An analysis of the use of basic falling and rising tunes in some interviews from The Ellen Show = Phân tích cách sử dụng ngữ điệu xuống và lên trong một số đoạn

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ MINH NGUYỆT

AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF BASIC FALLING AND RISING
TUNES IN SOME INTERVIEWS FROM THE ELLEN SHOW
PHÂN TÍCH CÁCH SỬ DỤNG NGỮ ĐIỆU XUỐNG VÀ LÊN TRONG
MỘT SỐ ĐOẠN PHỎNG VẤN TRÍCH TỪ THE ELLEN SHOW

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201

HANOI – 2013


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ MINH NGUYỆT

AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF BASIC FALLING AND RISING
TUNES IN SOME INTERVIEWS FROM THE ELLEN SHOW
PHÂN TÍCH CÁCH SỬ DỤNG NGỮ ĐIỆU XUỐNG VÀ LÊN TRONG
MỘT SỐ ĐOẠN PHỎNG VẤN TRÍCH TỪ THE ELLEN SHOW

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Hà Cẩm Tâm, Ph.D

HANOI – 2013


DECLARATION

I certify that the minor these entitled “ An analysis of the use of basic
falling and rising tunes on some interviews from the Ellen Show” is the fruit of
my own research and that it has not been published or summited to any other
universities or institutions.
Signature

Le Thi Minh Nguyet

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The first name to be mentioned here is my supervisor‟s, Dr. Ha Cam Tam,
who has been providing me with precious earnest advice and valuable
instructions for my research implementation. Without her help, there definitely
would not be this thesis.
On conducting this research, I also received help and encouragement from
my beloved family, who always stand for and by my side throughout the time I
worked on this study.
Finally, I would like to deliver the sincere gratitude to my colleagues for

their support and assistance in terms of ideas, materials as well as administration
for me to fulfill the thesis.

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ABSTRACT
How to speak English with the appropriate intonation? How to teach and
learn English intonation effectively and properly? etc. They are always big
questions under restless mind of English teachers and learners not only in Viet
Nam but also in the English-speaking words. There has been existing a
traditional so-called correlation between intonation tunes and sentence types
such as Declarative, Interrogative and Imperative Sentences in the practice of
English teaching. The current paper presents another effort to verify this myth by
analyzing the use of tunes and the sentence types in the conversations selected
from the most popular Television talk show in American- the Ellen Show. By
closely examining the bulk of 872 intonation units, this study point out the
dominance of falling tunes in real-life conversations. More importantly, the
research results supports the correlation between certain sentence types and some
specific tunes while underlines the inconsistence in the use of falling and rising
tunes and other sentence types under different circumstances.

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LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS
IU: Intonation Unit
SC: Simplex Clause
CC: Complex Clause
PC: Part of Clause

| Intonation Unit Boundary
\ falling tune
/ rising tune
/\ rise-fall tune
\/ fall-rise tune
_ level
(123) | So you are thirteen years/ old|
(123) Intonation Unit Number
old: Tonic syllable

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LIST OF TABLE

Table 1: Proportion of basic tunes ....................................................................... 21
Table 2: Proportion of five basic tunes ................................................................ 22
Table 3: IU Syntactic structure ............................................................................ 28
Table 4: Syntactic Structures of IUs .................................................................... 28
Table 5: Proportion of Tunes and Sentence Types in both SCs and CCs ............ 30
Table 6: Declarative and Falling/Rising Tunes ................................................... 31
Table 7: WH-Interrogative and Falling/Rising Tunes ......................................... 32
Table 8: Correlation between Yes/No Interrogative and The tunes .................... 32
Table 9: Imperatives and Falling/Rising Tunes ................................................... 34

