ABSTRACT
A distinction can be made between two types of language. In the tone languages, a group which includes, for instance, many of the languages in use in the Far East, the choice of one pitch treatment rather than another serves to differentiate particular lexical items (as well as sometimes serving a suprasegmental function, as described below). In the other group, which includes the modern European languages, it is said to have a suprasegmental function. This is to say that the lexical content of any utterance is held to be already determined by other means (i.e. by its segmental composition), so that intonation has to be thought of as adding meaning of some other kind to stretches of speech which are usually of greater extent than the single lexical item. Discovering what the stretches of speech are that are so affected, and developing a conceptual framework within which the peculiar contribution that intonation makes to meaning can be made explicit, are essential parts of the business of setting up systematic descriptions of the phenomenon.
