Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-ckgrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-09T08:39:30.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Falls and rises: meanings and universals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Alan Cruttenden
Alan Cruttenden
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The study of intonation has gone through phases in which it has been fashionable to ascribe the meaning of intonation to one particular sort of function.1 Most traditionally that function has been grammatical (see, e.g., the earliest British attempts at intonation analysis (e.g. Butler, 1634) and many recent textbooks on English language teaching). More recently (i.e. since the second world war), speakers' attitude has often been taken as most important (e.g. Pike, 1945; Kingdon, 1958). In the light of current fashion, the discourse function is often seen as most important (e.g. Brazil,, 1975, 1978; Pilch, 1977).I argue in this article that intonation operates with its own set of meanings which are of higher abstraction than those of grammar, attitude or discourse; and that it is only at a lower level that these meanings of higher abstraction become relevant to one or more of these functions (in so far as the functions can in any case be clearly separated). Such a hypothesis is relevant to the question of how intonation is acquired by children (where the real problem for investigators has always been WHAT exactly is being acquired). It is also important to questions of cross-dialectal intonational translation (whether across social or regional boundaries) and also to possible intonation universals.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 77 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abe, I. (1955). Intonational patterns of English and Japanese. Word II. 386–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allerton, D. J. & Cruttenden, A. (1974). English sentence adverbials: their syntax and their intonation in British English. Lingua. 34. 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allerton, D. J. & Cruttenden, A. (1976). The intonation of medial and final sentence adverbials in British English. ArchL 7. 29–59.Google Scholar
Allerton, D. J. & Cruttenden, A. (1978). Syntactic, illocutionary, thematic and attitudinal factors in the intonation of adverbials. Journal of Pragmatics 2. 155–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, L. E. & Ward, I. C. (1926). Handbook of English intonation. Cambridge: Heffer.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, M. (1966). Regeln für die Intonation deutscher Sätze. Studia Grammatica 7. 99–201.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, M. (1968). Two critical problems for accent rules. JL 4. 173–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1964). Intonation as a universal. In Lunt, H. G. (ed), Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Linguists. Mouton: The Hague.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1978). Intonation across languages. In Greenberg, J. P., Ferguson, C. A. & Moravcsik, E. A. (eds), Universals of human language. Vol. 2: Phonology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brazil, D. (1975). Discourse intonation. Birmingham University: Department of English.Google Scholar
Brazil, D. (1978). Discourse intonation II. Birmingham University: Department of English.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (1971). Sentence stress and syntactic transformations. Lg 47. 257–282.Google Scholar
Brown, G., Currie, K. & Kenworthy, J. (1977). The intonation of Scottish English. Final report to Social Science Research Council. University of Edinburgh: Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Butler, C. (1634). English grammar. Oxford (published for the author). Edited by Eichler, A. (1910). Halle: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Canepari, L. (1977). The dialect of Venice. JIPA 6. 67–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Cruse, D. A. (1973). Some thoughts on agentivity. JL 9. 11–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D. (1975). Prosodic features and linguistic theory. In The English tone of voice. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
von Essen, O. (1956). Grundzüge der hochdeutschen Satzintonation. Dusseldorf: Henn.Google Scholar
Giles, H., Bourhis, R., Trudgill, P. & Lewis, A. (1974). The imposed norm hypothesis: a validation. QJSp 60. 405–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1966). Intonation systems in English. In Halliday, M. A. K. & McIntosh, A. (eds.) Patterns of language: papers in general, descriptive, and applied linguistics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Intonation and grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1972). Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Jarman, E. & Cruttenden, A. (1976). Belfast intonation and the myth of the fall. JIPA 6. 4–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenworthy, J. (1978). The intonation of questions in one variety of Scottish English. Lingua 44. 267–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon, R. (1959). The groundwork of English intonation. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Knowles, G. (1975). Scouse: the spoken dialect of Liverpool. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Leeds University.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. Jr, (1977). The function of the A-rise accent in English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. Jr, (1978). Stylized intonation. Lg. 54. 517–539.Google Scholar
Leben, W. R. (1976). The tones in English intonation. LAn 2. 69–107.Google Scholar
Liberman, M. (1978). The intonational system of English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Liberman, M. & Sag, I. (1974). Prosodic form and discourse function. PCLS 10. 416–427.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P. (1967). Intonation, perception and language. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Maw, J. & Kelly, J. (1975). Intonation in Swahili. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.Google Scholar
O'Connor, J. D. & Arnold, G. F. (1961). Intonation of colloquial English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ohala, J. J. (1970). Aspects of the control and production of speech. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 15.Google Scholar
Pellowe, J. & Jones, V. (1977). On intonational variability in Tyneside speech. Department of English, University of Newcastle: mimeographed.Google Scholar
Pike, K. L. (1945). Intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Pilch, H. (1977). Intonation in discourse analysis. Phonetica 34 81–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romportl, M. (1973). On the synonymy and homonymy of means of intonation. In Studies in phonetics. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sag, I. & Liberman, M. (1975). The intonational disambiguation of indirect speech acts. PCLS II. 487–497.Google Scholar
Stockwell, R. P. (1960). The place of intonation in a generative grammar of English. Lg 36. 360–367.Google Scholar
Swadesh, M. (1946). Chitimacha. In Hoijer, H. (ed.), Linguistic structures of native America. New York: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology.Google Scholar
Tarone, E. S. (1973). Aspects of intonation in Black English. AS 48. 29–36.Google Scholar
Thorsen, N. (1978). An acoustical investigation of Danish intonation. JPhon 6. 151–175.Google Scholar
Topping, D. M. (1969). A restatement of Chamorro phonology. AnL II. 62–78.Google Scholar
Trubetzkoy, N. S. (1939). Grundzüge der Phonologie. (TCLP 7.) [Translated by Baltaxe, C. A. M. (1969) as Principles of phonology. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press].Google Scholar
Waterhouse, V. (1962). The grammatical structure of Oaxaca Chontal. Supplement to IJAL 28. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Centre in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wells, G., Montgomery, M. & MacLure, M. (1978). The development of discourse: a report on work in progress. School of Education, University of Bristol.Google Scholar