- A. I. Smirnickij, Sintaksis anglijskogo jazyka (Moscow, 1957).
- Dwight L. Bolinger, “Intonation and Analysis,” Word V (1949), 248–254; cf. also U. Weinreich, “Notes on the Yiddish Rise-Fall Intonation Contour,” For Roman Jakobson (The Hague, 1956), p. 633.
- František Daneš, Intonace a věta ve spisovné češtině (Prague, 1957).
- Some investigators, e.g. D. L. Bolinger (Word V, p. 249), overemphasize this aspect when they say that intonation is “embedded in a matrix of instinctive reactions”; they do not do justice to its genuinely linguistic, arbitrary functions which are demonstrated by the differences between languages. On this point, see Vilém Mathesius, “K teorii větné intonace,” Slovo a slovesnost III (1937), pp. 248ff.—From a genetic point of view, intonation formulas may indeed have developed from such instinctive signals; hence the relative similarity of intonational schemes in many languages. The degree of arbitrariness is proportional to the degree of intellectuality of the intonational function. Therefore, in its least intellectual, most “spontaneous” or instinctive uses, intonation is intelligible across language boundaries: in foreign languages it is sometimes easier to recognize and to render certain emotions than to distinguish a question from a statement.—P. Trost, in his article “O problémech větné intonace,” Slovo a slovesnost III (1937), p. 226, distinguishes three ranges of intonation use: (1) intonational mimicry in which intonation is spontaneous, natural, and psycho-physiologically stimulated; (2) intonational formulas, in which such natural values are intentionally utilized; (3) intonational oppositions, which enter into systems of form and meaning peculiar to a language, and for which the psycho-physiological value of intonation is irrelevant.—L. Bloomfield distinguishes between intonational “distinctive patterns of speech” and the use of intonation “in the manner of gestures, as when we talk harshly, sneeringly, petulantly… and so on” (Language, New York, 1933, p. 114).
- Cf. N. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague, 1957), §6.1, and the review of this book by Robert B. Lees, in Language XXXII (1957), 375–408: “American linguistic canons are particularly characterized by this confusion of field and laboratory techniques for data collection and classification on the one hand and model construction or grammar writing on the other” (pp. 379f.).
- Cf. K. L. Pike, The Intonation of American English (Ann Arbor, 1945), p. 14: “… an instrumental analysis for linguistic purposes needs to be preceded by an analysis of contrast of intonation which in turn demands careful attention to the characteristics which carry or control meanings.”—My own view was favorably cited by P. L. Garvin and M. Mathiot in their article, “Fused Units in Prosodie Analysis,” Word XIV (1958), pp. 179f., fn. 5. Cf. also analogous remarks by Robert Lees, concerning the use of statistical methods in linguistics (Language XXXIII [1957], pp. 379f.): “Statistical methods are in a sense mechanical…; but though much material may be thereby easily summarized, it is not thereby explained. Recent suggestions that phonemic and morphemic segmentation be mechanized by a statistical technique are best regarded as devices for generating hypotheses about linguistic boundaries which must then be validated grammatically.”
- Cf. D. L. Bolinger, op. cit., pp. 248ff.
- Cf. Karcevski's expression “la phonologie de la phrase,” e.g. in Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4 (1931), p. 188 f.
- Cf. D. L. Bolinger, “Intonation: Levels or Configurations?” Word VII (1951) 199–210.
- Intonation can exist only on the substructure of “segmental” material. Only in abnormal, “pathological” cases can it be hummed without words; but this is a secondary use, derived from the normal cases and supported by them.
- One is tempted to say that the contours extend and contract like an accordion according to their segmental base.
- The description always applies to the full form of the contour.
- Naturally, always only within a given domain. A feature that appears as a phonological modification in the expressive domain is a variant as regards the communicative domain, and vice versa.
- Cf. V. Mathesius' notion of the potentiality of linguistic phenomena (“O potenciál- nostijevůjazykových”, Věstnik Královské české společnosti nauk 1–24) and O. Jespersen's term “Richtigkeitbreite” (Phonetische Grundfragen, Leipsic, 1904).
- M. Schubiger (The Role of Intonation in Spoken English, St. Gall, 1935) was one of the first researchers that endeavored in her analysis to differentiate strictly between the two spheres. Cf. also the words of L. Bloomfield: “… gesture-like variations, non-distinctive but socially effective, border most closely upon genuine linguistic distinctions” (Language, 1933, p. 104).
- P. L. Garvin, “Operations in Syntactic Analysis,” Report of the Seventh Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Study (=Georgetown University Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, no. 9), Washington, 1957, pp. 59–72.
