A STUDY ON GRAMMATICAL MEANS AND PROSODIC MEANS AS COHENSIVE DEVICES IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative discourse but I do hope that it canbenefit something for the readers.. Aims and objectives of the study The aims of the study are to

INTRODUCTION

I Rationale

Linguistics has become a big scientific area and thanks to many linguists, there havebeen a lot of studies, researches, books, article, etc about linguistics In the past, linguisticsand language studying have mostly examined in terms of phonological, lexical and syntacticfeatures and sentences which are preferably taken out of the context Then the theory ofChomsky of the power of linguistics and some other researches born and have graduallychanged the previous views Nowadays, linguistics has been studied “in their full textual,social and psychological context” (Cook: 1989: ix) It means that language now is studiedcomprehensively how people communicate successfully, what parameters help them to take

language into communication or in other word discourse, “the language in use for

communication” (Cook 1989) Discourse has been approached by many linguists asHalliday, M.A.K (1985), Crytal, D (1992), Coulthard, M (1985), Moore, J et al (1980),Reichman, R (1985), etc They have contributed a lot on the theory of discourse InVietnam, we have Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Hoa, Assoc Prof Dr Vo Dai Quang, Dr HoangVan Van, Dr Tran Ngoc Them And there are some other studies on discourse as Bui, N A.(2003), Dam, T.H (2007), etc

Cohesion is an important factor of discourse which has attracted a lot of attention oflinguists The most significant research on cohesion is “Cohesion in English” by Hallidayand Hasan (1976) In which, grammatical items are analyzed in terms of the way they linksentences together Besides that, Halliday and Hasan (1976) also give “a brief discussion ofthe cohesive function of intonation” And Coulthard, M (2001) also introduces thesignificance of intonation in discourse These researches theoretically discuss howgrammatical means and intonation can relate meanings within one sentence or withinsentences to make them coherent Moreover, they also get the practical value that helplanguage user to apply these theories into everyday communication to gain the best result.People who can use grammatical and intonation as effective means of cohesion, can easierget successful in communication

Doing this thesis, I wish to understand more about cohesion as well as to improve

my ability to use language as an effective mean of communication but understanding aboutcohesion is not an easy task to do In this thesis, I examine here the four types ofgrammatical cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction in terms of theircohesive function And intonation is an important factor in creating cohesion that can’t beignored It is impossible to say that the thesis can cover all factors relating to grammatical

means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative discourse but I do hope that it canbenefit something for the readers

II Aims and objectives of the study

The aims of the study are to explore the grammatical and prosodic means ascohesive devices in narrative discourse Specifically, the thesis is targeted at the followingobjectives:

 How reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction function as cohesivedevices in narrative discourse

 How prosodic means in general and intonation in particular become cohesivedevices in narrative discourse

III Scope of the study

As far as I mentioned before that cohesion in discourse is such a broad category that

it is very difficult to cover every aspect so what I focus on here is cohesion in narrativediscourse by analyzing grammatical means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrativediscourse in general and the film “The Perfect Man” in particular

IV Methodology

The major research method of the dissertation is inductive which uses particularfacts and examples to form general rules and principles In this study, the particularexamples from which the general rules and principles are formed, are resulted from the film

“The Perfect Man” on HBO Besides that, analytic method is also used as a minor method

to analyze the examples of the film Moreover, the major technique of the study isdescription supported by systemization as a minor

V Structure of the study

The study consists of three main parts

* Introduction: introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope, method and structure of the

study

* Development: this part consists of three chapters:

Chapter I: theoretical background: provides overview of discourse, narrativediscourse, cohesion and intonation in English

Chapter II: Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse

Chapter III: Intonation as a mean of cohesive device in narrative discourse

* Conclusion: give some summary of concluding remarks of the thesis and suggestions forfurther researches

DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND

LITERATURE REVIEW

I Literature review

The concept of discourse has been discussed for a long time and linguists have givenvarious definitions Halliday (1985:318) defined “discourse is a multidimentional process”whereas Cook defines “discourse is stretches of language perceived to be meaningful,unified and purposeful” Sharing the same idea with Cook, Crystal (1992: 25) states

