The notion of “tone”. Static and kinetic tones.

Prominent segments of an utterance are usually associated with a pitch change (or a pitch contrast) combined with increased force of articulation and increased duration. Such a cooperation of different phonetic features is reflected in the notion of the tone – the basic element of English intonation.

Tones are divided into two classes: static and kinetic. Static are level tones, their number corresponds to the number of pitch levels. Kinetic tones are classified according to the following criteria:

a) the direction of the pitch change;

b) the interval of the pitch change;

c) the relative position of the pitch change within the speaker’s voice range.

Static and kinetic tones differ not only in form but also in function. Static tones give prominence to words. The degree of prominence is proportional to the pitch height of the static tone – the higher the tone, the greater the prominence. Kinetic tones are more significant for the sentence.

Kinetic tones perform a number of functions in a sentence:

1. Indicate the communicative type of a sentence.

2. Express the emotional state of the speaker, his attitude towards the subject-matter and the situation.

3. Single out the centre of semantic importance in a sentence.

The most common kinetic tones of Modern English are:

The Low Fall – the voice falls from a medium to a very low pitch.

The Low Rise – the voice rises from a low to a medium pitch.

The High Fall – the voice falls from a high to a very low pitch.

The High Rise – the voice rises from a medium to a high pitch.

The Fall-Rise – the voice first falls from a fairly high to a rather low pitch and then rises to a medium pitch.

The Rise-Fall – the voice first rises from a medium to a high pitch and then falls to a very low pitch.

The falling tones carry a sense of completion and finality and are categoric in character. The rising tones carry incompletion and are non-categoric in character.

Combinations of nuclei, heads, tails, and pre-heads lead to a great variety of melodic patterns in English intonation. The melodic structure of the language is a simple system of patterns based upon the most important linguistic functions of intonation. Since the most significant component of intonation is speech melody, and the most important word of an utterance is made prominent by one of the special tones typical of the language, it is natural to systematize the melodic patterns according to these special tones. Thus the great variety of possible patterns can be reduced to six Intonation Contours (IC), based on the six main tones used in the nuclei. These tones, when combined with different heads, tails and pre-heads, give rise to a few significative variants of the intonation contour.

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