TONALITY

THEORY: What is tonality?

The division of the spoken material into IP’s (Intonation Phrases).

THEORY: Where do we usually place an intonation break?

Between clauses, sentences, phrases, and occasionally between words.

THEORY: When do we say it’s “marked tonality”?

When we divide clauses or structures that we wouldn’t otherwise expect to divide in a grammatical boundary.

Vocatives are usually …?

left on the tail.

What would “yes/yeah/no” be an example for?

A tonally fixed statement: they’re mostly divided and given its own IP.

If there’s new information in a sentence, how do we expect to divide it?

For example, here: [ I took flute lessons for a couple of years ]

If we were to think of “for a couple of years” as an adverbial of time, we would leave it on the tail unaccented (MARKED TONICITY).

But if we were to think of it as relevant info, we would give it its own IP: [I took flute lessons | for a couple of years ] (and probably tone concord too)

What happens with “too”?

It usually gets its own IP.

What happens with vocatives in initial position?

They’re given its own IP.

What could be the reason to give a vocative it’s own IP when its in final position?

To be friendlier, usually in greetings, like: [ See you around! | Bye, | Felicia! ]

What happens with noun phrases?

They tend to have their own IP, especially if they’re heavy noun phrases. For example, appositions.

What happens with defining and non-defining relative clauses?

Defininf rel. clauses don’t tend to have their own IP, but non-defining rel.clauses do.

What happens with tag-questions?

They tend to have its own IP.

In this kind of sentence: [ I’ll be buying oranges, apples, bananas, and kiwis. ] How would we expect to divide it into chunks?

It’s a LIST, so we’ll treat every list item equally and give it its own IP.

[ I’ll be buying oranges, | apples, | bananas, | and kiwis. ]

THEORY: True or false?

“Normally, there’s a major break at every sentence boundary and each clause tends to be said as a separate IP.”

True.