“discourse is a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence,often constituting a cohesive unit such as a sermon, an argument, a joke or a narrative”.Besides that, Widdowson defines “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts ofcommunication which cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing arhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind ofcommunication”

Besides that, there exist a number of other definitions of discourse which illustratethe perspectives of discourse from different aspects Hatim and Mason (1990) definediscourse is “a matter of expression of attitude” and is “a mode of speaking and writingwhich involve the participants in adopting a particular on certain area of socio-culturalactivity: racial discourse, scientific discourse, domestic discourse”

Other linguists who study discourse as Coulthard, M., Nunan, D., Coulthard, M., Montgomery, M., Moore, Reichman, R., etc Vietnamese have also studied discourse as

Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Hoa with “An Introduction to Discourse Analysis” or Nguyen ThiViet Thanh with “He thong lien ket loi noi tieng Viet” In addition to that, there are someother studies on discourse of Nguyen Trong Du (2003), Bui Nguyet Anh (2003), NguyenThi Bich Lien (2004), Dam Thanh Hang (2004), etc These studies have contributed a lot tothe development of linguistics and language users benefit much from them

II

Discourse

I.1 What is discourse?

To answer the question, linguists have different ways of understanding and definingdiscourse Tradition linguists have concentrated on phonological, lexical and syntacticalfeatures which are considered the basic of foreign language knowledge Today’s view,however, consider language as a synthetic phenomenon In other words, in the study oflanguage, one should take into account a good number of social, cultural, and situationalfactors that are assumed to affect language use and its features Stretches of language canonly be obtained if they are considered “in their full textual, social, psychological context”

(Cook 1989) The concept of discourse is still discussed, but basically, it may be defined as

“the language in use for communication” (Cook 1989)

In “Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics”, discourse isdefined as a general term for examples of language use, i.e language which has beenproduced as the result of an act of communication Whereas grammar refers to the rules alanguage uses to form grammatical units such as clause, phrase and sentence, discourserefers to larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews

And according to Widdowson (1979: 98) “discourse is a use of sentences to performacts of communication which cohere in larger communicative unit, ultimately establishing arhetorical pattern which characterizes the piece of language as a whole as a kind ofcommunication” As far as the scope of discourse is concerned, discourse not only tospoken interactions, interviews but also to written and printed words such as newspapers,articles, letters, stories, recipes, instructions, etc (Carthy: 1993)

Thus, the majority of linguists seem to share a common view when defining theconcept of discourse Their definitions, though expressed in different ways, all emphasizethe two most important aspects of discourse:

 The structure of discourse: discourse is a well-form of organization above the level

of sentence

 The function of discourse: discourse servers as a mean of communication

I.2 Discourse and text

A distinction is usually made between the word “text” and “discourse”, however, sofar, there have been many ways of viewing the term For some linguists, these two termsseem to be used almost interchangeably Text is defined as a piece of spoken or writtenlanguage A text maybe considered from the point of view of its structure and/or itsfunctions (Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics) It isimpossible to fully understand a text without reference to the context in which it occurs Atext consists of one word or it may be of considerable length (Swales 1987: 13) Actually,text structure reveals in linguistic terms what is generally considered to be extralinguistic,that is, this “public function” (for an example of press news, see Garrido 1998c) Mann,Matthiesen and Thompson (1992: 41) posit three different levels of structure: “holistic” ortext structure, “relational” structure (where rhetorical relations obtain) and “syntactic”structure, or sentence structure Instead of this three-layer structure, there is only ahierarchical one, from text to discourse, from discourse to sentence, or, rather, fromsentence structure to discourse structure, and from discourse structure to text structure

Sentences are linked in sequences which may be called ‘discourses’ and thenorganized into larger structures, up to texts And texts are not defined in terms of coherence

or relevance but by the connection existing between their component discourses Similarly,

a discourse is not defined in terms of contextual information, but it is the result ofconnecting its component sentences In order for this connection to take place, additionalinformation must be included This happens whenever a unit is connected to others.Frequently this additional information is added as default, but it may also originate inpreceding units Thus words are linked to each other into phrases, phrases into clauses,clauses into sentences, sentences into discourses, and discourses into texts

