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INTONATION

Definition:
In linguistics, the use of changing vocal pitch to convey ggrammatical information or personal attitude

Examples and Observations:

"[W]e may make two verygeneral observations about the basic meanings of tones: one, that a falling pitch is associated with certainty--specifically, certainty about polarity--and a rising pitch with uncertainty; two, thata lower pitch expresses a meaning that is intensified, implying some additional commitment on the part of the speaker."
(Michael Halliday in A Course in Spoken English: Intonation, ed. by R.Mackin, M.A.K. Halliday, and J. McH. Sinclair. Oxford Univ. Press, 1970)





"Intonation is the melody or music of a language. It refers to the way the voice rises and falls as we speak. Howmight we tell someone that it's raining?
It's raining, isn't it? (or 'innit,' perhaps)

We're telling the person, so we give our speech a 'telling' melody. The pitch-level of our voice falls andwe sound as if we know what we're talking about. We're making a statement. But now imagine we don't know if it's raining or not. We think it might be, so we're asking someone to check. We can use thesame words--but note the question-mark, this time:

It's raining, isn't it?

Now we're asking the person, so we give our speech an 'asking' melody. The pitch-level of our voice rises and wesound as if we're asking a question."
(David Crystal, A Little Book of Language. Yale Univ. Press, 2010)






"In many languages, including English, intonation can show which partsof utterances are regarded as being background, given, common-ground material, and which parts carry the information focus. Given material in a clause typically has some kind of rising intonation contour,indicating incompleteness--there is something still to come--while the new information that is added is more likely to carry a falling contour, indicating completion. This helps to make speech less...