20. Pausation and tempo in the structure of English intonation. Their functions.

Pausation is closely connected with the other components of intonation. The most detailed analysis of pauses belongs to Tseplitis. He says that a pause is necessary in a sentence consisting of 9 and more words. His subdivision of pauses is as following:

-Asemantic:

• constitutive:

rhythmical

articulatory

intensity

• situational

• individual

• physiological

-Sematic

Asemantic pauses are called non-intonational. Constitutive pauses belong to the acoustic system of speech signal. Rhythmical pauses create a certain rhythm. Articulatory pauses occur in some plosive consonants, in pronunciation of some kinds of syllabic stress, sometimes between words. Intensity pauses take place before or after a word carrying a logical stress, they are one of the acoustic means of increasing intensity of a logical stress.

Situational pauses are the pauses used with the purpose of slowing the speech in order to give the listener an opportunity to put sth down, to make the listeners ready to perform a command.

Individual pauses are connected with different habits.

Physiological pauses are evoked for the lack of air in the lungs or for the detention in the processes of the central nervous system.

Semantic (intonational) pauses are those which help us to indicate the boundaries of groups of words or to indicate the emotional state of the speaker. Pauses perform constitutive (delimitative) function when they occur between sense groups where they are obligatory. Their distinctive function is an open question, requiring a special instrumental investigation.

Tempo of speech is the speed with which sentences or their parts are pronounced. According to Tseplitis tempo may be constitutive, situational and individual. Constitutive tempo is that which is inherent to the l-ge and its forms and to definite segments of an utterance. We may come across some examples of constitutive tempo in cases of acceleration of segments of speech (interjections, particles).

Situational tempo depends upon elements of special situation, e.g. on number of listeners, on their ability to apprehend the context, on acoustic properties of the apartment.

Individual is a tempo which the speaker is accustomed to and which is normal, convenient to him. It is connected with psychophysical properties of a person, with his temperament and so on.

Quick tempo means joy, gaiety, enthusiasm. Slow tempo means depression, inertia and meditations. Very slow tempo is a characteristic feature of a hampered speech, official solemn speech; it is used in a delivery of solemn promise, oath, in reading out the judicial sentence.

21.Rhythm as a linguistic notion. English speech rhythm. Types of rhythmic units. Guidelines for teaching English speech rhythm.

Rhythm is the arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed elements. Rhythm is a product of sentence stress and what happens to the words and sounds between the stresses. The rhythm of speech in English is dependent on the stress patterns of the words. It has often been claimed that English speech is rhythmical and that the rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of stressed syllables. The theory that English has stress-timed rhythm implies that stressed syllables will tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not; this would not be the case in ‘mechanical speech’.

The stress-timed rhythm theory states that the times from each stressed syllable to the next will tend to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. Some writers have developed theories of English rhythm in which a unit of rhythm, the foot, is used; the foot begins with a stressed syllable and includes all following unstressed syllables up to the following stressed syllable. Many foreign learners are made practice speaking English with a regular rhythm, often with the teacher beating time or clapping hands on stressed syllables. For foreign learners who don’t have so much weak syllables in their mothertongues as in English this exercise is valuable if it is not overdone to the point when learners start speaking as if reciting verse.

22. Phonostylistics as a branch of phonetics; its linkage with other linguistic disciplines. Extralinguistic factors causing phonetic modifications of speech. Phonetic styles, the problem of their definition and classification.

The subject matter of phonostylistics is versatile and not clearly determined. It studies variation in use of sounds of a l-ge, its phonetic expressive inventory, as well as typical prosodic features of different types of discourses and registers. Phonostylistics deals with ‘style-sensitive’ or ‘style-dependent’ phonological processes. Phonostylistic processes are language specific. The same function is served by various means across l-ges, but also within a l-ge. Ph. Provides descriptive frameworks by which readers hypotheses concerning the meaning and effects produced in texts can be explored through a systematic and principled attention to l-ge and intonation patterns.

The factors that determine the choice of the intonational style are the following: the aim of communication – the style forming factor. The other factors are called style modifying factors:

-the speakers attitude

-the form of communication

-the degree of formality

-the degree of preparedness.

All thses factors are interdependent and interconnected. Stylistic variation can also be caused by such factors as topic, setting and relationship between interlocutor. There are 5 intonational styles singled out mainly acc to the purpose of communication (Moscow linguistic school):

-Informational

-Academic

-Publicistic

-Declamatory

-Conversational

Using the informational style the speaker ought to be careful not to distract the listener by what he is saying (TV announcers). Written representation of oral and prepared speech.

Scientific style is used in lectures or science subjects or when reading out loud a piece of scientific prose. The purpose is to attract the listener’s attention to what is the most important in the lecture.

Publicistic style is used by politicians, the purpose is to except the influence of the listener to convince him of sth and make him accept the speaker’s point of view.

Declamatory style is used in reading poetry, prose aloud, in stage speech to appeal the feelings of the listener.

Conversational formulae familiar of every day communication are used in speech of friends within similar groups. It can have a wide range of intonation patterns.

23. Main prosodic peculiarities of the conversational style. Intonation of dialogues and monologues.

Conversational style is used in every day communication and thus is not formal. These are some common feature of informal communication:

-casual vocabulary and colloquial idioms, including slang.

-conversational openers to sentences (you know, say, you take)

-people speaking at the same time (overlapping)

-interruption

-hesitation

-repetition or rephrasing

-incomplete sentences. Loose sentence patterns common to conversation.

Some more important characteristics is an entire range of vocalic clusters, sounds, non-verbal signals are common in conversations.

On the prosodic level there are some generalizations about the conversational style.

1. Conversations fall into coordinated blocks, consisting of suprasegmental and supraphrasal units tied up by variations within the lenghth of pause speed, rhythm, pitch ranges, pitch levels and loudness.

2. Since there are no restrictions on the range and depth of emotions which might be displayed in conversational speech situations, they will allow entire range of prosodic effects.

3. Intonation groups are rather short, their potentially lengthy tone units tend to be broken. These short interpausal units are characterized by decentralized stress and sudden jumps down on communicative centres.

4. The heads are usually level, or rarely falling. Falling heads occur only in groups consisting of several stressed syllables.

5. As for the nuclei, simple falling and rising tones are common. Emphatic tones occur in highly emotional contexts. High pre-nuclear syllables are very frequent.

6. The tempo of colloquial speech is very varied. The natural speed might be very fast but the impression of slowness may arise because of a great number of hesitation pauses both filled and non-filled with the block. However, the speakers may have no pauses between their parts, very often they speak simultaneously, interrupt each other.

7. Also a familiar point about informal conversation is the frequency of silence for purposes of contrastive pause as opposed to its being required simply for breath-taking.

8. Pauses may occur randomly, not just at places of grammatical junctions.

9. So, tempo is very flexible in this style. It is uneven with and between utterances.

10. Interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards subjective rhythmic isochrony.

11. Alongside common features, there is evidence for variation of prosodic characteristics in women’s conversational style. Women’s voice range is, as a rule, wider than men’s one and changes basically within high and low pitch levels.

In monologues the speech reminds the informational monologue, only differs in the degree of formality.