ABSTRACT
LOOKING AHEAD An utterance consists of one or more tone units, and each tone unit has an intonation and one accented syllable, the nucleus of the tone unit. Two utterances that contain the same words in the same sequence may differ in prosody: they may be spoken with different melodies, or intonations; they may be divided into different numbers of tone units, which means different numbers of accents; or, within any tone unit, the accent may be in different places. Intonation is taken up in Chapter 11; the other matters are the subject of Section 10.1. (We continue to use the downward arrow (↓) and upward arrow (↑) to represent falling and rising intonations, respectively. Chapter 11 introduces other symbols for more complex intonations.)
The accented word in a tone unit carries the most important information, new information, and generally this word is at the end of the tone unit. When an earlier word is accented, the accent creates a special focus. One reason for this focus is to highlight a contrast with something previously said. Within a word the stress and accent may shift to a prefix that is in contrast with another prefix or with no prefix. (See Section 10.2.)
However, a word may be accented, not so much because it is important, but because other parts are de-accented: they present old information, repeating what has been said earlier in the discourse. Languages have special forms called anaphoric words to express what has already been mentioned. (See Section 10.3.)
10.1 The structure of a tone unit In speech meanings are communicated not merely by what is said but also by the way it is said. We humans have invented ways of preserv-ing our sayings through writing, but the writing systems that we have do not reflect all that is present in speech. Writing indicates consonant and vowel phonemes with some degree of
accuracy, but no language has a writing system that adequately represents the rhythms and melodies of our utterances. Punctuation marks, italics, and under-lining are crude ways of trying to represent these prosodic elements that provide nuances of meaning in what we say.