- P. L. Garvin, who in his article on “Fused Units in Prosodie Analysis (cf. fn. 6) expounded the “integrational approach” to phonological problems (in opposition to the traditional “linear treatment”), in many respects comes close to our conception of the problem. Garvin's “fused units,” which are “higher-order phonemic units,” correspond to our “configurations,” and are called by both of us “contours.” They have as their overall characteristics (a) prosodic features (loudness and pitch) and (b) boundary features (pause).
- In our conception, juncture comprises not only pause (boundary features), but also the preceding contour; the types of juncture (and their different degrees) are defined not only by the length of the pause, but also by the type of preceding contour and its actual occurring variant.
- The utterance is not a concept on the phonic level—cf. §3.21—but the fact that utterance-portions between final junctures cannot be identified with utterance-wholes shows that the boundaries between utterances in actual speech are sometimes vague.
- The thème has minimal utterance dynamicity, the propos the maximal one. I prefer the French terms ‘thème’ and ‘propos’ (used by the Dutch linguists A. W. de Groot, C. L. Ebeling, and others) to the misleading terms “psychological subject' and ‘psychological predicate’; they correspond to the Czech terms základ (or východisko) výpovědi and jádro výpovědi. The differentiation of utterances on this basis, called by some Czech linguists the “functional sentence perspective”, was elaborated by Vilém Mathesius under the heading of “contextual organization” (významová výstavba).
- This is “emphasis for contrast,” which, according to D. Jones (An Outline of English Phonetics, London, 81956, p. 277), “is emphasis intended to show that a word is contrasted with another (either implied or previously expressed), or that a word introduces a new and unexpected idea.”
- In utterances with more complex organization, e.g. with double or multiple propos, or compound (double or multiple) utterances, further rules apply.
- Cf. V. Mathesius, “Studie k dějinám anglického slovosledu,” Věstnik České Akademie XVI (1907), XVII (1908), XVIII (1909), XIX (1910); “Ze srovnávacích studií slovosledných,” Časopis pro moderní filologii XXVIII (1942), 181–190, 302–307; “Něko- lik poznámek k funkci podmětu v moderni angličtině,” ibid. X (1924), p. 244 fn.—J. Firbas, “Poznámky k problematice anglického slovního pořádku z hlediska aktuálního členěni větného” (with English résumé, “Some Notes on the Problem of Word Order From the Point of View of Actual Sentence Analysis”), Brno University, Sborník pracé filosofické fakulty, 1955, řada jazykovědná A 4, 93–107; “K otázce nezákladových podmětů v současné angličtině (with English résumé, “On the Problem of Non-Thematic Subjects in Contemporary English”), Časopis pro moderní filologii XXXIX (1957), 22–42, 165–173; “Thoughts on the Communicative Function of the Verb in English, German, and Czech,” Brno, Studies in English (Prague, 1959), pp. 39–63.—D. L. Bolinger, “Linear Modification,” Publications of the Modern Language Association LXVII (1952), 1117–1144; “Meaningful Word Order in Spanish,” Boletin de filologia (Universidad de Chile); “Stress and Information,” American Speech XXXIII (1958), 5–20.
- K. L. Pike uses the term “innate” (Intonation of American English, p. 77).
- U. Weinreich, “Notes on the Yiddish Rise-Fall Intonation Contour” (see fn. 2), p. 634. Weinreich characterizes the semantic function in this instance as “dramatized transition”. It is interesting that a very similar contour is used with the same function in the Czech, German, and some other languages.
- Cf. e.g. M. Romportl, “Zum Problem der Fragemelodie,” Lingua V (1955), 88–108. D. Jones (op. cit., cf. fn. 20) makes a similar statement concerning English. In this language this would, from the functional point of view, be obvious.
- This example and the following ones are taken from M. Schubiger, The Role of Intonation in Spoken English.
- I presume, however, that one cannot eliminate the existence of a context (even if it is not very frequent) in which even the meaning ‘some’ may be in contrast (e.g. with ‘all’). M. Schubiger, from whom the example is quoted, does not reckon with such a possibility.
- On the relation of peripheral and central elements, see e.g. A. W. de Groot, “Structural Linguistics and Phonetic Law,” Archives néerlandaises de phonétique expérimentale XVII (1941), p. 82.
- Choose new content alerts to be informed about new research of interest to you
- Easy remote access to your institution's subscriptions on any device, from any location
- Save your searches and schedule alerts to send you new results
- Export your search results into a .csv file to support your research