Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Prosodic


                                           Stress & Intonation (Dickins, 2008: 114)

- In spoken texts, different sentences for different purposes can be created through intonation and stress. 

-  Intonation patterns (falling, rising, fall-rise, high level) can result in distinct spoken sentences: a statement, question, demand, encouragement, warning, etc.

                                             The salt.   [with falling intonation: statement]
                                             The salt?  [with rising intonation: question]
                                             The salt!   [ with fall-rise intonation: demand]
                                             The salt!   [ with high, level intonation: command]

- Similarly, stress stress can express different shades of meaning.

                                             I know that man. [neutral]
                                             I know that man. [ I ]
                                             I know that man. [know]
                                             I know that man. [that]
                                             I know than man. [man

- In written texts, stress and intonation can be conveyed through three ways:

   Punctuation [a capital letter, fullstop, comma, question/exclamation mark]
   Typography [italics, capitals, bold interface]
   Additional explicit information [e.g. 'she exclaimed in surprise', 'she said angrily', etc]