Grammatical Function

The listener is able to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is being said by using the information contained in the intonation.

Intonation helps to distinguish different syntactic structures: declarative, interrogative, and imperative ones.

E.g. John cooked dinner. (Declarative / Statement)

John cooked dinner? (Interrogative / Question)

Cook the dinner, please. (Imperative / Order)

Cook the dinner, please. (Imperative / Request)

The placement of boundaries (pauses) between phrases, clauses or sentences is also indicated by intonation.

E.g. Structurally, | the English language is fairly homo geneous| all over the world,| but there are marked differences in pro nunci ation be tween its many dialects.