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION...................................................................................................i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................iii
LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS.................................................iv
LIST OF TABLE...................................................................................................v
TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................vi
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 1
1. RATIONALE.................................................................................................. 1
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS .......................... 3
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY ............................................................................... 3
4. METHODS OF THE STUDY ........................................................................ 3
5. SIGNIFICANE OF THE STUDY .................................................................. 3
5.1. To the area of intonation research ............................................................ 4
5.2. To language user-learners and teachers ................................................... 4
6. ORGANISATION OF THE STUDY ............................................................. 4
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................ 6
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................... 6
1.1. THEOREOTICAL BACKGROUND .......................................................... 6
1.1.1. Pitch ....................................................................................................... 6
1.1.2. Tune ....................................................................................................... 7
1.1.3. Intonation ............................................................................................... 8
1.1.4. Basic tunes of intonation ....................................................................... 8
1.1.5. Functions of Intonation ......................................................................... 8
1.1.6. Intonation Unit .................................................................................... 10
1.1.6.1. Definition ...................................................................................... 10
1.1.6.2. Syntactic structures of IU.............................................................. 11
1.1.7. Sentence types in SC and CC IUs ....................................................... 13
1.1.7.1. Declarative sentence ..................................................................... 13
1.1.7.2. Yes/no-interrogative ..................................................................... 13
1.1.7.3. Wh-interrogative ........................................................................... 13
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1.1.7.4. Imperative ..................................................................................... 14
1.2. PREVIOUS RESEARCH .......................................................................... 14
1.2.1. Research on the frequency of the basic tunes .................................. 14
1.2.2. Research on the correlation between tunes and syntactic structure of
utterances ....................................................................................................... 14
CHAPTER TWO: THE STUDY ...................................................................... 16
2.1. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................... 16
2.1.1. Research Questions ............................................................................. 16
2.1.2. Data collection ..................................................................................... 16
2.1.3. Analytical Framework ......................................................................... 19
2.2. DATA ANALYSIS & DISCUSSION ....................................................... 21
2.2.1. Frequency of falling/rising tunes ......................................................... 21
2.2.2. Correlation between Falling/Rising tunes and IUs Sentence Types ... 27
2.2.2.1. Syntactic structures of IUs ............................................................ 28
2.2.2.2. Falling/Rising Tunes and Sentence Types in SCs and CCs ......... 30
2.2.2.2.1.Declarative and Falling/Rising Tunes ..................................... 31
2.2.2.2.2. WH-Interrogative and Falling/Rising Tunes .......................... 32
2.2.2.2.3. Yes/No Interrogative and Falling/Rising Tunes ..................... 33
2.2.2.2.4. Imperatives and Falling/Rising Tunes .................................... 34
PART THREE: CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 37
1. Recapitulation ............................................................................................... 37
2. Implication for Teaching and Learning English ........................................... 39
3. Limitations and Suggestions for further research ......................................... 39
APPENDIX 1: List of Links for Excerpts from The Ellen Show .................... I
APPENDIX 2: SAMPLE TRANSCRIPTION ANALYSIS ............................ II

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PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
To start with, in this very first part of the thesis, the readers would find
background information to the study. The historical context of the intonation
issue with relevant theories and the justifications for implementing this study
would be presented first, then come the aims and research questions of the study.
The third part concerns with the scope of the study, followed by the methods and
significance of this research. A brief description on the organization of this
minor study wraps up the Introduction part.
1. RATIONALE
Intonation has always been the mysterious and promising woods which
has inspired a great deal of exploration, arguments and mediation to achieve a
satisfactory agreement on its nature as well as values in languages. Intonation,
the so-called „melody of speech‟ (Roach,2001), is „what you had when the prose
was spoken‟ (Couper-Kuhlen,2007).
In the past fifty years, intonation has been steadily acknowledging its
indispensable roles and values in communication via the tool of languages.
During this process, the works centering on the issues of intonation has recorded
numerous changes from both theoretical and practical perspectives, some of
which are currently far from a final conclusion. While traditional viewpoints
simply equate intonation with „the use of the pitch of the voice to convey
linguistic information‟ (Gilbert, 1987), the more recent and contemporary
linguists argue about a far more complex nature of intonation, as Roach (2009:
43) claims: “in its broader and more popular sense it is used to cover much the
same field as „prosody‟, where variations in such things as voice quality, tempo
and loudness are included.”
With that vivid transformation and nonstop development as well as the
increasingly important roles in linguistics, intonation is currently an appealing
topic for further research. It is not difficult to find that the majority of linguistics
research on intonation is devoted to the functions of intonation. Roach (1991:

163) defines four functions of intonation: to express emotions and attitude as we
speak – attitudinal function, to produce the effect of prominence on syllables –
accentual function, to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is
being said – grammatical function, and to signal to the listener what is “new” and

