intonation

n. The intonation of an utterance is its tune or melody. Along with phrasing or rhythm, intonation is part of the suprasegmental phenomena that are collectively referred to as prosody. Pitch movements signaling sentence-internal prosodic events reveal the intonational structure of an utterance. In English, intonation is the primary means for distinguishing between declaratives (The people are revolting) and inter- rogatives (The people are revolting?), the latter produced with rising intonation at the end, compared to falling intonation for the former. Within a sentence, intonational phrase boundaries are signaled by pitch movements, as well as by durational cues (pausing and/or lengthening of the phrase-final element). For example, in English, restrictive (The students who live far away always arrive late) and nonrestrictive relative clauses (The students, who live far away, always arrive late) have different intonational contours. English also uses intonation to signal pitch-accented elements in sentences. In Alice ate the pickle, for instance, the pitch movements associated with the word Alice will differ, depending on whether the sentence answers Did Bernard eat the pickle? or Did Alice eat the olives?

- EMF