PITCH VARIATION IN PHONETICS

PITCH VARIATION IN PHONETICS

Saying correctly the individual sounds of your new language is only the beginning. One
prosodic feature of any language that is an extremely important aspect of good pronunciation is the proper use of the PITCH of your voice. Perhaps you need to speak in a high voice, or a low voice, or something in between. Or maybe you need to vary from one to the other.

Whatever the case, reproduction of the pitch levels used by the native speakers of your target language is the only thing that will enable you to sound really “right” in that language.
Pitch is used in languages in two different ways: intonation and tone.

INTONATION

INTONATION is the pitch pattern over an entire utterance and can be used to signal

emotions, convey certain thoughts or attitudes, or to distinguish between things like questions and statements. But intonation is never used to distinguish one word from another.

Tone

We have now seen that intonation patterns in a language can change the implication of
utterances. But the words in those utterances maintain their basic meaning. However, there
are languages in which the pitch of a word or syllable in a word contributes as much to the
meaning of the word as do the individual segments. The pitches are just as much a part of the meaning of the word as the segments are. These languages are called TONAL
LANGUAGES or TONE LANGUAGES, and the pitches in these languages are called
TONES.

Types of Tone Languages

Some tone languages use only LEVEL tones (the pitch is heard to stay the same throughout
an entire syllable). Others also use TONE GLIDES (the pitch is heard to rise, or fall, or do
both within a single syllable).
“When a language utilizes tone glides that have been analyzed as not being sequences of
level tones, then that language is called a CONTOUR TONE LANGUAGE.

Things to Keep in Mind When Considering Tone and Intonation

 Where does the sound start? Is it pitched high, low, or mid-range?
 In what direction does the sound go after that? Does it remain level, drop, or rise?
 If it drops or rises, does it glide up or down a long or a short time?
 If it drops or rises, does it only go in one direction, or does it rise and fall, or fall and
rise?