Approaches to Systemic Functional Grammar - Convergence and Divergence - Gordon Tucker

Approaches to Systemic Functional Grammar - Convergence and Divergence - Gordon Tucker

11. Intonation in Semantic System Networks

Approaches to Systemic Functional Grammar - Convergence and Divergence - Gordon Tucker

Paul Tench [+-]
Cardiff University (retired)
Paul Tench was formerly Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University, Wales. He retired in 2007 after more than 40 years in full-time academic life and is now active as a Research Associate at Cardiff. His main teaching responsibilities were in phonetics, the phonology of English, applied linguistics in language teaching and introductions to Systemic-Functional Linguistics. His research focussed mainly on the description of British English intonation, which resulted in The Roles of Intonation in English Discourse (1990), the Intonation Systems of English (1996) and Transcribing the Sound of English (2011) and many journal articles. His first major publication was Pronunciation Skills (1981). Since retirement he has devoted time to exploring system networks at the level of word phonology, and to working with minority language groups in devising orthographies for hitherto unwritten languages in Nigeria and Zambia. His publications can be viewed in http://www.paultenchdocs.co.uk/.

Description

This chapter is a personal review of the functions of intonation in the grammar and discourse of English speakers. It offers an extension to Halliday’s classic statement (Halliday 1967, 1970) and also reflects recent innovations in intonation that have been widely reported. It also takes into account Fawcett’s categories of meaning, or ‘functional components’ (Fawcett 1980), which are found useful as a basis for displaying six separately identifiable functions that intonation performs in English: the identification of spoken genres, phonological paragraphing, the organization of information, communicative (discourse) functions, the expression of attitude and the disambiguation of identically worded clauses. It concludes with a general statement about the neat association between the categories themselves and the subsystems of intonation.

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Citation

Tench, Paul. 11. Intonation in Semantic System Networks. Approaches to Systemic Functional Grammar - Convergence and Divergence. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 215-234 Jun 2020. ISBN 9781781796870. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=34284. Date accessed: 24 Apr 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.34284. Jun 2020

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