Intonation Patterns

The Melody of Spoken English: Intonation Patterns
Do you ever hear people say that English has a melody? It’s true. Many people think that spoken English has a musical quality. That’s probably because we use many intonation patterns when we speak.

What do I mean by intonation patterns?

Well, intonation refers to the pitch patterns we Americans use when we talk. There are many intonation patterns in American English. These patterns are important because they convey meaning.

While some tonal languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese use changes in pitch to differentiate between words, English uses pitch or intonation patterns over phrases and sentences to convey larger chunks of meaning.

The two most commonly used sentence intonation patterns used in spoken English are: rising-falling intonation and rising intonation.

Rising-Falling Intonation
First I’ll tell you about rising-falling intonation. In rising-falling intonation the speaker’s pitch rises and falls on the focus word in a sentence (you learned about focus words in last week’s lesson). The final falling pitch indicates that the speaker is finished talking.

Rising-falling intonation is the most common intonation pattern in English. The speaker’s pitch rises at the top of the focus word and then drops to indicate the speaker is finished speaking.
Rising-falling intonation is found in:
•declarative sentences
•commands (very strong)
•‘wh’ questions

Rising Intonation
In rising intonation the speaker’s pitch rises and stays HIGH at the end of a sentence. The rising pitch at the end of a sentence indicates that the speaker is waiting for a reply.

In rising intonation the pitch rises and stays high at the end of the sentence. When you hear rising intonation it indicates that they speaker is waiting for a reply. Rising intonation is found in: yes/no questions situations when someone is expressing doubt or surprise