Intonation and linguistics

Rising intonation means the pitch of the voice increases over time; falling intonation means that the pitch decreases with time. A dipping intonation falls and then rises, whereas a peaking intonation rises and then falls.classic example of intonation is the question-statement distinction. For example, northeastern American English, like very many languages, has a rising intonation for echo or declarative questions (He found it on the street?), and a falling intonation for wh - questions (Where did he find it?) and statements (He found it on the street.). Yes or no questions (Did he find it on the street?) often have a rising end, but not always. Some languages like Chikasaw and kalaallisut have the opposite pattern: rising for statements and falling with questions.of British and Irish English vary substantially, with rises on many statements in urban Belfast, and falls on most questions in urban Leeds.the International Phonetic Alphabet, "global" rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-to-right [?] and falling left-to-right [?], respectively. These may be written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a broader scope:found it on the street?

[hi?? fa? nd? t |? n????? st? i? t?]the rising pitch on street indicates that the question hinges on that word, on where he found it, not whether he found it., he found it on the street.

[?? j? s? hi? fa? nd? t |? n???? st? i? t?]did you ever escape?

[??? ha? d? dju? |?? v? |???? ske? p?], as is common with wh - questions, there is a rising intonation on the question word, and a falling intonation at the end of the question.intonationintonation may become semi-lexicalized in common expressions such as "I'unno" (I don't know), and therefore starts to approach the domain of tone. Pitch also plays a role in distinguishing acronyms that might otherwise be mistaken for common words. For example, in the phrase "Nike asks that you play-Participate in the Lives of America's Youth", [2] the acronym play may be pronounced with a high tone to distinguish it from the verb 'play', which would also make sense in this context. However, the high tone is only employed for disambiguation, and is therefore contrastive intonation rather than true lexical tone. [9,78]