Halliday, for example, use “text” refers to “discourse”: he sees a text as a “semanticunit” characterized by cohesion Some other linguists tend to avoid using the term

“discourse” and “text” altogether, preferring “text” for all record instances of language inuse

Other linguists, on the other hand, clarify the difference between “text” and

“discourse” They argue that discourse is language in action, while text is the written record

of that interaction Crystal (1992: 72), for example, proposed that discourse is “continuousstretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence”, whereas text is “a piece ofnaturally occurring of spoken, written or signed discourse identified for the purposed ofanalysis” And according to Guy Cook (1994: 74), ‘a text’ means “the linguistic forms in astretch of language and those interpretations of them which do not vary with context I usethe general term ‘text’ to mean language regarded in this way.” He also said that text isdependent on its receiver, and therefore variable Nevertheless, he believes the term issufficient constant to be used on the sense defined above Brown and Yule (1983:3), cited

in Nunan (1993: 6), also argue that text is “the representation of discourse and the verbalrecord of a communication act”

In other words, there is a disagreement about the meanings in the terms “discourse”and “text” All, however, seem to agree that both text and discourse need to be defined interms of “meaning” and that coherent text/ piece of discourse are those that form ameaningful whole To make it easy, discourse is a general term to refer to all the act ofverbal communication, whereas text is simply a verbal record of the whole communicativeprocess (that is discourse) in which many situational factors are involved, it can be bothwritten and spoken, and there is no limit to the size of the text Thus text is purelylinguistics, formal object while discourse has both linguistic and non-linguistic property

I 3 Narrative discourse

As far as concerned, a narrative discourse is a discourse that is an account of events,usually in the past, that employs verbs of speech, motion, and action to describe a series ofevents that are dependent one on another, and that typically focuses on one or moreperformers of actions

A narrative is a text, composed in any medium, which describes a sequence of real

or unreal events It is common to make a primary distinction between two basic components

of narrative: narrative plot and narrative discourse The term plot is generally understood to

refer to the abstract storyline of a narrative; that is, to the sequence of elementical,chronologically ordered events which create the ‘inner core’ of a narrative Narrative

discourse, by contrast, encompasses the manner or means by which that plot is narrated.

Narrative discourse, for example, is often characterised by the use of stylistic devices such

as flashback, prevision and repetition-all of which serve to disrupt the basic chronology ofthe narrative’s plot Thus, narrative discourse represents the realised text, theunderstandable and noticable piece of language which is produced by a story-teller in agiven interactive context

In a narrative, something happens, such that we seen a “before” by another state ofaffairs and this later is, ideally, not merely temporally but casually related to the formalstate Narratives are most commonly narrated in words, in speech (as in oral literature andjokes) or (chiefly) in writing; but they can be enacted dramatically on stage, or visualized inthe imagines of film and gesture of mimime”

Narrative is distinguished from the description- a telling of the ways things are It isalso distinguished from much expository writing and expression of opinion which are oftenexplanations of the way things are, or an argument for the way we believe things should be

So what makes a difference between a narrative and other types of discourse is the fact that

a narrative is a text in which something humanly interesting has happened, or a significantchange in the situation has occurred

Narrative can be told, and, in some cases, do not require verbal language (as in theway of mimime); thus, narrative form is medium-independent Like any kind of formalorganization, narrative form is able to exploit the particular characteristics of the mediasimilarly verbal narrative will exploit the characteristics of language

II Cohesion in English

II.1 What is cohesion?

Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships of persons andevents; there is not any language that may these patterns be ignored, if the translation is to

be understood by its readers (Callow.1974:30) The topic of cohesion has always appeared

to be the most useful constituent of discourse analysis or text linguistics applicable to

translation (Newmark.1987:295) Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976) define

cohesion “is a semantic one; it refers to relation of meaning that exist within the text, andthat define it as a text” Cohesion connects a string of sentences to form a text rather than aseries of unrelated statements

Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which linkvarious parts of a text These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, forinstance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to otherwords and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs Cohesion is a surfacerelation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear.Cohesion may be defined as the formal linguistic realization of semantic and pragmaticrelations between clauses and sentences in a text (Quirk et al 1985: 1423 cited in GuyCook 1994: 29)

Cohesion, as contrasted with register, is not concerned with what a text means

Rather, it refers to a set of meaning relations that exist within the text (Halliday and Hasan.

1976) These relations are not of the kinds that link the components of a sentence and theydiffer from sentential structure The discovery of these meaning relations is crucial to itsinterpretation For instance, in the following text:

Mary bought a new pencil She put it in her drawer

The interpretation of the elements she and it depends on the lexical items Mary and Pencil So, cohesion is in the semantic relation that is setup between these elements

According to Halliday and Hasan, the function of cohesion is to relate one part of atext to another part of the same text Cohesion is the quality of well-formed discourses(texts) that gives them an internal unity, making them "hang together." Sentences flowsmoothly from one to another within that discourse He also assumes that there areappropriate interpropositional relations marked, either explicitly or implicitly There is aunity of vocabulary Pronominalization natural to the language enables the reader to knowthat he is reading about the same participant (topic) introduced earlier in that discourse

Halliday and Hasan were two linguists who published good studies of cohesion withinEnglish discourse Every language has its own cohesion strategies

According to Halliday and Hasan, there are five types of cohesive devices in Englishand in the lexicogrammatical system of the language They are reference, substitution,ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion Reference, substitution, and ellipsis aregrammatical; lexical cohesion is lexical; conjunction stands on the border line between thetwo categories

II 2 Cohesion versus coherence

In history of linguistics study, there have been some of the disagreement stems fromdiverse views of what cohesion is and how it differs from coherence Coherence refers tothe ways in which the parts of a piece of writing are linked together to form a whole which

is often confused with cohesion While cohesion links among sentences and within them,coherence is the broader characteristic of unity of the text as a whole According toRichards et al (1992:62), “cohesion is the grammatical and or lexical relationships betweenthe different elements of a text This may be the relationship between different sentences orbetween different parts of a sentence” And coherence is “the relationships which link themeanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text” (Richards et.al.1992:62)

Cohesion is only one component of coherence In addition to cohesion, at least oneother factor must be present for a text to have coherence; that factor is organization Otherfactors like situational consistency add coherence to text Cohesion exists within text andadds to the coherence of text It may be useful to think of coherence as something the readerestablishes-or hopes to establish-in the process of reading connected discourse coherence

is both a text-related and a reader-related phenomenon

Larson, who provides a fine summary of major studies on cohesion in compositionresearch agrees with this definition and goes on to say, “The determination of coherence isfundamentally an interpretation by a reader It is part of a transaction between text andreader, between the reader’s world and the writer’s language” Coherence comes fromcohesion and redundancy Both come from the writer’s language, cohesion specificallyfrom the ties the writer builds in, while redundancy comes from both the writer’s languageand the “reader’s world” in a particular linguistic and psycholinguistic sense For example:

“IBM is the leading company in electronics Thus working for it would be a great chance for any expert of the field”.

It is obvious that there is a link between “IBM” and “it” This makes the exchangeunderstandable For example:

A- Are you applying for a job in that foreign company?

B- My English is not good enough.

Obviously, there is no grammatical or lexical link between A’s question and B’sreply, but the exchange is felt to be coherent because we understand the reason why he can’tapply for a job in that company Therefore cohesion is only a guide to coherence, and it ismainly used to embody coherence by means of grammatical and lexical cohesive devices

However, according to Guy Cook (1994:32), some other linguists (Brown and Yule1983:191-9; de Beaugrande and Dressker 1981: 48-111) regard the two as distinct, seeingcohesion as an element of text explicable in terms of formal linguistics, and coherence as aresult of the interaction of text and receiver, which, though it may be aided by cohesion, isdistinct and independent from it It is true that, in principle, cohesion is neither necessarynor sufficient to create coherence but in practice a discourse employ it Most coherent textare also cohesive but it does not mean that cohesion create coherence For example:

Becca: Holly, you’ve gotta open up

Holly: I’m not so sure about this

It can be seen that this extract “text” is cohesive but not coherent without somespecific knowledge on the part of the receiver (Brandsford and Johnson 1973) Andconversely, there are short discourse, especially conversational interchanges, which can beperceived as coherent, given the necessary contextual or cultural knowledge, but notcohesive For example:

Becca: You look awesome Turn

Holly: I cannot believe that you talked me into going to the dance

Becca: I thought you said you’ve been to like a million schools.

