. It's absolutely beautiful today.",

Speaker "I wish it was like this more frequently."

One:,

Speaker Two: "Me too."

Speaker One: "So where are you going now?"

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Speaker Two: "I'm going to meet a friend of mine at the department store."

Speaker One:, "Going to do a little shopping?",

Speaker Two:, "Yeah, I have to buy some presents for my parents."

Speaker One:, "What's the occasion?"

Speaker Two: , "It's their anniversary."

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Speaker One:, "That's great. Well, you better get going. You don't want to be late.",

Speaker Two: "I'll see you next time."

Speaker One:, "Sure. Bye.",

c) Select any fine tone units in (b) and describe the forms of these units and their discourse
functions in the recorded conversation. Compile your description in the form of the table as
given below.

Form Functions/ attitude Sample Utterance

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Turn taking speaker has not
finished.
"Hi Mary."
Rise
Invitation for another to talk.
Turn taking: speaker has not
finished.
Fall - Rise I'm doing alright. How about you?".

Invitation for another to talk.

Turn taking: speaker has not
Rise finished.
Going to do a little shopping?"

Invitation for another to talk.

Turn taking: speaker has not
finished
"I'm going to meet a friend of
Rise Focusing attention on shared mine at the department store.
information( what being talked
about
Turn taking: Speaker has
Rise- Fall finished communication.
"Sure. Bye.",

Reference

A Discourse Approach To Intonation: Can It Work In Japan, Gregory S. Hadley[online]

Available:-Http://Www.Nuis.Ac.Jp/~Hadley/Publication/Phonology/Intonation.Htm
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Issues in Acquisitional Pragmatics,Ji-Young Jung1,Teachers College, Columbia
University[online]
Available:-journal.tc-library.org/index.php/tesol/article/download/21/26 PDF file

Prosodic realization of focus in the discourse of Spanish learners and English native
speakers,Dolores RAMREZ VERDUGO,Universidad Autnoma de Madrid[online]
Available:-www.labphon13.labphon.org/satellite/.../CongostoRamirez.APT2012.doc

The Intonation of Singapore English David Deterding National Institute Ofeducation, Nanyang
Technological University [online]
Available:-Www.Ubd.Edu.Bn/.../Faculty/Fass/Staff/Docs/Dd/Jipa-Sing-Intonation,Pdf File

The Intonation Patterns Of Malay Speakers Of, English: A Discourse Intonation Approach, Noor
Fadhilah Mat Nayana & Jane SetterbA universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia; university of
Reading, [online]
Available:-Www.Icphs2011.Hk/Resources/Onlineproceedings/Regularsession/Mat%20...
Pdf file.

Verdugo, D. R., & Trillo, J. R. (2005). The pragmatic function of intonation in L2 discourse:
English tag questions used by Spanish speakers, Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(2) 151-168 journal.

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