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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Phonetics and Phonology

Intonation

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˌɪntəˈneɪʃn/nounCore term

In linguistics & grammar, intonation means: The rise and fall of the voice across a phrase or sentence, which shows things like a question, surprise, the speaker's attitude or whether they have finished.

In Turkish: tonlama, ezgi

How it is used

Teachers draw arrows to show rising and falling intonation and practise question tags and lists. In phonology, intonation belongs to prosody together with stress and rhythm.

Example sentences

  1. With falling intonation, 'You're coming, aren't you?' expects agreement rather than an answer.

  2. Flat intonation can make a polite request sound rude in English.

Common collocations

  • rising intonation
  • falling intonation
  • intonation pattern
  • question intonation
  • stressExtra force or length given to one syllable in a word, or to one word in a sentence, which makes it sound stronger and clearer than the others.
  • pragmaticsThe study of how context affects meaning: how speakers mean more than they actually say, and how listeners work out intended meanings, politeness and hints.
  • syllableA unit of pronunciation built around a vowel sound, often with consonants before or after it; 'banana' has three syllables: ba-na-na.
  • phonologyThe study of how a particular language organizes its sounds into a system: which sound differences change meaning, how sounds combine and how they affect each other.

More terms: Phonetics and Phonology

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