Rhythm as a Component of Intonation

Intonation is a complex unity of four components, formed by communicatively relevant variations in:

1.     voice pitch, or speech melody;

2.     the prominence of words, or their accent;

3.     the tempo (rate), rhythm and pausation of the utterance;

4.     voice-timbre, this complex unity serving to express adequately, on the basic of the proper grammatical structure and lexical composition of sentence, the speaker’s or writer’s thoughts, volition, emotions, feelings and attitudes towards reality and the content of the sentence.

Speech melody is the variations in the pitch of the voice which take place when voiced sounds, especially vowels and sonorants, are pronounced in connected speech. The speech melody is produced by the vibrations of the vocal cords.

Stress in speech (loudness) is the greater prominence which is given to one or more words of the same sentence. In English this greater prominence is achieved by uttering the stressed words with greater force of exhalation and muscular tension than the unstressed words, as well as by a change in pitch and an increase in the length of stressed syllables of words in the sentence.

The voice quality (timbre) is a special colouring of the voice in pronouncing sentences and shows the speaker’s emotions, such as joy, sadness, irony, anger, etc.

The tempo of speech is the speed with which sentences or their parts are pronounced. It is determined by the rate at which speech sounds are uttered and by the number and length of pauses. Closely connected with the tempo of speech is rhythm: the recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time. Therefore, the tempo and rhythm of speech may be said to constitutive the temporal component of intonation. Each syllable of the speech chain has a special pitch colouring and bears a definite amount of loudness. Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness. Together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of intonation.

Jones D. writes: “Intonation may be defined as the variations which take place in the pitch of the voice in connected speech, i.e. variations in the pitch of the musical note produced by the vibration of the vocal cords”. [Jones, 29]

Armstrong L. and Ward I. define intonation as follows: “By intonation, we mean the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice when we speak”. [Armstrong, 19]

As far as the intonational aspect of pronunciation is concerned a special attention must be drawn to the fact that every English expression should be pronounced with an appropriate kind of intonation in the sense that intonational contour should serve, first and foremost a particular syntactic purpose. In other words it should express either finality or non-finality in full accordance with the context.

Intonation has the following functions: [Dickushina, 134]

1.      Semantic function, for it determines the communicative type of  sentences,

2.      Grammatical function, for it determines the grammatical type of a sentence or a clause,

3.      Intonation enables us to express our emotions or our attitude to persons and things,

4.      Segmentational function, for it marks out syntagms  (sense-groups) thus making our speech intelligible.

It goes without saying that intelligibility is the most vital requirement in so far as human communication by means of language is concerned. “In phonetics intelligibility is a measure of how comprehendible speech is, or the degree to which speech can be understood. It is affected by spoken clarity, explicitness, lucidity, comprehensibility, perspicuity and precision”. (http//en.wikipedia.org/intelligibility)

It is common knowledge that speech is always split up into parts or segments. Here the segmentational function of intonation plays an important role.

Utterances are units of communication. It is therefore indispensable that the natural interruption in the flow of speech should occur at the end of sense-groups to bring out the purport of the utterance.

Hence we deal with the problem of juncture. Phonetically juncture is the cessation of voice enhanced by the prolongation of the preceding sound or sounds accompanied by a change in the intonational contour. Syntactically it is a kind of rhythmic-melodic cadence whose function consists in segmenting speech into sense-groups. A sense-group marked off by a juncture is called a Syntagm. The latter is coterminous with the breath-groups, being singled out in the flow of speech by pauses and other intonational means. e.g.

But still, | the two unprotected ones must be sheltered from him.

(“The Lost Girl” by D.H. Lawrence, Chapter 1, p. 14)

The syntagm has very important functions in a language and is an indispensable feature of intonation. Syntagms are distinguished in connected speech by significant pitch-patterns, at the same time, they are bearers of intonation. No pitch-patterns are possible without syntagms and no syntagms exist without pitch-patterns.

Incorrect syntagmatic division sometimes helps the speaker to understand the important role of pitch-patterns and syntagms. Thus, the syntagms play a very important role in a language, they are responsible for the syntactic structure of the sentence, as well as for the meaning they carry. [Dickushina, 140]

Speech is organized by rhythm. Rhythm seems to be a kind of framework of speech organization. Linguists sometimes consider rhythm as one of the components of intonation. D. Crystal (D.Crystal “Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English”, Cambridge, 1969) for instance, views rhythmically as one of the constituents of prosodic systems. Rhythm as a linguistic notion is realized, in lexical, syntactical and mostly in their combinations. For instance, such figures of speech as sound or word repetition, syntactical parallelism, intensification and others are perceived as rhythmical on the lexical, syntactical  and prosodic levels, e.g. “But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year”   (O. Wilde “The Nightingale and the Rose” 1891 ). In this example the syntactical parallelism of the homogeneous clauses is correlated with the identical prosodic contour of the intonation groups in phrase and is strengthened by the repetition of the conjunction “and”.

