Brazil Resumen Chapter 1

Intonation is connected with variations in the perceived pitch of the speaking voice. Pitch varies continuously from the moment anyone begins speaking to the moment they end.
Tone unit: the stretchof language that carries the systemically-opposed features of intonation. Each tone unit has either one or two syllables that hearer can recognize as being in some sense more emphatic that theothers, which is said that they have PROMINENCE, a feature which distinguishes them from all other syllables and the speaker can vary voluntarily, being part of the meaning system. The fact that certainsyllables in a tone unit are prominent while others are not might sometimes have no communicative significance. Whereas the allocation of the prominence is the consequence of a speaker’s decision.
Thesyllable, the point of operation of the tone system will be referred to as the tonic syllable. Those tonic syllable are constituent a sub-set of prominent syllable. In the tone unit, the last syllableis called tonic syllable which is indispensable in it and to which one of the five tones can be applied [fall; rise; fall-rise; rise-fall, level], whereas the first prominent syllable is called theonset syllable. Thus, constitute another sub-set of prominent syllables and are complementary to tonic syllables. Onset syllable differs from the tonic syllable in having no pitch movement choiceassociated with them, that syllable is the place of operation of a separate pitch-level choice among high, mid and low, which is referred as key. However, the choice associated with the tonic syllable isknown as termination.
Key and termination choices are combined with all tone choices, so the location of all three may now be represented as:

Tonic segment is delimited by the first and the lastprominent syllables. Preceding this, may be a proclitic segment, and the following it may be the enclitic segment. By definition, none of them contains prominent syllables; neither is involved in the...