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“given” information”. Crystal (1969:254) discusses the grammatical and
semantic functions of intonation as follows:
„grammatical considerations are relevant for the study of intonation in so
far as it can be shown that a given grammatical structure has a regular correlation
with a given intonational pattern, and that a change in intonation causes one to
re-label (re-interpret) the syntactic structure of an utterance, no other
morphological change being necessary‟.
In contrast, a number of phonologists believe that this function is incapable by
itself to provide adequate account for certain intonational patterns. A wide range of
linguistic works (Roach, O‟Connor & Arnold, Crystal, Halliday, Cruttenden) suggest
a strong tendency to have falling tone in statements and WH-questions and rising tone
in Yes/No questions, but also assert that the “generalizations are too broad” and this
traditional view only scratches the surface”.
This controversial issue, at the same time, causes great confusion and
nuisance for the learners and teachers of English as a foreign language,
which the writer as a novice teacher has been experiencing. There‟s still a
need for an appropriate guideline on the correlation of the tunes and the
grammatical structures of utterances. This is particularly meaningful and
importance in the case of EFL learning and teaching in VietNam, where
intonation is an exotic concept to the Vietnamese linguistic reservoir of EFL
learners as well as teachers.
Moreover, most the previous studies on intonation are based on readaloud conversations or speech, sometimes isolated utterances from official

corpus (Ladd, 1985 as an example). Therefore, a closer look into naturallyoccurring discourse can hopefully be contributable to the field of intonation and
to the writer particularly. The extracts of two-or- three speaker interviews from
the show, an American television talk show hosted by comedian/actress Ellen
DeGeneres with the best-known celebrities all over the world provide the
research with a varied accents and extremely colorful cultural background. The
show has won 32 Daytime Emmy Awards as of 2011. The 10th season of the
show, from which the selected excerpts are taken, began on September 10, 2012.
In a nutshell, the significance of intonation tunes in successfully
communication together with the desire of the author as a EFL teacher to obtain
an empirically-driven and efficiency framework to teach intonation to her
students are the justifications behind the choice of the current paper topic.

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2. AIMS OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The primary purpose and aim of the current study is to provide a closer
look into the use of falling and rising tunes in the context of a real-life talk show,
which would be the closest form of naturally occurring conversation. The author
would like to discover the frequency of falling and rising tunes in the free-style
chat show to partially establish a conclusion about the dominance of these two
tones in English conversations. Moreover, another issue to be cleared out is the
long-in-dispute problems of correlation between the tunes employed and
different sentence types, including Declarative, Wh-Interrogative, Yes/No
Interrogative and Imperative. The degree of correlation, which would pave the
way to the formation of a generalization for the correlation, then is another aim
of the study.
Therefore, this minor research target to research questions as follows:
1. How frequently are falling and rising tunes used in the selected
interviews from the Ellen Show?

2. Is there a correlation between the falling and rising tunes and sentence
types at the level of intonation unit? If yes, how is the correlation realized?
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Under the scope of this mini study, the author would closely
examine the use of falling and rising tunes as well as the relationship between the
tunes and the syntactic structures of the intonation units. To mention the
materials for the data collection and analysis, the author would selectively
analyze 10 two-speaker or three-speaker interview extracts from the interviews
with the highest viewings from the Ellen Show website.
4. METHODS OF THE STUDY
As far as the method is concerned, there were two different types of
methods employed to obtain the data and reach the conclusion of this study. In
the first stage, the author used analytical methods to observe the intonation
patterns of utterances in the extracts and analyze their functions. Then,
quantitative method took over the main role in synthesizing the statistics
collected from the descriptive step.
5. SIGNIFICANE OF THE STUDY
Hopefully, the writer can find her own minor study meaningful and
helpful, despite to a very small extent, to the area of intonation research as well
as intonation as a component of English language, users-learners and teachers in
some following aspects:
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5.1. To the area of intonation research
- To build up the enormous literature on intonation of English with
another moderate empirical effort. In particular, this study is hoped to enrich the
naturally-occurring discourse analysis on intonation
- To provide an new evidence on the frequency of falling and rising tunes
as two basic tunes of the language of English

