Notice that to produce a falling tone on It you will have to start at a higher pitch in order to fall. The pitch moves up on the word in, starts high on It and then moves downwards over aly.
A n n a ’ s i n I t a l y For a rise, you will have to start at a lower pitch on It in order to rise upwards on aly.
Experiment 2 Practise each tone on the syllable It in the sentence Anna’s in Italy.
Tone & Meaning Watch Video Lesson
Most English pronunciation textbooks will tell you that each of these tones has a number of specific emotional meanings attached to it. They also usually state that you should use a rising tone for certain questions, and a falling tone for another.
Research1 has proved that English people don’t follow these rules in normal, spontaneous speech. One tone can express a number of contrasting emotions and attitudes depending on a variety of factors such as context, facial expression and voice quality.
You’re probably asking yourself, well if there are no rules for intonation, then surely I can do what I want? Not exactly….
Now go to the next page.
1Read a discussion of this with explanations and references to recent research in the book Phonology For Listening – Teaching the Stream of Speech (2013) by Richard Cauldwell (especially pages 223-233).
