Page 40 - 4227

7. Complete Individual Practical Task.
8. Write the report.

Theory

4.1. Intonation

In linguistics, intonation is variation of spoken pitch that is
not used to distinguish words; instead it is used for a range of

functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the

speaker, signalling the difference between statement and question,
and between different types of question, focussing attention on

important elements of the spoken message and also helping to
regulate conversational interaction. It contrasts with tone, in which

pitch variation in some languages does distinguish words, either
lexically or grammatically.

4.2 Units of language vs. speech

Language and speech can be the two main objects of analysis
in our attempt to understand the nature and functioning of oral

verbal communication. These global concepts structurally can be
divided into smaller units. Here we will outline in brief the

taxonomy of language versus speech units. Ch. W. Kreidler [1989]

gives the description of the LANGUAGE UNITS as follows:
In their use of language speakers express themselves mainly

in sentences which can be organized into texts. Sentences consist

of phrases, and phrases consist of words. Every word consists of at
least one morpheme, a minimal unit that contributes in some way

to the meaning of the word. A morpheme is expressed in some
sequence of the phonemes of a language. A phoneme is an abstract

unit (“a sound in the mind”) which is realized in speech as
different segments in different positions. In the six words geese,

goose, glee, glue, greet, grew, all six allophones of the phoneme

/g/ have shared features of being back-lingual, stops, and voiced.

39