5.2. To language user-learners and teachers
Teachers and learners always desire for a guideline to perceive and
appropriately use intonation as a tool for conveying communicative messages.
Therefore, the expected findings of the study, the frequency of falling and rising
tunes and the correlation between the tune choice and syntactic features of the
intonation units are hopefully supposed to
- promote the awareness of language teachers and learners as users of
English about the need to understand and use these tones in communication.
- offer a helping hand in deciding the tone choice as speakers and
understanding the message as listeners.
6. ORGANISATION OF THE STUDY
The thesis is composed with 3 main parts:
Part one: Introduction states the reasons for conducting research, the aims
of the study along with the research questions as well as the method of doing
research, the scope of the study and the organization of this current report.
Part two: Development includes two chapters.
In chapter one: Literature Review, some theories related to intonation and
the framework for this study will be discussed. Then, the previous research
related to intonation would be reviewed in order to show the research gap and the
need to conduct this work.
The second chapter- The study is the main core of this research paper.
There are two sections: Methodology and Data Analysis & Discussion.
Section 1- Methodology once again highlights the research questions. The
data collection description and procedure are discussed in detailed here, followed
with the analytical framework for the current study.
Section 2: Data Analysis & Discussion presents the research results which
include the frequency of falling and rising tunes in the corpus of the interview
extracts and the correlation between these two tunes with the syntactic structure
of the utterances. In this chapter, the researcher also discusses the answers to the

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posed research questions and provides a comparison between the findings of the
current study with the previous study.
Part three: Conclusion summarizes the main contents of the research
paper – what has been done throughout the research. Implications, limitations of
the research along with suggestions for further studies are also proposed.

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PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
Part Two: Development, the heart of this research, would firstly lead the
readers through the history of intonation research with chapter one- providing a
Literature Review of the concerned issue. In this Chapter, a background for the
research journey with the relevant works and explanation about the main
concepts in the study is established, from which a gap to fit the current research
and a framework for the findings would be pointed out. The following chapter,
The Study, consists of Methodology part and Data Analysis and Discussion.
Methodology Section describes the data and clearly states the analytical
framework taken into effect in the research while Data Analysis and Discussion
Section presents the process of analyzing data collection to reach some initial
findings along with discussion sessions concerning the results achieved above.

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
The Literature Review chapter would be divided into two main part:
Theoretical background and Previous Research. In the former part, the writer
tries to make a sketch of intonation with the relevant studies on tune and
Intonation. The Definition, Components, Intonation Unit, Basic Tunes,

Importance of Intonation together with Functions of Intonation would be
presented in turn. Altogether, this part provides a framework for the research.
The latter one is supposed to point out the understanding situation related to the
studied topic, the frequency of falling and rising tunes and the correlation
between these tunes and the grammatical structures of the utterances. Then, this
situation description and analysis would lead to the identification of the gaps and
the needs for the current study.
1.1. THEOREOTICAL BACKGROUND
1.1.1. Pitch
In natural speeches, it‟s rarely true that people speak with a level,
monotonous voice, no matter what language they are speaking. „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.”(Roach, 1991).
Therefore, it is essential to start with the term of „pitch‟ to subsequently define
„tune‟ and „intonation.
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According to Hayes (2009:291), “pitch can be considered as a purely
physical phenomenon: the vocal cords can vibrate faster or slower, resulting
acoustically in higher or lower fundamental frequency. Frequency is measured in
hertz (Hz, cycles per second), and is easily measured and visualized with pitchtracking equipment.”
So, pitch refers to the rate of vibration of the vocal cords (Megdad, 2012
cited Hyman, 2007). Roach (2009) also claims that “Pitch is an auditory
sensation”. In a broad sense, pitch would be nearly all vibrating sounds that can
be identified from a musical instrument or a vowel produced by human voice.
Thus, English language consists of a number of voiceless sounds which “cannot
give rise to a sensation of pitch in this way.”
Another important feature to bear in mind relating to „pitch‟ is that pitch
range is an individual possession, which means that a high pitch of a person with

low-pitched voice may be a low pitch of another with a high-pitched voice. To
get the appropriate interpretation of pitch changes in one‟s voice, it‟s advisable
to look at the pitch movement within the whole pitch range of a certain
individual.
1.1.2. Tune
Hayes (2009, 294) mentions a central idea in intonation analysis which
involve text and tune. “The text is simply the words we are saying, conveyed
through vowels, consonants, stress and phrasing. The tune is the pitch pattern
with which the words are said. For the analysis of tune, we introduce here the
concept of a tone, or more precisely, a tonal auto-segment. A tone is like a
phonological segment, except that its content specifies only pitch features.”
Roach (2009) restricts the meaning of the term “tone” in phonetics and
phonology as follows: “it refers to an identifiable movement or level of pitch that
is used in a linguistically contrastive way. In some languages (known as tone
languages) the linguistic function of tone is to change the meaning of a word. In
other languages, tone forms the central part of intonation, and the difference
between, for example, a rising and falling tone on a particular word may cause a
different interpretation of the sentence in which it occurs.”
It is necessary to highlight that in this study, tune refers to the pitch
pattern covering an utterances while tone point to the pitch clinging to a certain
syllable in the utterance.

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1.1.3. Intonation
Intonation refers to the patterning of pitch changes in utterances. (Snow,
2002).Cruttenden (1986), quoted by Megdad (2012) equates intonation
particularly with pitch movement while Coulthard (1992) identifies it with
prosody in general which would therefor include pitch movement but also

loudness, length, speed, and even voice quality. Roach (2009) adds another
important feature of intonation, which is known as prominence. It is defined as
the tendency for speakers to make some syllables more noticeable than others,
accomplished by pronouncing them louder and longer, by assigning them a
different pitch, or by articulation the phonemes (especially the vowel) more
distinctly. Prominence is also sometimes referred to as emphasis, focus, main
stress, nucleus or tonic accent.
1.1.4. Basic tunes of intonation
There stands a colourful picture when it comes to the number of tunes
types in English language. O‟Connor and Arnold (1973) and Cruttenden (1969)
are cited by Oladipupo (2010) as propose two basic tunes: tune 1 – fall
(including high-fall and low-fall) and tune 2 – rise (including high-rise and lowrise). Crystal and Ladefoged in Celik (2001) identify four basic ones: rise, fallrise, fall and rise-fall. Brazil et al. (1980) and Roach (1991) endorse five: fall,
rise, rise-fall, fall-rise and level. The standard distinction in this unit is taken
from Roach (1991) with five basic tunes of English.
1.1.5. Functions of Intonation
Regardless to some slight differences in the terms assigned to the set of
intonation functions, there would be mentioned four main functions of
intonation, according to Roach (1991), including: attitudinal function, accentual
function, grammatical function and discourse function. Intonation has attitudinal
functions, which is proved with the fact that “intonation is used to convey our
feelings and attitudes… which may be labeled „angry, happy, grateful, bored‟,
and so on”. In terms of grammatical function, there are two cases in which
intonation asserts its grammatical function: (i) to indicate grammatical structure
to the listener and (ii) to define if the utterance is a statement or a question.
(i)
To indicate grammatical structure to the listener
As a matter of fact, IU boundaries tend to occur between grammatical
units of higher order than words. In sentences with a more complex structure,
IUs boundaries are normally found at the boundaries between phrases and
clauses. Thus, IU division serves as an indication for grammatical structure of an

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utterance. Furthermore, in situations of meaning ambiguity due to the complex
structure of the sentences, intonation can be of great help for the listener to
correctly infer the message of the speakers. For example:
(a) The Conservatives who \/like the proposal are \pleased.
(b) The Con\/servatives who \/like the proposal are \pleased.
The intonation distinguish between the (a)restrictive and (b) nonrestrictive relative clauses. (a) implies that only some Conservatives like the
proposal whereas (b) implies that all Conservatives like it.
(ii)
To define if the utterance is a statement or a question.
This sub-function relates to the choice of tone on the tonic syllable. In
English, like several other languages, speakers can simply change a statement
into a question by changing the tone from falling to rising.For instance:
(a) The \price is going up.
(a) is a statement with the use of falling tone on the tonic syllable „price‟.
but it‟s acceptable to ask a question:
Why do you want to buy it now? (b) The price is going /up.
The intonation of question-tags is also quoted as an illustration for
changes in the meanings doe to the differences in tones. Let‟s have a look at an
pair of example:
(c) They are coming on \Tuesday| \aren’t they|
(d) They are coming on \Tuesday| /aren’t they|
In (c), with the falling tone on the question tag, the implication is that the
speaker is quite certain about the validity of the information while in (d) when
rising tone is used, the speaker is thought to be less certain about the information.
Roach (1991) also argue that accentual function involves the placement of
tonic stress within the tone unit as a part of intonation. The location of the tonic
syllable is of considerable linguistic importance.” The most common position for

