英语教学术语选摘(131)

Intonation refers to the meaningful changes in pitch of the voice in speech.Such meanings may be grammatical(English types of relative clauses),contrastive(I saw him),pragmatic(English statements turned into questions by rising intonation),discourse(pitch range lowering to signal end of topic),attitudinal(anger,friendliness,etc.)or lexical(tone languages such as Yoruba distinguish words by different pitches).Systems to describe intonation commonly use a set of tones(rise,fall,etc.)or a set of levels(high,mid,etc.).It is mostly ignored in language teaching,apart from the obligatory aside in NOTIONAL/FUNCTIONAL SYLLABUSES that functions are related to intonation.