Theoretical phonetics. Study guide for second year students. Борискина О.О - 70 стр.

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characterizes the approach of the American school to the study of intonation
system as "mechanical".
      Two main functions of intonation are — constitutive and recognitive,
intonation also serves to distinguish communicative types of sentences and
differentiate functional styles.
      Attitudinal function of intonation can be observed in utterances consisting
of one word and in utterances consisting of more than a single word. In the latter
cases it is not only that the type of the nucleus is important but also the pitch of
the utterance preceding the nucleus: prehead and head. The attitudinal function
of different tonal types in statements, special and general questions, commands
and interjections is accurately and thoroughly described in the "Intonation of
Colloquial English" by J. D. O'Connor and G. F. Arnold and in other textbooks
on phonetics.
      Prosody Stress
      Any word spoken in isolation has at least one prominent syllable. We
perceive it as stressed. Stress in the isolated word is termed word stress, stress in
connected speech is termed sentence stress. Stress is indicated by placing a
stress mark before the stressed syllable: /'/.
      Stress is defined differently by different authors. B. A. Bogoroditsky, for
instance, defined stress as an increase of energy, accompanied by an increase of
expiratory and articulatory activity. D.Jones defined stress as the degree of
force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhalation and gives an
impression of loudness. H. Sweet also stated that stress is connected with the
force of breath. Later, however, D. Jones wrote, that "stress or prominence is
effected ... by inherent sonority, vowel and consonant length and by intonation."
A.C. Gimson also admits that a more prominent syllable is accompanied by
pitch changes in the voice, quality and quantity of the accented sounds.
      If we compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the words contract
/'kontrəkt/ договор, to contract /tə kən'trækt/ заключать договор, we may note
that in the stressed syllable:
      (a) the force of utterance is greater, which is connected with more energetic
articulation;
      (b) the pitch of the voice is higher, which is connected with stronger
tenseness of the vocal cords and the walls of the resonance chamber;
      (c) the quantity of the vowel /æ/ in /kən'trækt/ is greater, the vowel
becomes longer;
      (d) the quality of the vowel /æ/ in the stressed syllable is different from the
quality of this vowel in the unstressed position, in which it is more narrow than
/'æ/.
      On the auditory level a stressed syllable is the part of the word which has a
special prominence. It is "produced by a greater loudness and length,
modifications in the pitch and quality. The physical properties are: intensity,
duration, frequency and the formant structure. All these features can be analysed
on the acoustic level.