Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-mnklg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-12T07:35:25.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intonation and Its Parts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Dwight Bolinger
Dwight Bolinger*
Affiliation:
Palo Alto, California
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The traditional attempts to identify grammatical functions of intonation have recently been supplemented by attempts to identify holistic lexical functions. One such, proposed by Liberman & Sag 1974 and by Sag & Liberman 1975 is a ‘contradiction contour’ having the general shape . with the sentence accent normally at or near the lowest pitch. This contour, as an exemplar of the theory of intonational wholes, is examined in the light of an alternative theory of abstract meanings attached to rises vs. falls. ‘Contradiction’ is seen as a contextual inference from the more abstract meanings.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 1982, pp. 505 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bing, Janet M. 1980. Aspects of English prosody. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1948. The intonation of accosting questions. English Studies 29. 109–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1958. Intonation and grammar. Language Learning 8:1/2.31–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1964. Intonation as a universal. Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Linguists, ed. by Lunt, Horace G., 833–48. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1978. Intonation across languages. Universals of human language, II: Phonology, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H. et al. 471–524. Stanford: University Press.Google Scholar
Brazil, David, Coulthard, Malcolm; and Johns, Catherine. 1980. Discourse intonation and language teaching. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. 1981. Falls and rises: Meanings and universals. Journal of Linguistics 17. 77–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foldvik, Arne Kjell. 1981. Voice quality in Norwegian dialects. Nordic prosody II: Papers from a symposium, ed. by Fretheim, Thorstein, 228–32. Trondheim: Tapir.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. 1980. The structure of intonational meaning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Liberman, Mark. 1979. The intonational system of English. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Liberman, Mark, and Sag, Ivan. 1974. Prosodic form and discourse function. CLS 10. 416–27.Google Scholar
Pike, Kenneth L. 1945. The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Sag, Ivan, and Liberman, Mark. 1975. The intonational disambiguation of indirect speech acts. CLS 11. 487–97.Google Scholar