Cover not available
Part of
English Pronunciation Instruction: Research-based insights
Edited by Anastazija Kirkova-Naskova, Alice Henderson and Jonás Fouz-González
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 19] 2021
► pp. 175–196

Chapter 8
The intonation contour of non-finality revisited

Implications for EFL teaching

| Aix Marseille University, CNRS, LPL
| Aix Marseille University, CNRS, LPL

It is well documented that in English falling contours are associated with final statements and rising contours with yes-no questions and continuation. Our analyses of the speech of native speakers show that falls dominate in read speech and are widely used non-finally. This has important pedagogical implications for EFL teaching. To help French learners avoid pronouncing too many rises, a visualisation technique is promoted to show the difference between the French and English intonation systems. We also show how relevant a map task can be for the practising and learning of intonation contours. Hopefully this chapter will provide learners with clues to gain greater competence as listeners and speakers, and teachers with tools useful and adaptable in the language class.

Keywords: British English intonation, non-finality contours, EFL teaching, read speech, L2 prosody learning
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Theoretical framework and previous research
    • The functions of intonation contours
    • Rising contours and speaking styles
    • Hypothesis and possible pedagogical implications
  • Corpus and method
    • Corpus
    • Method
  • Results and discussion
    • Tonal distribution in the corpus
    • Results per speaker
  • Pedagogical implications
    • The visualisation of prosody
    • The map task as a support for authentic oral production
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 13 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.19.08her
References
Aarts, B., & Nelson, G.
(1999) Investigating English around the world: The International Corpus of English. In R. Wheeler (Ed.), The workings of language: From prescriptions to perspectives (pp. 107–115). Praeger.Google Scholar
Anderson-Hsieh, J.
(1992) Using electronic visual feedback to teach suprasegmentals. System, 20(1), 51–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, A., Bader, M., Bard, E., Boyle, E., Doherty, G., Garrod, S., Isard, S., Kowtko, J., McAllister, J., Miller, J., Sotillo, C., Thompson, H., & Weinert, R.
(1991) The HCRC Map Task corpus. Language and speech, 34(4), 351–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Best, C., & Tyler, M.
(2007) Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In O. S. Bohn & M. Munro (Eds.), Language experience in second language speech learning: In honor of James Emil Flege (pp. 13–34). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D.
(2020) Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 6.1.09) [Computer software]. [URL]
Brazil, D.
(1997) The communicative value of intonation in English. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2007) Pronunciation for advanced learners of English. Student’s book (13th ed.). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, P., & Kempe, V.
(2012) Language development. BPS Blackwell.Google Scholar
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M.
(2010) Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chan, D., Fourcin, A., Gibbon, D., Granström, B., Huckvale, M., Kokkinakis, G., Kvale, K., Lamel, L., Lindberg, B., Moreno, A., Mouropoulos, J., Senia, F., Trancoso, I., Veld, C., & Zeiliger, J.
(1995) EUROM – A spoken language resource for the EU. Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Speech Communication and Speech Technology, Eurospeech ’95 (pp. 867–880). [URL]
Contreras Roa, L.
(2019) Prosodie et apprentissage des langues. Etude contrastive de l’interlangue d’apprenants d’anglais francophones et hispanophones [Prosody and language learning. A contrastive study of francophone and hispanophone learners of English] (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Rennes 2.Google Scholar
Council of Europe
(2001) Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge University Press. [URL]
Cruttenden, A.
(1994) Rises in English. In J. Windsor Lewis (Ed.), Studies in general and English Phonetics: Essays in honour of Professor J. D O’Connor (pp. 155–173). Routledge.Google Scholar
(1997) Intonation (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001) Mancunian intonation and intonational representation. Phonetica, 58, 3–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2007) Intonational diglossia: A case study of Glasgow. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37(3), 257–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Gimson’s pronunciation of English (8th ed.). Routledge.Google Scholar
Crystal, D.
(1969) Prosodic systems and intonation in English. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E.
(1995) Second language speech learning: Theory, findings and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233–277). York Press.Google Scholar
Goswani, U.
(2008) Principles of learning, implications for teaching: A cognitive neuroscience perspective. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(3/4), 381–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grosser, W.
(1993) Aspects of intonational L2 acquisition. In B. Ketterman & W. Wieden (Eds.), Current issues in European second language acquisition research (pp. 81–94). Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, C.
(1983) A three-dimensional scaling of nine English tones. Journal of Semantics, 2(2), 183–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1984) On the grammar and semantics of sentence accent. Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2004) The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, C., & Chen, A.
(2000) Universal and language-specific effects in the perception of question intonation. In B. Yuan, T. Huang, & X. Tang (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) (Vol.2, pp. 91–94). China Military Friendship Publishing. [URL]
Gut, U.
(2009) Non-native speech. A corpus-based analysis of phonological and phonetic properties of L2 English and German. Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M.
(1967) Intonation and grammar in British English. Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herment, S.
(2018) Apprentissage et enseignement de la prosodie: L’importance de la visualisation [Learning and teaching prosody: The importance of visualisation].. Revue Française de la Linguistique Appliquée, 23(1), 73–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herment, S. & Leonarduzzi, L.
(2012) The pragmatic functions of prosody in English cleft sentences. In B. Yuan, T. Huang, & X. Tang (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) (pp. 713–716). China Military Friendship Publishing.Google Scholar