this is on the last lexical word while for contrastive purposes, any word may
become the tonic syllable. For example:
(i) I want to know where he’s \travelling to. (the word „ to‟ being a
preposition and not a lexical word, is not stressed)
(ii) I don’t want to know where he’s travelling \/ from.(the word
„from‟ contrast to „to‟ and is stress for contrast)
According to Roach (2001), two main areas are identified while studying
intonation in the relation with discourse. First, the use of intonation to focus the
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listener‟s attention on the aspect of the message is the most important; secondly,
the regulation of conversational behavior.
Actually, the two functions of accentual function and discourse function
do overlap to a large extent and is said to be better grouped into one, while the
attitudinal function and grammatical function also refer to the same thing in a
wide range of situations.
Halliday (1994: 296-299) mentions three functions: grammatical,
informational an attitudinal. Tench (1996) discusses three functions of
intonation: (i) to reflect the status of the information contained in an intonation
unit (ot tone unit/group), (ii) to fulfill the communicative function of an
utterance; i.e. to indicate whether a speaker is telling or asking, commanding or
requesting, etc., (iii) to express the attitude .
To put all into a nutshell of functions of intonation, there may be
presented three major functions: attitudinal function, grammatical function, and
discourse function.
1.1.6. Intonation Unit
1.1.6.1. Definition
Traditionally, intonation studies have been making use of the notion of a
phonological unit that is defined by a coherent pitch movement and / or

accentual pattern, which is known as tone unit (Crystal 1969; Brazil 1997, Roach
1998), tone group (Halliday 1967), intonation-group (Cruttenden 1997),
intonation phrase (Wells 2006), intonation unit (Du Bois 1991), rhythm unit
(Pike 1945), and breath group (Liebeman 1967). All of the terms mentioned
point to one basic notion of a linguistic unit defined by supra-segmental aspects
of speech. Such a unit is described with a “fairly clearly-defined internal
structure”, with a compulsory Tonic Syllable, which “carries a tone and has a
high degree of prominence”. A tonic syllable not only carries a tone (which is
something related to intonation) but also a type of stress that will be called tonic
stress.” Some research also uses nucleus and nuclear stress for tonic syllable and
tonic stress. The tone-unit structure is completed with the optional components,
including Head, Pre-Head and Tail. The head, which is “all that part of tone-unit
that extends from the first stressed syllable (but not including) the tonic syllable.
If there is not stressed syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a Head.”
(Roach, 1998, p.281). The Pre-head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in

10


a tone-unit preceding the first stressed syllable. Any syllables between the Tonic
syllable and the end of the tone-unit are called the Tail.
Other definitions of intonation unit also look at the pitch movement which
makes up its core feature. Reed, 2009 quotesCruttenden (1997) as providing a
“good example” of the definition of the “intonation-group”.
“His internal criteria for defining a stretch of speech as an intonationgroup include firstly the existence of at least one stressed syllable; and secondly
pitch movement on, to, or from that stressed syllable. External criteria for
identifying intonation-groups are those that define potential boundaries…one
such criterion is a potential pause following an intonation-group. Other external
criteria include anacrusis, that is, fast delivery of unstressed syllable; lengthening
of the final syllable; and a potential change in the pitch direction of any

unstressed syllables from one intonation-group to the next.”
While the theory of tone unit concerns the internal phonological structure
(Tonic syllable, Head, Pre-head, etc.), intonation group terms are derived from
research on pitch changes and pauses on unit boundaries, the current study put
forwards the need for a unit which is clearly-defined with unit boundaries and
syntactic structure to answer the questions of frequency and correlation between
the sentence types and tunes. Therefore, in this study, the term „intonation unit‟
would be adopted. The main criteria to identify each intonation unit is the
presence of pauses at borders of each unit.
1.1.6.2. Syntactic structures of IU
The classification of syntactic structures of IU in this study was adopted
from Iwasaki (1996) with five categories: Simplex clause (SC), Complex Clause
(CC), Part of Clause (PC), Isolated word and phrase, and Others. Due to the
space limitation, only the correlation between Simplex Clause and Complex
Clause with falling and rising tunes would be examined.
This part of definitions is taken from Iwasaki (1996 ) but not the
examples.
(a) Simplex Clauses (SC) contain minimally an overt predicate. One or
more argument (s) or adjunct (s) without clausal modification may appear. For
example:
(1) I went to school.
(2) Do you know it?

