2015-08-21
1101
Intonation is used to express emotions and attitudes, and this adds a special kind of “meaning” to spoken language. The same sentence can be said in different ways, which might be labelled “angry”, “bored”, “ironic”, “apologetic”, “happy”, “grateful”, “encouraging” and so on.
For example, the falling-rising tone in the following utterance makes it sound apologetic:
I 
hope I’m 
not 
late.
And the rise-fall in the context below shows that the speaker is greatly impressed:
A: 
Have you heard about Pat?
B: ^ Yes! Isn’t it ^scandalous!
Components of an Intonation Pattern/Tone-unit