Herment, S., Ballier, N., Delais-Roussarie, E., & Tortel, A.
(2014a) Modelling interlanguage intonation: The case of questions. In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon & D. Hirst (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 492–496). Trinity College Dublin. [URL]. DOI logo
Herment, S., Tortel, A., Bigi, B., Hirst, D., & Loukina, A.
(2014b) AixOx, a multi-layered learners corpus: Automatic annotation. In J. Díaz Pérez & A. Díaz Negrillo (Eds.), Specialisation and variation in language corpora (pp. 41–76). Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Herment, S., Tortel, A. & Leonarduzzi, L.
(2020) The British English rising contour: An exception in reading? Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody (196–200). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hirst, D. J.
(1998) Intonation in British English. In D. J. Hirst & A. Di Cristo (Eds.), Intonation systems: A survey of twenty languages (pp. 56–77). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirst, D. J. & Di Cristo, A.
(1998) Intonation systems: A survey of twenty languages. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horgues, C.
(2010) Prosodie de l’accent français en anglais et perception par des auditeurs anglophones natifs [Prosody of the French accent in English and perception by native anglophone listeners] (Unpublished doctoraldissertation). Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7.Google Scholar
Jarman, E., & Cruttenden, A.
(1976) Belfast intonation and the myth of the fall. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 6(1), (4–12). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, D.
(2011) Second language acquisition of English question intonation by Koreans. In L. Amstrong (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association. [URL]
Martin, P.
(2009) Intonation du français. Armand Colin.Google Scholar
(2010) Learning the prosodic structure of a foreign language with a pitch vizualizer. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Speech Prosody (paper 980). [URL]
Mayo, C., Matthew, A., & Ladd, R.
(1997) Prosodic transcription of Glasgow English: An evaluation study of GlaToBI. In A. Botinis (Ed.), Proceedings of Intonation: Theory, Models, and Applications (pp. 231–234). [URL]
McElholm, D.
(1986) Intonation in Derry English: A preliminary study. In H. Kirkwood (Ed.), Studies in Intonation (pp. 1–58). University of Ulster Press.Google Scholar
Nance, C., Kirkham, S., & Groarke, E.
(2015) Intonational variation in Liverpool English. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1–5). [URL]
Niebuhr, O., Alm, M., Shümchen, N., & Fischer, K.
(2017) Comparing visualization techniques for learning second language prosody: First results. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 3(2), 250–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pellowe, J., & Jones, V.
(1978) On intonational variety in Tyneside speech. In P. Trudgill (Ed.), Sociolinguistic patterns of British English (pp. 101–121). Arnold.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J.
(1988) The phonology and phonetics of English intonation (Doctoral dissertation, MIT 1980) Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Pytlyk, C.
(2008) Interlanguage prosody: Native English speakers’ production of Mandarin yes/no questions. In S. Jones (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association. [URL]. University of British Columbia.
Roach, P.
(2009) English phonetics and phonology (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rodrigues Da Mota, C., & Herment, S.
(2016) The pragmatic functions of the final particle ‘eh’ and of High Rising Terminals in Canadian English: Quite similar, eh! In J. Barnes, A. Brugos, S. Shattuck-Hufnagel, & N. Veilleux (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 878–882. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rvachew, S., Nowak, M., & Cloutier, G.
(2004) Effect of phonemic perception training on the speech production and phonological awareness skills of children with expressive phonological delay. American Journal of Speech Pathology, 13(3), 250–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Samlowski, B., Kern, F., & Trouvain, J.
(2018) Perception of suspense in live football commentaries from German and British perspectives. In K. Klessa, J. Bachan, A. Wagner, M. Karpiński, & D. Śledziński (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 40–44. Adam Mickiewicz University. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santiago-Vargas, F., & Delais-Roussarie, E.
(2012) La prosodie des énoncés interrogatifs en français L2 [The prosody of interrogative utterances in L2 French]. In L. Besacier, B. Lecouteux, & G. Sérasset (Eds.), Actes des Journées d’études sur la Parole (JEP-TALN 2012) (pp. 265–272). [URL]
Silverman, K., Beckman, M., Pitrelli, J., Ostendorf, M., Wightman, C., Price, P., Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, J.
(1992) ToBI: A standard for labelling English prosody. In J. J. Ohala, T. B. Nearey, B. L. Derwing, M. M. Hodge, & G. E. Wiebe (Eds.), ICSLP 92 Proceedings: 1992 International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 867–870). University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Tench, P.
(1996) The intonation systems of English. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Toivanen, J.
(2005) ToBI or not ToBI? Testing two models in teaching English intonation to Finns. Proceedings of the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference 2005. [URL]
Tortel, A.
(2008) ANGLISH une base de données comparatives de l’anglais lu, répété, parlé en L1 & L2 [ANGLISH a database of comparative data on English read, repeated and spoken in L1 and L2]. TIPA Journal (Travaux Interdisciplinaires sur la PArole et le langage), 27, 11–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Warren, P.
(2016) Uptalk. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wells, J. C.
(2006) English intonation: An introduction. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilhelm, S.
(2011) Innovations segmentales et suprasegmentales dans le NW Yorkshire: Implications pour l’étude du changement accentuel dans l’anglais des îles Britanniques [Segmenntal and suprasegmental innovations in NW Yorkshire: Implications for the study of accent change in the English of the British Isles]. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Bourgogne.Google Scholar
(2015) Quand les paroles s’envolent: Réflexions sur les caractéristiques et la forme phonétique du High Rising Terminal en anglais contemporain [When words take off: Reflections on the characteristics and phonetic form of High Rising Terminal in contemporary English]. Anglophonia 20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar