A Study On Intonation As A Means Of Conveying Deontic Modality In English.pdf

Viet nam National University, Hanoi college of foreign languages postgraduate department nguyÔn thÞ hång tuyªn A study on Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English Nghiªn cøu vÒ n[.]

postgraduate department

nguyễn thị hồng tuyên

A study on Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English Nghiên cứu về ngữ điệu nh- một ph-ơng tiện biểu đạt tình

thái trách nhiệm trong tiếng Anh

M.A minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Hanoi-2009

college of foreign languages

postgraduate department

nguyễn thị hồng tuyên

A study on Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English Nghiên cứu về ngữ điệu nh- một ph-ơng tiện biểu đạt tình thái trách nhiệm trong tiếng Anh

M.A minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang

Hanoi-2009

postgraduate department

nguyễn thị hồng tuyên

A study on Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English Nghiên cứu về ngữ điệu nh- một ph-ơng tiện biểu đạt tình thái trách nhiệm trong tiếng Anh

M.A minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang

Hanoi-2009

Part I: Introduction

1 Rationale:

In the process of learning English, a large number of learners recognize that intonation is one of the most important issues and as the backbone of English It not only causes difficulties for the speaker himself but also for the listener Since English intonation

is considered as one of the most important matter and as the backbone of English, there have been a lot of opinions about this topic

In J P.O’ Connor’s opinion, the words themselves are unchangeable in expressing meaning but they are enriched in the process of using tunes What enriches the words is the speaker’s feelings at that moment and this way of using tunes is called intonation Here the phonetician wanted to emphasize the important role of tunes in English because the speaker can use it to express his state, he can say it definitely or hesitantly or sometimes he can say

it with interest or without interest

According to Barbara Randford (1988), expressing oneself and understanding other people are two of the most necessary goals for foreign language learners in general and for English language learners in particular In order to achieve two main goals successfully we must know how to master English intonation effectively It is the best way for us to express our attitudes, feelings, emotion while we are speaking On the other hand, it is helpful for

us to understand other people’s feelings, emotion in their specch so that we can lead our talks to the result full of success and intelligibility Furthermore, intonation helps us to focus on the most considerable things to speak or express This make our talks more interesting and we feel more confident when we speak in public or in a crowd With the wrong use of intonation, our speeches may be broken because the listeners do not understand what are the goals of our speeches More seriously, in some cases they are not patient enough to pay attention to us and they may try to find the way to stop our conversations as soon as possible

In our everyday lives, much of our time is spent for communication with other people and in our communication, we not only exchange facts but also express our emotions and attitudes, or in other words we express modality.Thus, to study modality in general and investigate how much a speaker commits to what he says in particular is very interesting and essential Modality gained much populaity among linguists According to Halliday (1985: 86), modality is “an expression of the speaker’s opinion” towards the

content of what he is saying, whether he considers it is possible, probable, certain, etc For Lyon (1997), a speaker’s qualification of his commitment to the truth of his/her proposition becomes an important issue Besides, the study of modality has spawned innumerable academic papers, namely Bybee (1985), Palmer (1986) and others In Vietnam, Hoµng Phª (1984) and §ç H÷u Ch©u (1989) have studied on Vietnamese modal system and there have been a number of English-written M.A theses on this issue, for example: Modality and

Modal Auxiliaries: A systematic Comparision of English and Vietnamese by §ç H÷- HuyÕn (1996); Modality in English by Hoµng Thu Giang (2001); A Contrastive analysis of modal meanings expressed via Must, Should, Have to in English and the equivalent in Vietnamese by Ph¹m ThÞ Mai Anh (2005)

Indeed, learning to express and interpret modality is very difficult, particularly for learners of English as a foreign language The learners’ failure in the understanding of the modal meanings has already prevented the from getting the goals of communication As a learner and a teacher of English as a foreign language the writer has realized the importance of researching intonation as a means of conveying modality, specificly on deontic modality to get the success in communicating goals It is the reason the writer would like to choose Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English as the subject for this thesis with the hopes that the research can serve as a very small contribution to liguistic studies and also to teaching and learning English as a foreign language In addition, suggestions and pedagogical implications of this study can be utilized to aid teachers of English and learners of Enlish at Hoa Lu University in Ninh Binh province in the process of studying and learning English because in the school year of 2009-2010, the first English majored students will be trained to become junior secondary teachers of English for Ninh Binh Province

2 Aims of the study:

The study is aimed at:

 providing as exhaustive as possible a description of the basic tunes in English and English deontic modality in terms of forms, functions, features and meanings

 giving systematic description of two semantic features: obligation and permission

as subtypes of deontic modality in English and studying the four basic tunes in English as a means of conveying those two semantic features

 finding mistakes commonly made by Vietnamese learners in using Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality

 offering some suggestions on possible solutions to these mistakes and implications

on teaching intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality

3 Scope of the study

It would be ideal for the thesis to study on intonation as a means of conveying both deontic modality and epistemic modality However, since the limitation of time , knowledge and the aims of the study the writer focuses on Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality, more specificly, the four basic tunes in English as a means of conveying obligation and permission in deontic modality

4 Method of the study

In order to achieve the goal set from the beginning, a number of books and studies

in the field of intonation and modality were collected and then studied thoroughly to set up the theoretical framework for the intonation and as well for the deontic modality.The study was classified mainly based on the basic tunes in English by J.D.O’Connor (1991) and by Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang in “Lecture on Principles of Phonetics and Phonology” (2008), “Nghiên cứu một số ph-ơng tiện biểu đạt nghĩa tình thái trong câu - phát ngôn tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt”- (“Thông Tin Khoa Học”, Số 3-2008) About Modality, the study was mostly based on the opinion of Palmer (1986)

And a combination of different methods of analysis will be used in this study: The first is the discriptive method Basic tunes in English and semantic features of deontic modality will be described in turns to find out how intonation can convey deontic modality

Secondly, an investigation was made into the intonation and the deontic modality

in order to find out the commonest mistakes made by Vietnamese learners when studying intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality by recording, interviewing, discussing with the Vietnamese learners of English

Finally, a thorough analysis on the results of the study was made to give the suggestions and implications on teaching English intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality

5 Design of the study

This study is designed in three parts:

Part 1 is the Introduction: this part includes the rationale, scope, aims,

methodology and design of the study

Part 2 is the Development: This is the main part of the study and is divided into

three main Chapters

Chapter One is dealt with the general theoretical concepts involving the subject under consideration

Chapter Two discusses the intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English

Chapter Three focuses on a number of mistakes existed on the process of studying English intonation, especially conveying deontic modality

Part 3 is the Conclusion: This part lays out the findings of the study, draws

important conclusions and suggests implications of teaching and learning English as a foreign language and suggestions for further research are also presented

Part II: Development

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1 1 Intonation in English

1.1.1 Definitions of English intonation

English Intonation is a very important and difficult matter in the process of learning, studying and teaching English There are a number of lingustists have given the definitions of intonation

In “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic Dictionary”, 1992, Oxford University Press, intonation is defined as: “the rise or fall of the pitch of the voice in speaking, especially as this aspects the meaning of what is said: intonation patterns.”

According to the definition of Paul Tench (1996), the lingusitic use of pitch in untterances can be called intonation In his definition, two things are clearly classified Firstly, he specifies “pitch” as the essence of intonation Secondly, the definition futher specifies the concern between intonation and utterances

Barbara Bradford (1988) defined Intonation is a feature of the spoken language It consists of the continuous changing of the pitch of a speaker’s voice to express meanings The author specified that people can mean different things by using the same group of words, arranged in the same oeder, but saying them in different ways

J.D O’Connor (1967) mentioned to the different attitudes of expressing a word group, it can be said definitely or hesitantly, angrily or kindly, with interest or without interest, “and these differences are largely made by the tunes we use: the words do not change their meaning but the tune we use adds something to the words, and what it adds is

the spesker’s feelings at that moment; this way of using tunes is called intonation.” Here

the phonetician wanted to emphasize the important role of tunes in English and a necessary study about the shapes as well as the meanings of tunes in English

For Peter Roach (1983), “no definition is completely satisfactory but any attempt at

a definition must recognize that the pitch of the voice plays the most important part Only

in very unusual situations do we speak with fixed, unvarying pitch and when we speak normally the pitch of our voice is constantly changing.”

In sum, all the above mentioned definitions have mentioned intonation is the change of the pitch of the voice in speaking

1.1.2 Functions of English Intonation

Look at a typical example by Peter Roach (1983):

“ Those who sold quickly mame a profit."

This can be expressed in at least two different ways:

a/ Those who sold quickly mame a profit

b/ Those who sold / quickly made a profit

We can see the placement of tone-unit boundary causes the difference in the above example Besides, consider two different paraphrases of the sentences:

a A profit was made by those who sold quickly

b A profit was quickly made by those who sold

With this function, we are easy to clarify the different types of sentences, they can

be the declaratives, the interrogatives, the exclamatives, the requests, etc For example, if the speaker use the falling tune (or in the lower pitch) at the end of the statement sentence, the listener can realize that is the declarative But if the speaker use the rising tune (or raise voice) at the end of the utterance, the listener can understand that is the interrogative, even that is incomplete utterance and the expecting answer for the utterance is “Yes/ No” For example:

She is Peter's wife

(falling tune at the end of the utterance, and this sentence plays a role in providing the listener with the information that: that woman is Peter’s wife.)

(raising tune at the end of the utterance, and this sentence can be understand as a question: She is Peter’s wife?)

In short, with the grammatical function, sentences can be divided into different spoken purposes Each kind of sentence has a suitable kind of intonation So we can

conclude that intonation plays an important role in expressing the grammatical meaning of

a sentence

1.1.2.2 Attitudinal Function

This function is probably the most familar With attitudinal function, the speaker can express their feelings, attitudes while speaking It helps to transfer a special meaning in questioning and answering It corresponds most clearly to the observation “Not what they said but the way they said it.” (Paul Tench-1996) Here, Paul Tench wanted to emphasize the term: “the way they said it”, that conveys the mood of the speaker or his attitude shown

to the addressee Moreover, the speaker can give a message with different ways depending

on the his states of emotion A message can be given politely, angrily, grumpily, warmly and so on Specifically:

- The Glide-down: cofirming in categoric statement or expressing a forceful agreement from the questionner in tag question

- The Dive: expressing the hesitation, uncertainty, sarcasm

- The Take-off: expressing the anger, annoyance

- The Glide-up: tranfering the interrogative meanings

The great importance of attitudinal function of English intonation is undeniable If a person who has a dull voice with neither rises or falls sounds like a dull person, but one who can express that he is bored, indignant, friendly or angry and so on by using different pitches of his voice can have greatly good impression on the listener Unless the learners of English learn the appropriate way to use this function of intonation in a given situation, he will be facing with a great risk that the listener does not understand his attitude or emotion expressed in the sentence, for example, in his talk, he would like to express his bored or unhappy state but with wrong intonation he seems to be expressing a very happy mood This misleading view of intonation must have caused unnecessary anxiety to many learners

of English

Therefore, it is very necessary to learn this function of intonation thoroughly

1.1.2.3 Discourse function

Looking at the larger context of speech, we can see that intonation helps the listener

to identify the given information as well as the new information In conversation, intonation can convey to the listener what kind response is expected We call the above functions are intonation’s discourse function

Dealing with the discourse function of intonation, we look at how information is implied by speaker and understood by listeners in discourse with the great help of intonation Two main aims are easily found out when realizing the relationship between discourse and intonation The first main aim is the use of intonation to focus the listener’s attention on what is the most significant information in the speaker’s utterance The second main one is concerned with the regulation of conversational behaviour

With this function, the tonic stress plays an important part in it The tonic stress usually falls on the most important words of the sentence Many discourse analysts’ideas point out that tonic stress and pitch movement are exploited by speakers to mark not only the information which the speaker presents but also the beginning of a speaker’s turn, the beginning of new topic, special emphasis or constrast

Furthermore, this function of intonation is considered the most important part in the conversational interaction of two or more speakers Based on it, the listeners are easy to identify what each speaker is actually doing in spaeking, such as questioning, challenging, advising, encouraging, disappointing and so on In a more general way, the speakers indicate to others that they have finished speaking, that another person is expected to speak, that a particular type of response is required, etc

In short, be copetent with this fuction, we are easy to take the initiative in mastering English and we always achieve great success in our speech or conversation

1.1.2.4 Accentual function

The term “Accentual” is derived from “accent” which is used to refer to “stress” So accentual function here means the placement of stress, or more specifically, the tonic stress

With this function, the speaker can specialize the tonic stress or unstressed word in the speaking utterancesto highlight that this word is the most important Commonly, the position of the tonic syllable is on the last lexical word (e.g Noun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb ) However, for the contrastive or emphatic purposes, any word may become the tonic syllable Compare:

Example: Did Mary broke the vase yesterday morning?

Did Mary broke the vase yesterday morning?

Did Mary broke the vase yesterday morning?

Did Mary broke the vase yesterday morning?

Generally, the focus is on “morning” However, the focus on dofferent words result different understandings as following interepreting:

If the focus is on “Mary”, it means “Mary or someone else broke the vase?”

If the focus is on “vase”, it means “Mary broke the vase or something else?”

If the focus is on “yesterday”, it means “Mary broke the vase yesterday or some day else?”

In sum, placement of tonic stress is important and is closely linked to intonation With this function of intonation, the speaker can convey the essential information to lead to the success of communication

1.1.3 Basic tunes of English Intonation

A number of the phoneticians classify tunes in various ways such as Paul Tench (1981) has classified them in 5 tunes: falling, rising-high, rising- low, falling-rising-falling, rising-falling

Whereas Vasilyez says that there are eight nuclear tunes: high-falling, low-falling, high-rising, low-rising, rising-falling, falling-rising, rising-falling-rising, and level tone

However, many English language learners and researchers find that the best way to classify basic tunes in English by J.D.O’ Connor (1991) He classified them into four basic tunes: The Glide-down (The Fall), The Glide-up (the first rising tune), The Dive (The falling-rising tune), The Take-off (the second rising tune)

In this study, the writer takes the view of J.D.O’Connor into considerartion, specifically:

1.1.3.1 The Glide - down (The Fall)

- Form:

- Intonation Marking: ( )

- Description: The falling-tune consists of a fall in the voice from a fairly high pitch to a

very low one

+ On a single syllable:

+ On more than one syllable:

Example: Tenpence Definitely

+ When there is more than one important word in the group:

Example: What was the matter with that?

+ In group with more than three important words:

Example: How can I possibly pay him two hundred pounds?

+ Unstressed syllables before the stressed syllable of the first important word: Example: I was very glad

+ Any stressed syllable near the beginning:

Example: I taught him all I know

- Functions:

+ We use the Glide - down for statements whichs are complete and definite Example: I ' wouldn't 'mind 'seeing it a gain

+ We use the Glide - down for Wh - question:

Example: 'Why did you 'change your mind?

+ We use the Glide - down for short questions used as responses:

Example: (I went to cinema last night) Did you?

+ We use the Glide - down to seek for agreemen in question - tag;

Example: It's cold today, isn't it? (Forcing the answer "yes") + We use the Glide - down for strong commands:

Example: ' Come and ' have dinner with us!

+ We use the Glide - down for strong exclamations:

Example: ' Good Heavens!