Intonation in english

The intonation of Donald Trump's speech demonstrates frequent use of a level tone in the nuclear syllable. Unlike other dynamic nuclear tones, the Level tone is 'bleached ' of any real interactional meaning, which can therefore express detachment of speaker from listener.  The general impression that Trump's use of this tone conveys is one of detachment, or lack of engagement, with both his audience and the topics that are addressed in his discourse.

This study investigates factors that influence the interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing the word only. When only appears preverbally in simple SVO constructions, it can be interpreted as associating with the direct object, the verb, or the entire verb phrase. An auditory sentence completion task was used to probe native-speaking English listeners for overall biases in the interpretation of only, as well as for the influence of accentuation and individual differences on the extent of any such biases. Results show a strong preference for only to associate with the direct object overall, although this preference is reduced when the direct object is less (relatively) prominent. Finally, the effect of accentuation was itself modulated by individual differences related to cognitive processing style.

This thesis addresses the question of whether two low-rising contours, the L*LH% and L∗HH% (Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg 1991), should be considered categorical distinctions in Midwestern American English. The status of L*LH% has been questioned by several previous researchers, while the L*HH% has only recently been investigated as an important contour in American English.
The status of the two low-rising contours was investigated through the use of two meaning-based tests. The interpretation of the of L*LH% was compared to that of the fall (H*LL%) and fall-rise (H*LH%), two generally accepted contours, while the interpretation of the L*HH% was compared to the H*HH%, a third accepted contour. Twenty-eight dialogues were recorded. The nucleus of the final utterance of each dialogue (utterances included declaratives, Yes / no questions, and WH questions) was electronically manipulated to produce two or three dialogues differing only in the nuclear tone, resulting in a total of 70 stimuli. Fourteen dialogues were used to compare the interpretations of the L*LH%, H*LL% and H*HH% and fourteen to compare the L*HH% and H*HH%. Forty-seven subjects interpreted the meaning of the final utterances.
Results indicate that neither the of L*LH% nor the L*HH% are clearly categorical. In mixed results, subjects interpreted the of L*LH% as distinct from the H*LL% but not the H*LH%. However, the L*HH% and H*HH% contours were consistently interpreted in the same way on all three grammatical structures examined, indicating that this dialect of English has a single category for a generally high-rising contour.
The results suggest that this dialect of English distinguishes only three of the five contours on the basis of meaning. Furthermore, they suggest that the phonological distinction in English between simple high and low pitch accents (H* vs. L*) is of questionable value for this dialect. A critical evaluation of the value and most appropriate use of meaning-based tests is presented, and the results of intonational research are applied to the teaching of intonation in English as a second language (ESL) textbooks.

Intonation is an inseparable part of human speech. It can perform several functions. One of these functions is the expression of attitudes or emotions, among them is fear. The present research paper investigates the relation between in tonation and expressing fear both in Kurdish and English. To achieve this aim, the study endeavours to clarify the intonation patterns used to express fear by depending on seven variables: the tone, the height of the pre-head and the head, the width of pit ch range, the key, and markedness. In addition, references are also made to other prosodic and paralinguistic features which are also integral parts of speech and important factors for the expression of emotions. The study elaborates the function in quest ion in Kurdish by drawing and thoroughly describing the diagrammatic representations of twenty-two selected tone-groups of various syntactic structures. Whereas in English, the relation between intonation and fear depends on the literature available. One of the most important conclusions which can be drawn from the study is that fear is carried out mostly by the falling tone, either from high to mid or mid to low, and a narrow pitch range as well as the accompaniment of whispering and shivering as paralingu istic features.

We present a new methodological approach which combines both naturally-occurring speech " harvested " on the web and speech data elicited in the laboratory. This proof-of-concept study examines the phenomenon of focus sensitivity in English, in which the interpretation of particular grammatical constructions (e.g. the comparative) is sensitive to the location of prosodic prominence. Machine learning algorithms (support vector machines and linear discriminant analysis) and human perception experiments are used to cross-validate the web-harvested and lab-elicited speech. Results confirm the theoretical predictions for location of prominence in comparative clauses and the advantages using both web-harvested and lab-elicited speech. The most robust acoustic classifiers include paradig-matic (i.e. un-normalized), non-intonational acoustic measures (duration and relative formant frequencies from single segments). These acoustic cues are also significant predictors of human listeners' classification, offering new evidence in the debate whether prominence is mainly encoded by pitch or by other cues, and the role that utterance-normalization plays when looking at non-pitch cues such as duration.