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1. Read the text entitled “The Components of Intonation”
2. Write a summary of the text (12-15 sentences) and be ready
to deliver short speech on the topic orally.
3. Draw a scheme to illustrate your report.

The most essential speech unit, complete and independent
enough to function as a unit of communication, is the sentence. It
can perform this function not only because it consists of words that
are made up of definite sounds, have a definite meaning, and
follow each other in a definite order according to the rules of the
language, but also because it possesses definite phonetic features,
without which the sentence cannot exist. These features are closely
connected with the meaning of the utterance as a whole and carry
important information that the words of the utterance do not
convey. Each feature performs a definite task, and all of them
work simultaneously. Thus,
a) Sentences are usually separated from each other by
pauses. If necessary, the sentence is subdivided into shorter word-
group according to sense; these are called sense-group or
syntagms.
b) The pitch of the voice does not stay on the same level
while the sentence (or the sense-group) is pronounced; it
fluctuates, rising and falling on the vowels and voiced consonants.
These falls and rises are not chaotic, but form definite patterns,
typical of English. The fluctuations of the voice-pitch are called
speech melody.
c) The word that is most important for the meaning of the
sentence, i. e. the word acting as its semantic centre, is made
prominent by stress and a special moving tone; this special tone is
the result of a perceptible change in the pitch, which either falls, or
rises, or changes its movement first in one direction, then in
another (fall-rise or rise-fall). The movement is initiated on the
stressed syllable of the most important word of the sentence ( or
sense-group).

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