Speech production is naturally closely connected with the process of breathing. So speech activity as well as any other human activity is conditioned by physiological factors among others and is characterized by rhythm. From the materialistic point of view rhythm is one of the means of matter organization. The rhythmical arrangement of different phenomena of objective reality is presented in the form of periodicity, or tendency towards proportion and symmetry.

In speech, the type of rhythm depends on the language. Linguists divide languages into two groups: syllable-timed like French, and German, as well as Russian. In a syllable- timed language the speaker gives an approximately equal amount of time to each syllable, whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed and this produces the effect of even rather staccato rhythm.

In a stress-timed language, of which English is good example, the rhythm is based on a larger unit than syllable. Though the amount of time given on each syllable varies considerably, the total time of uttering each rhythmic unit is practically unchanged. The stressed syllables of a rhythmic unit are practically unchanged. The stressed syllables of a rhythmic unit form peaks of prominence. They tend to be pronounced at regular intervals no matter how many unstressed syllables are located between every two stressed ones. Thus the distribution of time within the rhythmic unit is equal.

Speech rhythm has the immediate influence on vowel reduction and elision. Form words such as prepositions, conjunctions as well as auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns are usually unstressed and pronounced in their weak forms with reduced or even elided vowels to secure equal intervals between the stressed syllables, e.g.

Come and 'see me toˎmorrow.

None of them was 'any  ˎgood.  

Speech rhythm is traditionally defined as recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time in a speech continuum. The unstressed syllables time between the stressed syllables. The greater is the number of unstressed syllables the quicker they are pronounced, e.g.

     'Jhon 'went 'back to London.

     'Jhon has 'gone 'back to London.

     'Jhon should have 'gone 'back to London.

These three sentences, each containing the same number of stressed, but a different number of unstressed syllables, are pronounced in the same period of time, although in the first sentence there is one unstressed syllable between the first two stressed syllables while in the last the same stressed syllables are separated by three unstressed syllables. A stressed syllable pronounced together with the unstressed syllables forms a rhythmic group. The stressed syllable is the prosodic nucleus of the rhythmic group. The initial unstressed syllables preceding the nucleus are called proclitics, those following the nucleus are called enclitics. In qualifying the unstressed syllables located between the stressed ones there are two main alternative views among the phoneticians. According to the so-called semantic viewpoint the unstressed syllables tend to be drawn towards the stressed syllable of the same word or to the lexical unit according to their semantic connection, concord with other words, e.g.

Negro Harlem │ became│ the largest│colony│of coloured people.

According to the other viewpoint the unstressed syllables in between the stressed ones tend to join the preceding stressed syllable. It is the so called enclitic tendency. Then the above-mentioned phrase will be divided into rhythmical groups as follows, e.g.

Negro Harlem │ became│ the largest│colony of │coloured people.

It seems that the enclitic tendency is more typical of the English language, though in the speech flow it sometimes difficult to define the borders of rhythmic groups. So the division into rhythmic groups is no easy matter. The rhythm-unit break is often indeterminate. It may well be said that the speech tempo and style often regulate the division into rhythmic groups. The enclitic tendency is more typical for informal speech whereas the semantic tendency prevails in accurate, more explicit speech. The most frequent type of rhythmic group includes 2-4 syllables, one of them stressed, others unstressed. In phonetic literature there is a great variety of terms defining the basic rhythmic unit, such as an accentual group or a stress group which is a speech segment including a stressed syllable with or without unstressed syllables attaches to it; a pause group- a group of words between two pauses, or breath group- which can be uttered within a single breath. The term “rhythmic group” used by most of the linguists implies more than a stressed group or breath group. A rhythmic group may comprise a whole phrase, like “I can’t do it” or just one word: “Unfortunately…” or even a one-syllable word: “Well…”; “Now…”. So a syllable is sometimes taken for a minimal rhythmic unit when it comes into play. Rhythmicality marks every text segment: rhythmic groups, intonation groups, phrases and phonopassages. The rhythmic effect of the text units is obtained by the prosodic parameters, the pitch of the voice, loudness, duration. In fact not only the actual pitch of the voice but its level and range, pausation and other phenomenal of a stretch of speech form rhythm constituents. The rhythm constituents vary not only in different rhythm units but also in different speech realizations, different linguistic activities.