Cohesion is a manifestation of certain aspects of coherence, and a pointer towards it,rather than its cause or necessary result Cohesion is never more than a partial textualrealization of coherence (which is a feature of the perception of text rather than of textitself) Even in texts with a density of cohesive ties, many links of co-reference, cause,sequence, and logic, though recoverable by the readers or the listeners, remain unstated andhave no textual manifestation whatsoever Though an increase in cohesion may, up to acertain point, make a text clearer, less ambiguous, and more coherent, there is a pointbeyond which it may make it duller and less readily processible This is, for example,particularly evident in legal text

II 3 Cohesion and discourse

It will be clear from what have been said above is that cohesion is not just anothername for discourse structure Discourse structure is, as its name, a type of structure Thename is used to refer to the structure of some postulated unit higher than the sentence, forexample the paragraph, or some larger entity such as episode or topic unit

The concept of cohesion is set up to account for relations in discourse, but in rather adifferent way, without the implication there is some structural unit that is above thesentence Cohesion refers to the range of possibilities that exist for linking something withwhat has gone before Since this linking is achieved through relations in meaning (we areexcluding from consideration the effect of formal devices such as syntactic parallelism,metre and rhyme), what is in question is the set of meaning relations which function in thisway: the semantic resources which are drawn on for the purpose of creating text And since,

as we have stressed, it is the sentence that is the pivotal entity here – whatever is puttogether within one sentence is part of a text – we can interpret cohesion, in practice, as theset of semantic resources for linking a sentence with what have gone before From thestandpoints of Haliday and Hasan “the primary determinant of whether a set of sentences do

or do not constitute a text depends on cohesive relationship within and between thesentences For example:

“Immediately after my leaving college, a well-known auditing firm in London employed me Along with it I was doing accounting work of a commercial firm”.

It is clear that “it” in the second sentence refers back to the first sentence Therelation between them creates cohesion The function of “it” creates cohesive linkingbetween the two sentences; the two sentences together constitute a text By using cohesivedevices we can choose to repeat, to refer back or forward, or to substitute words or phrases

… As Brown and Yules (1987) explained, cohesive relationships can be formallyestablished within a text, providing cohesive “tie” which blind a text together

II 4 Cohesive devices

Halliday and Hasan recognize five types of cohesive devices in English and in thelexicogrammatical system of the language They are reference, substitution, ellipsis,conjunction, and lexical cohesion Reference, substitution, and ellipsis are grammatical;lexical cohesion is lexical; conjunction stands on the border line between the two

categories In other words, it is mainly grammatical but sometimes involves lexicalselection

As cohesion is expressed through grammar and vocabulary, it has been classifiedinto two kinds: grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion which work closely to create atext In this part I would like to make brief definition of the terms relation to them Thefollowing diagram above summaries what grammatical and lexical cohesion consist of togive a brief understand about cohesion

Cohesion

Grammatical Lexical

Reference Substitution Ellipsis Conjunction Reiteration Collocation

II 4.1 Lexical cohesion

Cohesion is maintained by not only grammatical cohesion but also lexical cohesion

to hold texts together According to Haliday and Hasan’s description of lexical cohesion(1976), related vocabulary items which occur across clause and sentence in written textsand in speech are major characteristic of coherent discourse The relation betweenvocabulary items in texts described by the Haliday – Hasan model are of two principalkinds: reiteration and collocation

 Reiteration:

The major relation between vocabulary items in texts is reiteration It can be seen aseither restarting a word in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or by reassertingits meaning by exploiting such lexical relations as synonyms, antonyms and superordinate.For example:

The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:

“Don’t they smell beautiful!”

Her mother gave a short laugh.

