Talk:Intonation (linguistics)

[Untitled]

Can anyone expand on the explanation of the notation that can be used to record intonation (IPA or otherwise)? 128.12.20.195 04:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The claim that Chickashaw uses rises for statements and falls for questions should perhaps be accompanied by a reference (Gussenhoven?) since there is no mention of this on the links to Chickashaw language and this is not a widely known fact. DanielHirst 12:51, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

A possible ref would be Matthew Gordon of UC Santa Barbara, but I don't have anything available offhand and it's way past my bed time. kwami 13:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Angelica fernandez fernandez

No information/link is given about this person.

"diagonal arrow" symbols

ANGELICA FERNANDEZ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.193.213.107 (talk) 01:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

The two "diagonal arrow" symbols both appear as the same white square (empty box) symbol on my screen. I'm using IE 7, with pretty standard settings.

Sadly, IE isn't good at font substitution. It works fine in Firefox. If you figure out what fonts they appears in, we can wrap the arrows in <span> tags that force one of those fonts … Ruakh 14:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hungarian intonation

Random trivia: In Hungarian, you make a yes/no question by making the last two syllables rise and fall--"ment a vonat" means the train has left; intoned "ment a VOnat" it asks, has the train left?

Rise and fall

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal, "most sentences using a Wh-interrogative rise and then fall at the end." 69.210.78.205 06:55, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge

Shouldn't this article be merged with Tone (linguistics)? The concepts are virtually the same. Rsazevedo ^msg 16:49, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

No. They are completely different concepts. This would be like merging vowel and formant. kwami (talk) 17:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, the articles certainly don't convey that difference in the concepts. They definitely need reworking then. Rsazevedo ^msg 17:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Currently, Intonation is described as a type of pitch and then this article talks about uses of pitch in Chinese. It neglects to address the most important information about intonation: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTONATION AND PITCH? Anyone who reads this will have the same question. I came here to see just that, and Wikipedia is offering nothing as of now... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.61.179.133 (talk) 08:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Dubious tag on "dunno"

adrian loves bruno — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.195.44.51 (talk) 09:19, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The article currently says, in the section "Lexicalized intonation":

English intonation may become semi-lexicalized in common expressions such as "dunno" ([I] don't know)

I dunno about that -- to me the intonation of "dunno", by itself or at the end of a sentence, seems to be the same as in "I forget" -- low on the first syllable, then high-start-with-a-dropoff on the stressed final syllable. And in the middle of a sentence, "dunno" and "forget" both seem the same again -- low on the first syllable, then medium on the stressed second syllable. Can someone justify the assertion in the text? Duoduoduo (talk) 15:42, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I think the intention here was the hummed mumble "I'unno" or "I dunno". It's basically the intonation of "I dunno" said (really hummed) without opening your mouth. It's incredibly common among English speakers and is often accompanied by a shrug. Actually, there's a quick mention of it on the page for shrug: "In the English-speaking world it may be accompanied by a three syllable grunt or hummed mumble mimicking the intonation of 'I dunno'." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.136.237.59 (talk) 18:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Male-female intonation differences

The article Gender-neutral language says in its last sentence, without a source:

...intonation differs between men and women in many languages....

Is this true? If so, with elaboration it would make an excellent addition to the present article. Duoduoduo (talk) 15:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Intonation in English

I want to rewrite the "Intonation in English" section, if nobody objects. At the moment, the material is presented in terms of the traditional American 4-pitch-level system and it is not made clear that this is not generally used by European linguists, and is widely regarded as outdated. I won't delete that material, though it could do with a bit of improving from the readability point of view, but I'd like to add some stuff about British analyses, about modern American work using ToBI and other European descriptions of English. RoachPeter (talk) 14:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I find the article's opening definitional sentence confusing. Does it hold water? The difference between tone and intonation (if one is indeed supported widely in the literature) needs to be clarified. For example, the opening para of Intonation in English morphs into a quite different frame (pitch). And I'm unsure of how authoritative Cecle-Murcia et al. is ... it's a textbook for second-language speakers, isn't it? Tony (talk) 08:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, I've made a lot of changes to the "Intonation in English" section and added a Bibliography. I will now go on to rewrite the opening section so that i) definition of intonation, ii) transcription of intonation and iii) functions of intonation are properly separated (they are rather muddled together at the moment). BTW, Celce-Murcia et al is a textbook on the teaching of English pronunciation which contains a lot of useful observations about English phonetics RoachPeter (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I've not looked. I hope you'll be around from 5 March, after my real-life work-stress deadline, to collaborate on this potentially fascinating article. Talk then? Tony (talk) 06:27, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - it's a vast topic, so there's lots more to say. I have a few more revisions nearly ready to go, so I'll keep plodding on with those - best to do this bit by bit, I think. RoachPeter (talk) 15:34, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

