Lecture 7. STYLE CHARACTERISTICS OF INTONATION
2. Informational Dialogues
Accentua-tion of seman tic centres
Terminal tones
common use of final categoric falls; in non-final segments mid-level and low rising tones are quite common
common use of final categoric falls on semantic centres, non-final falls, mid-level and rising tones in non-final intonation groups. The emphasis is achieved by the use of high falls (very abrupt for a male voice)
Pre-nuclear patterns
common use of falling and level heads or several falls within one interpausal unit
varied; common use of level heads with one accentuated pre-nuclear syllable; descending falling heads are broken by the "accidental rise"
The contrast between accented and
unaccented segments
not great
great, achieved by the centralized stress pattern; increase of loudness, levels and ranges on semantic centres; high categoric falls, emphatic stress on them and other variations of different prosodic characteristics
By comparing the invariant characteristics of the two varieties of the language (writ-ten and spoken) in this register by the systemat ic phonological opposition we can make the fol lowing conclusion:
Written (read aloud) and spoken texts belonging to the same intonational style have 1.
different prosodic realization.
In oral speech the means of the prosodic realization are more vivid, expressive and’
2.
varied, especially in voice timbre, loudness, tempo, length of pauses and rhythm.
The speaker often uses some hesitation phenomena (hesi tation pauses and 3.
temporizers) intentionally, which enables him to obtain the balance between formality and informality and es tablish contacts with the public.
The speaker uses various hesitation phenomena uninten tionally which enables him 4.
to gain the time in search for suitable expression or idea and thus not interrupt the flow of speech.
The speech is characterized by a greater number of intona tion groups, supraphrasal 5.
units and phonopassages. In spontane ous speech an intonation group doesn’t always coincide with a syntagm. Pauses at the end of the phrase are optional.
The reading is characterized by a decentralized stress dis tribution whereas speaking 6.
– by a centralized one.
Spontaneous speech is more contrastive, communicative centers are more vividly 7.
underlined; the emphasis is achieved by a wider range of terminal tones, greater degree of loudness and prominence of accented segments.
The reading is rhythmical, oral speech rhythm is non-sys tematic, unpredictable, 8.
variable (see table 26).
the redundance of vocal expression.
4.
This gives us the reason to distinguish several types of dialogues:
5. specialized informative talks on serious and intellectual sub ject matters (such as educational, psychological, political, etc.).
6. discussions on serious and weighty problems, 7. debates,
8. everyday conversations, telephone talks among them.
There are certain things common to all dialogue talks as opposed to monologues. A dialogue is a coordinated simultaneous speech act of two participants or rather a speaker and a listener. Thus the factuous contact is conveyed. It is essential that in any success ful conversation "give-and-take" between the sender and receiv er should be maintained.
The attention-getting function is established by putting all sorts of questions, agreement, question tags to show the interest and guide the course of the talk towards a given theme and also by using all sorts of response and non-response words and utter-ances both of verbal and non-verbal character. This communion may be so close that the speakers often talk simulta neously. There might be also permanent recapitulations upon the request of the listener. The utterances on the part of both participants tend to be in-complete since the context makes per fectly plain to them what was being intended thus making re dundant its vocal expression.
Hesitation phenomena are of primary significance in deter mining acceptability or otherwise of conveyers. Hesitancy is strongly influenced by periods of creative thinking and word searching. Voiceless hesitation is also very frequent, it tends to occur relatively randomly, not just at places of major grammati cal junctions, which is more the pattern of written English read aloud. Voiced hesitation' consists of hesitant drawls, verbal and non-verbal fillers such as er, ehm, mm.
Any kind of dialogue is also joined up by means of non-verbal communication — facial expressions (a raised eyebrow, a glance towards the partner, etc.), gestures, body movements and noises such as whistles, artificial clearing of the throat, snorts, sniffs, laughs and other paralinguistic features of significance.
On the lexical and grammatical level there is a high- propor tion of errors which seem not to bother the speakers.