‘No’, she said, ‘not to me It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and’chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk,he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole

 Collocation:

By Richards et al (1992:62) “collocation refers to the restrictions of how words can

be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or whichverbs and nouns are used together”

For example we always say “do business” and “make a profit”, not “make business”and “do a profit” Thus, here “make” collocates with “a profit”, and “do” collocate with

“business”

II.4.2 Grammatical cohesion

Grammatical cohesion can be defined as the surface marking in written discourse,and between utterances and turns in speech These links can be grouped into 4 types:reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction

respectively equivalent to how reference hangs the text together exophoric and endophoric.

When there is no previous mention of the referent in the text, we call it exophoric reference,

dependent on the context outside the text for its meaning while endophoric is a term that

means an expression refers to something in the same text There are two types ofendophora: anaphora and cataphora Anaphora links the language back to something thatwent before in the preceding text The other, cataphora, is the opposite – link forward to areferent in the text that follow

According to Halliday and Hasan, there are different types of reference that isclassified on the criterion of reference potential without regard to the endophoric/exophoricdistinction: personal, demonstrative and comparison

II.4.2.2 Ellipsis:

By Richards et al (1992) “ellipsis is the omission of elements normally required bythe grammar which the speaker writer assumes are obvious from the context and thereforeneed not be raised” Ellipsis has broadly 3 types, which are nominal, verbal and clausalellipsis which is similar to substitution Nominal ellipsis means ellipsis within the nominalgroup is omitted and one of the other elements will take the function of the Head Verbal

ellipsis means ellipsis within the verbal group and clausal ellipsis usually occurs in yes-noquestion.

Halliday and Hasan (1976:142) confirmed that although substitution and ellipsisembody the same fundamental relation between parts of a text (a relation between words orgroups or clauses), they are two different kinds of structural mechanism, and hence showrather different patterns Ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a sentence orclause and can only be recovered by referring to an element from a sentence or clause andcan only be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text Therefore, ellipsis, isnormally an anaphoric relation In brief, ellipsis can be regarded as substitution by zero

II.4.2.3 Substitution:

Substitution can be defined as the replacement of one item by another Substitution

is a grammatical relation - a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning According

to Halliday and Hasan (1976), substitution is “a relation on the lexico-grammatical level, the level of grammar and vocabulary, or linguistic form” Substitution is used to avoid

repeating information that is known to the hearer Unlike ellipsis which leaves a structuralslot empty, substitution replaces it by a filler word There are three types of substitution:nominal, verbal and clausal one Most of the substitutes are pro-forms within sentences,which are used across sentences In specific words, substitutes may be pro-forms foradverbials, pro-forms for predicate and predication, and also pro-forms for the direct objectclause According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 91), nominal substitution includes “one”,

“ones”, “same”: verbal substitution consists of “do” and clausal substitutes are “so”, “not”

II.4.2.4 Conjunction

Conjunction is another type of cohesive relation in the grammar Conjunction, innature, is rather different from the other cohesive relations, form both reference, on the onehand, and substitution and ellipsis, on the other It does not function to remind the reader ofpreviously mentioned entities, actions and state of affairs In other words, it is not whatlinguists call an anaphoric relation Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves,but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings They serve as cohesive devices becausethey signal relationships that can only be fully understood through reference to other parts

of the text

As grammatical items, Cook (1989:21) defined: “Conjunctions are words or phraseswhich explicitly draw attention to the type of relationship between one sentence and clauseand another” There are four types of conjunctions: temporal, causal, additive andadversative Following are some examples of conjunctive relations:

Additive: and, and also, or, furthermore, in addition, besides, alternatively,

incidentally, by the way, that is, I mean, in other words, etc

Adversative: yet, though, only, however, nevertheless, despite this, in fact, actually,

however, on the other hand, at the same time, etc

Causal: so, hence, therefore, consequently, for this reason, account for this,

as a result, for, because, otherwise, etc

Temporal: then, next, after that, just then, at the same time, finally, at last, soon,

meantime, until then, etc

III Intonation in English

III.1 Definition

Intonation is the different pitch of voice It is the rising or falling pitch of the voice

when somebody says a word or a syllable or the rising or falling pattern of speech generally

