Expressive means of English intonation

The devices that are used in English to produce additional expressive effects comprise, first of all, special means of emphasis, namely emphatic variants of kinetic and static tones. Secondly, emotionally coloured intonation patterns, such as the ascending scandent and sliding heads or the rising-falling tone as well as various modifications of pitch, stress and duration features.

1. Emphatic Tones are used in speech for various purposes, one of which is to increase the semantic prominence of separate items of an utterance or its overall prominence.

Emphasis applied to a tone not only increases the force of articulation and the effect of loudness, but also changes the pitch characteristics moving the upper point of a kinetic tone upward (extra-high pitch level) and the lower point of it downward (extra-low pitch level), thus widening the interval of the pitch change.

Normal Emphatic The semantic role of an emphatic static tone is

voice range voice range closely connected with the meaning of the nuclear

tone.