That was a great improvement to the article! Do you think you can also add some things about how American and British intonations in themselves differ? I mean, the academic transcription is different, but even British intonation itself goes up and down more than in American (I think, at least). It's one of the most important differences between the two Englishes, maybe even more so than pronunciation. 76.18.160.47 (talk) 23:09, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Halliday and Grieves make points about this. From memory, North American English has a slight tendency towards more pronounced intonation, with considerable variety between individual speakers—perhaps more than the difference between the transatlantic averages. Text read aloud has more pronounced intonation, I believe. But I haven't looked at their refs, which would be interesting; nor have I gone back to the particular sections I'm recalling. Will have time soon to discuss more on this talk page. Tony (talk) 01:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Level intonation

Someone has just deleted "Level intonation" from the list at line 22. I don't feel I should just revert this change straight away, but there are many accounts of English intonation that give a role (albeit a minor one) to level tone alongside falls, rises etc. I suppose that if Level is reinstated it should be with some examples. RoachPeter (talk) 17:12, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Cadence

This seems to be missing as an article, but there can be some overlap here so I did not add one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.33.23.14 (talk) 18:21, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

French (continuation pattern)

At present we have:

• Hier ↗soir, il m'a off↗ert une ciga↘rette. (The English equivalent would be "Last eve↗ning, he offered ↗me a cigar↘ette.")

The English intonation given here is clearly wrong – should be: Last ↗evening, he ↗offered me a ciga↘rette (BrE) / ↘cigarette (AmE). Furthermore and in any case, is an "English equivalent" really necessary in this description of an aspect of French? I propose simply removing it. -- Picapica (talk) 05:59, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

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Evaluating an Article

Evaluate an article This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.

Name of article: Intonation (linguistics) Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. · All three of my children have been late talkers, and communicated solely by intonation, without words, until aged almost three years. It’s a subject of interest to me, and it cites David Crystal several times, so I figured it'd be relevant to class. Lead Guiding questions Yes, it had a great introductory sentence. The article's major sections were not briefly described, but were listed in the contents box. I did not find it overly detailed, but it did have a quote from David Crystal, without saying anything about who he is. I don't know if it's necessary to explain who someone is, or what their credentials are, before quoting them on WIkipedia.

Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? Lead evaluation Content Guiding questions The content is relevant and seems to be up-to-date. Most of the cited sources were from last century, with only a few from the last two decades. I am not aware of how much recent research has been done on the subject. I am not overly familiar with this field of study, but all the information seems to belong. I would think there could be a section on how and when intonation competency is acquired, but again, I don't know how much research has been done on the subject. It's a linguistics article, so I believe that is part of a Wikipedia gap.

Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Is the content up-to-date? Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics? Content evaluation Tone and Balance Guiding questions The article is neutral and unbiased, as I don't believe it is a topic of controversy. There don't appear to be different viewpoints; it seems to be a somewhat underrepresented topic in general, because of the difficulty of its research.

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? Tone and balance evaluation Sources and References Guiding questions All facts/paragraphs have citations, except the lead paragraph, which does not, excepting a quote from David Crystal. There is a large variety of authors referenced. There are many links; I checked several, and one did not work. The sources range in date from the 1920s to 2015. I am not personally aware of more recent research on the subject, and am not sure what counts as "up-to-date".

Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Are the sources current? Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible? Check a few links. Do they work? Sources and references evaluation Organization Guiding questions It seems to be about as concise and clear as such a complicated subject can be. It was well-organized, and I didn't notice any spelling or grammatical errors.

Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? Organization evaluation Images and Media Guiding questions It has one image of the intonation marks used for transcription. I don't think it's a terribly important image, since it uses the marks in the Transcription section, but it could be better labeled/explained.

Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? Are images well-captioned? Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? Images and media evaluation Checking the talk page Guiding questions There are a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes, many of them to do with difference in intonation between languages and dialects, and general clarity of the article. It is part of the WikiProject Linguistics, and is rated B-class. We haven't discussed this topic in-depth yet, except how there may be a difference in intonation depending on the gender and class of the person you are talking to, which I did not see mentioned in the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? Talk page evaluation Overall impressions Guiding questions It has not received a rating on the "importance" scale. A strength seems to be that many people who are genuinely educated and fascinated by the subject are the ones behind the scenes. I especially enjoyed the section on Function. I think it may be mildly underdeveloped--I was still left wanting, anyway--but that may be due to a lack of recent research in general on the topic. It could maybe be improved if there has been any more recent research on the topic.

What is the article's overall status? What are the article's strengths? How can the article be improved? How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? Overall evaluation Optional activity Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback with four tildes — RedClover4 (talk) 18:11, 15 October 2020 (UTC) Are there any studies done with children and intonation? Such as, at what age do they acquire intonational competency in their native language? RedClover4 (talk) 18:11, 15 October 2020 (UTC) RedClover4