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(b) Complex Clauses (CC) There are a tentative classification of four
subtypes:
CC1: Paratactic construction: This construction combines two or more
simple clauses paratactically. The two (or more) events depicted in this

construction are relatively independent of each other, as evidenced by different
subjects, aspectual markings , polarities associated with different clauses, and/or
an intervening conjunction. For example:
(3) Oh, I quickly ran to the bedroom and he enter the room right after that.
CC2: Serial construction: This construction is similar to paratactic
construction but what is expressed in this construction is conceived as one event.
Structurally speaking, the two serialized verbs are not independently marked
with aspectual and other verbal information. Causative, passive and purpose
constructions are considered as serial constructions. For instance:
(4) She put on her coat, took the bag, and walked out of the room.
CC3: Hypotactic construction: CC3 consists of a dependent (adverbial)
clause and the main clause. Examples of CC3 are quite abundant.
(5) Although they had prepared quite carefully before the storm, the
damage was still too big.
(6) When you left, you brought all the good things with you.
CC4: Complement and relative constructions: Complement
construction is a construction with a verb which take the complement. For
instance:
(7) He said (that) you had already moved out of the building.
A relative clause may appear as part of a simplex or complex clause.
(8) The girl who lives next door is a doctor.
(c) Part of a clause (PC)
An IU is recognized as part of a clause when it combines with the nex IU
to create a complete clause. If the second IU in this case can be considered
independent, then it is coded as SC or CC. The following one is an example:

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(9) I don’t think | (the man is good enough for this job)

An IU is also considered as part of a clause when it is the second part of a
serial construction following the first part, or when it is a prepositional phrase
which accompanies a verb in the preceding IU, such as
(10) (He calmly sat down) | in front of the director.
(11) (The policeman opened the door) | walked into the room.
(d) Words and phrases: isolated words and phrases which are not part of
a clause are classified as one category
(e) Others: In this group are included backchannel expressions, reactive
token, fragmental IU, laughter tokens and other miscellaneous tokens.
1.1.7. Sentence types in SC and CC IUs
For the analysis of correlation between falling and rising tunes and
syntactic structures, in this study, the researcher isolated SCs and CCs as IUs
which can stand independently as a complete sentence. The sentence types are
mentioned as subtype of SC and CC. Hasselgård, H. et al. (2012) revises
sentence types in English with three types: declarative (marked by the word
order S+V), yes/no interrogative (marked by the word order V+S), whinterrogative (marked by the word order wh-word+V (+S)), and imperative
(marked by the word order V, with the verb in the imperative, and usually no
subject).
1.1.7.1. Declarative sentence
A type of sentence (or, strictly speaking, a clause) in which the word
order (in English) is S-V-X, with X symbolizing any element that may follow the
verbal (object/predicative/obligatory adverbial). The typical communicative
function of a declarative sentence is a statement, although declaratives may also
have other functions. For example:
John pressed the button.
1.1.7.2. Yes/no-interrogative
A sentence type marked by inverted word order (usually subject-auxiliary
inversion - unless the verbal is a simple form of to be or - less frequently - to
have). For example:
Is your mother at home? Have you done your homework?

1.1.7.3. Wh-interrogative
An interrogative sentence which contains a wh-word (what, where, when,
which, who, whom, whose, why, how). The wh-word is usually placed at the

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beginning of the sentence, and is followed by the finite verb. Unless the whword has the syntactic function of subject, the word order of a wh -interrogative
is as follows: wh-word+ finite auxiliary + subject + verbal. For example:
Why did you want to study English?
If the wh-word functions as subject, the word order of the whinterrogative is simply: wh-word (=subject) + verbal. For example:
Who wants a second-hand grammar book?
1.1.7.4. Imperative
A sentence type typically used to make commands. For example:
Sit down. Give an analysis of this poem.
An imperative sentence typically contains no grammatical subject, but the
implied subject is 'you'. Sometimes a subject may be included, particularly in
negative imperatives such as: Don't you dare touch that switch. Sentences such
as Let's get out of here! Let's go! where the implied subject includes the speaker
as well as the hearer(s), are also referred to as imperative.
1.2. PREVIOUS RESEARCH
1.2.1. Research on the frequency of the basic tunes
There is not much research done on the topic of relative frequency of
basic tunes in English language. A small piece of information on this topic that
the author encountered was found in the paper „The communicative value of the
tone system of English‟ by Tench (1995:4) . He claims that
„usually between half and two-third of all tones are falls. Prepared or
rehearsal discourse has a relatively high proportion of rises, which demonstrates
the planning of incomplete information with complete, but even so, half the tones
are falls; a higher proportion of falls is found in unprepared unrehearsed speech,