It is also a manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard of accuracy ofpitch and the use of changing pitch convey syntactic information “Intonation is a part andparcel of the English language, as it is for any language of the world Intonation isinevitable whenever a language is spoken; it is important, because we eventually realize that

it carries meaning and will often be the most important part of a message” (Tench, P.1996:2) In other word, it isn’t what people say but how they say it

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish words All languages use

intonation to express emphasis, contrast, emotion, or other such nuances, but not everylanguage uses tone to distinguish lexical meaning When this occurs, tones are phonemes(discrete speech sounds), just like consonants and vowels, and they are occasionallyreferred to as tonemes

A tone may be defined as a feature of a syllable which makes it stand out because itspitch value contrasts with its surroundings, in very many cases by initiating a movement in

a new pitch direction Its normal function is to accent a word The more work one does withtones the more inconvenient it becomes to use phrasal definitions (such as "a fall from amid to a low pitch") to identify them

Pitch is the essence of intonation and it distinct intonation from paralanguage.

Paralanguage involves not only pitch, but also volume, tempo and voice quality, indeed allthe vocal effects that are available within a given language community The effects likegigging, sobbing, tut-tut ting, husky voice, speaking through the teeth, etc whereas

intonation itself is confined to the use of pitch alone We use the word pitch to describe the

high or low sound of the voice It does not refer to loud, soft, fast or slow Every individual

has a level of pitch which is normal, and which we can recognize as his/ her middle pitchlevel He/she can change it to make the voice high or low in relation to this middle level.

To sum up, intonation refers to the rise and the fall of the pitch of the voice inspoken language Intonation is inevitable whenever a language is spoken It varies fromlanguages to languages, even regions to regions in English When you say something youcan not say without some kind of intonation, even a monotone can be classed as a kind ofintonation Intonation is integral in speech

III.2 Tone vs intonation

III.2.1 Parameters

Intonation is the linguistic use of pitch in utterance Every language has its ownmelody, no language is spoken on the same musical notes at all the time The voice goes upand down and the different notes of the voice combine to make tones Tone that is thesound, especially with reference to its pitch quality, strength, pitch aspect of a syllable whileintonation is the high or low, up or down of pitch in syntactic level The pitch of voiceexpressing in tone is only happened in a syllable so tone belongs to syllable and it has thedistinctive function When the utterance is a syllable one, tone becomes intonation Tonedoes not usually express meaning which is only a phonological factor that distinct themeaning while intonation expresses meanings

In many languages, of which English is one, the tone belongs not to the word but tothe word group We can say a group of word definitely or we can say it hesitantly, angrily

or kindly; we can say it with interest or without interest, and these differences are largelymade by the tones we use In other words, the words don’t change their meaning but thetone adds something to the words and what it adds is the speaker’s feelings at that moment

This way of using tones is called intonation Crystal (1969) identifies four basic tones (fall,

rise-fall, rise, and fail-rise) while O'Connor and Arnold (1973) distinguish only two (riseand fall) Brazil et al (1980) endorses five tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level)whereas Cruttenden (1986) recognizes seven tones (high-fall, low-fall, high-rise, low-rise,fail-rise, rise-fall, and mid-level)

A tone unit is an utterance or part of an utterance which contains a single tone and,

therefore, one tonic syllable A speaker begins the pitch movement we have called tone on

prominent syllable This syllable is then called tonic syllable and is indicated in thetranscriptions by the use of small capital letters and underlining What makes a tone a rising

or falling or any other type of tone is the direction of the pitch movement on the laststressed (tonic) syllable (Brown, 1977:45) If the tonic syllable is in non-final position, the

glide continues over the rest of the syllables A fall in pitch on the tonic syllable renders thetone as 'fall' A 'rise' tone is one in which the tonic syllable is the start of an upward glide ofpitch This glide is of two kinds; if the upward movement is higher, then it is 'high rise'; if it

is lower, then it is 'low rise' 'Fall-rise' has first a pitch fall and then a rise