Interpolations are commonly interjectional in character, their function is primarily to indicate that attention is being main tained.
We should also mention here all sorts of introductions, after thoughts, high propor-tion of parenthetical words which even in creases in a more serious type of conversapropor-tion.
Dialogues are commonly characterized by a large number of loosely coordinated clauses, the coordination being structurally ambiguous, a series of loosely coordinated sentence-like struc tures.
The invariant of phonostylistic characteristics of informational spontaneous dia-logues is given in table 27.
Table 27 The Invariant of Pbonostylistic Characteristics of Informational
Spontaneous Dialogues
Timbre businesslike, detached, occasionally interested
Delimitation
coordinated block – dialogical units (stimulus – response) – phrases – intonational groups, frequent absence of end-of-utterance pauses due to the rapid taking up of cues; frequent use of hesitation pauses (filled and silent), occasional silence for purposes of emphatic pause
Style- marking prosodic features
Loudness
normal or reduced (piano expression); variation of it at block bound-aries and also for the accentuation of semantic centres; occasional inaudible lowered mumbles and trailing off into silence occurring by the end of the segments
Levels and ranges
greatly varied, especially for the contrastive accentuation of se-mantic: centres; narrowed pitch ranges for many monosyllabic re-sponses
Rate
slow or normal, varied on the accented semantic centres and in-terpolations, characteristically uneven, as flexible as one wishes it to be
Pauses
may be of any length; their length being the
marker of contact between the speakers; simulta neous speaking is quite com-mon; silence of any stretch occurs for the sake of emphasis and as a temporizer to gain some time before expressing the view
Rhythm
non-systematic, greatly varied, interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards the subjective rhythmic isochrony; the rhythmi-cality within the block is achieved by the variation of all prosodic parameters
Accentu-ation of semantic centres
Terminal tones
regular use of falling (high and medium) final and categoric tones, the increase of the range of the nuclei on the semantic centres;
occasional usage of level and low rising tones in non-final groups, of emphatic tones (High Fall, Fall-Rise, RiFall) on emphatic se-mantic centres; high proportion of nar rowed tones throughout the responses
Pre-nuclear patterns
common use of level heads, usually with one accented pre-nuclear syllable and high pre-heads, longer pre-nuclear patterns are not frequent, if they do occur, then sudden wide pitch jumps with in the segments characterize them
The contrast between accented and
unaccented segments
great, achieved by the variations in all prosodic parameters
By opposing informational monologue – di alogue phonostylistic characteristics we will draw the following conclusions:
The structural hierarchy of a monologue is: phonopassages – phrases – intonation 1.
groups; whereas the one of a dialogue is: blocks – dialogical units – phrases – intonation groups.
There is some distinction between the opposed varieties on the part of segmental 2.
features notably in vowel length, voicing and devoicing of consonants, assimilations and elisions, but the phonological differences lie mainly in the use of non-segmental features of basic prosodic configurations.
In a dialogue there is a wider range of contrasts in prosodic and paralinguistic 3.
effects, thus the danger of misunderstanding is avoided through the introduction of a large number of prosodic contrasts.
The attitudes of the talkers are more variable in a dialogue, but, since both analysed 4.
forms belong to the informational style, impartiality prevails. Changes in the attitude condition changes in prosodic features. They also condition variations in utterance length. In a dialogue there is a strong tendency to keep them short, to break up potentially lengthy intonation groups wherever possible. The average length of units in the majority of cases falls within the range of 1—5 words. Relatively high proportion of in complete phrasal segments is noticeable. Phrases are commonly short at the beginning, longer as topics are introduced, longer still as argument develops and short again as the end approaches.
In a dialogue the rhythmicality is even more non-systemat ic, there is no stable 5.
pattern of rhythm.
The tempo (rate + pauses) in a monologue is normally less varied but in both cases 6. it is conditioned by the importance of information, the fluency of speakers, their familiarity with the topic (theme) and experience in speaking. In general in a mono-logue less fluent speech is being the expected kind.