up to 65%.‟
However, Tench(1996) does not provide any figures illustrated this
statement.
Similarly, the author cannot find any literature on the frequency of other
tunes in English.
1.2.2. Research on the correlation between tunes and syntactic
structure of utterances
The correlation between tunes and the grammatical structure of utterances
has long been an attractive topic to linguists. Historically, some of the very first
work on intonation tried to establish a correspondence between declarative,
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interrogative and exclamatory sentence types and final falling or rising
intonation. (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996).
Other researchers compromised with

similar

generalizations

accompanying a number of exceptions. Take one example, Huynh (2012) takes a
look into the question intonation patterns in real-life conversations and textbook
dialogs and conclude about the efficiency of the textbook in preparing the
students with intonation use in real-life situation. What she find outs about the
question intonation patterns in real-life conversations and textbook can be
summarized in the following table:
Authentic
conversation

Textbook

Wh-question intonation patterns

Rising-Falling
Falling-Rising

Rising-Falling

Or questions intonation patterns

Rising-Falling

Rising-Falling

Yes/No questions intonation patterns

Falling-Rising
Terminal falling pitch

Falling-Rising

Statement as questions intonation
patterns

Terminal rising pitch

Terminal rising pitch

McCarthy (1991:106) is quoted by Medgag (2012) as admitting the

popularity of the utilization of grammatical intonation, especially among teachers
who widely believe that there are „correct‟ intonations for sentence structures,
such as declarative sentences, questions, tag questions, etc. Thus, yes/No
questions typically go with rising tones, and the wh-interrogatives with falling
tones. However, McCarthy do admit that there‟s more evidence to suggest that
there is “no one-to-one relationship between sentence type and tone.”
In short, despite the richness of studies on the issue of intonation patterns
and grammatical types of utterances, there‟s still a need for more empirical
evidence to approach an agreement on the questions of the correlation between
the two variables. This study roots from that need as well as the personal demand
of the writer as an English teacher to deepen the understanding of intonation as
the target language in her career.

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CHAPTER TWO: THE STUDY
2.1. METHODOLOGY
This main purpose of this section is to provide a sketch of the research
with the emphasis on the two research questions in the first sub-section. After
presenting the research problems, there follows a description of the selected
research objects along with the justification behind the object choice. Last but
not least, the analytical framework adopted in this current paper would be
highlighted.
2.1.1. Research Questions
In this very initial research effort into the intonation umbrella, the current
paper would aim to find the answer to the question of the frequency of falling
and rising tunes in talk-shows on American media. Moreover, the relative
relationship between these two kinds of tunes with sentence types in English
language would be examined in the selected interviews. Therefore, this research

is on the lookout for the answer of two following research questions:
1. How frequently are falling and rising tunes used in the selected
interviews from the Ellen Show?
2. Is there a correlation between the falling and rising tunes and sentence
types at the level of intonation unit? If yes, how is the correlation realized?
2.1.2. Data collection
As mentioned previously, the data for this study is collected from ten
excerpts of the interviews from the American television talk show The Ellen
DeGeneres Show, or the Ellen Show as the original name. The talk show is
hosted by comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneres, debuting on September 8, 2003,
and has been increasingly popular with American. The show has reached
considerable success with 33 Daytime Emmy awards as of 2011 because of the
richness and creativity in the episodes. The audience can enjoy a combination of
comedy, celebrity, musical guests and human-interest stories. There‟s a
surprisingly wide range of celebrities having making their turn as guests on the
Ellen show, from very famous singer Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber to popular
actors and actress such as Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart and even the
President of The United States, Barack Obama and his First Lady. The appeal of
the program not only roots in the appearance of well-known artist and politicians
on the show but also some of very special elements. For instance, non-celebrities
are also featured in ‟15 minutes of fame‟ part of the program. Guests of this role
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