Systematically, English intonation consists of: tonality, tonicity and tone Tonality is

the system by which a stretch of spoken text is segmented into a series of intonation whichcorrespond to the speaker’s perception of “pieces” of information It is also subject to asystem If you change the number of intonation units (tonality), you change the number of

pieces of information Tonicity is the system by which an individual, discrete unit of

intonation is shown to have a prominent word which indicates the focus of information Ifyou change the prominent word, you change the focus of information, and thus create a

different meaning Tone is the system of contrasting pitch movements in each unit of

intonation, which, among other roles, identifies the status of the information: e.g, major,

minor or incomplete

III.2.2 Functions

III.2.2.1 Some basic functions of intonation

According to J.D O’Connor and G.F Arnold (1973), intonation has three roles.Firstly, it has the function of division of longer utterance into grammatically relevant wordgroups Secondly, intonation is the use of different tunes, different patterns of pitch, forgrammatical purposes And apart from these two grammatical roles, there is also a third andvery important one, that of expressing the speaker’s attitude, at the moment of speaking, tothe situation in which he is placed Besides that Paul Tench (1996:16) introduces sixfunctions of intonation: the organization of information, the realization of communicativefunctions, the expression of attitude, syntactic structure, textual structure and theidentification of speech styles

Moreover, in Ng÷ ®iÖu tiÕng Anh ë ngêi ViÖt (2006: 63), Nguyen Huy Ky introduces

6 functions of intonation that I want to mention here: grammatical function, attitudinalfunction, accentual function, discourse function, distinctive function and pragmaticfunction

 Grammatical function: Intonation can distinct between statement utterance, question,

exclamation, additional utterance and ordering / request utterance

 Attitudinal function: Intonation is used as a mean to express the speaker’s feelings,

attitudes (happy, sad, glad, angry, worry, etc.) In combination with grammatical

function, one utterance can express different attitudes, feelings of the speakers indifferent situations.

 Accentual function: This function helps the speaker to create the effect of sound in any

stressed or unstressed syllable in any utterance Accentual emphasizing in thesesituations are causing by tempo to express the informed information in each intonationunit

 Discourse function: Intonation helps speakers and hearers to achieve what is called

“new information” (unknown information) or “old information” (already knowninformation) in an intonation unit

 Distinctive function: Intonation plays this function to make the utterance express

different stretches of meaning in different situations Same grammatical structure canexpress different meanings by mean of intonation

In summary, intonation functions grammatically, phonetically and communicatively

It used all means of grammar and phonetic to express speakers’ feelings, attitudes, purposes

to achieve communicative value

III.2.2.2 Some communicative functions of tone

Traditionally, the description on the intonation of communicative functions isassociated with the glide down, glide up, take off and dive

A falling tone is by far the most common used tone of all It signals a sense offinality, completion, belief in the content of the utterance, and so on A speaker, bychoosing a falling tone, also indicates to the addressee that that is all he has to say, andoffers a chance (turn-taking) to the addressee to comment on, agree or disagree with, or add

to his utterance It is usually used with statements, wh-questions, commands, exclamations

On the other hand, the glide up is used in genuine 'Yes/No' questions where thespeaker is sure that he does not know the answer, and that the addressee knows the answer

In statement, the glide- up is you when the speaker intent to be soothing or encouraging toform the statement as a question or to show the interest except the short questions used asresponses Tag questions have either a fall or rise depending on the speaker’s sense ofcertainty or uncertainty

The third tone, the take-off is usually used as a grumble statement or when you wantsomeone to repeat something This tone is also used with a rise at the end of an invitation orrequest or in tag questions when both clauses are negative or speaker wants to find theagreement as well as in an exclamation to question the speaker

The Dive mostly be used in statement if the statement is not complete but leading to

a following word-group or for the statement which show reservations on the part of thespeaker When you warn to correct someone or to warn somebody, you can use Dive.Surprisingly, that the Dive is rarely used in questions but it can be use in commands whenyou want the command to sound pleading, more a request than an order, the Dive is used

However, there are many more communicative functions than those just listed Thetraditional list is based on the types of clauses recognized by grammarians In fact, there is

no one-to-one correspondence between clause type and communicative function as justpresented Also, there is no special tone for each separate communicative function; theresources of intonation are simply not sufficient for so many different functions

To sum up, we have seen that in addition to the role of information organization, thetone system has a role in expressing the speaker’s choice of types of interaction with theaddressee, in other words, communicative functions