Wells's English Intonation follows in the well-established tradition of the British school of intonation analysis, both in its approach to the subject and in its intended audience. Like many previous publications in this tradition (Palmer Reference Palmer1922; Schubiger Reference Schubiger1958; Kingdon Reference Kingdon1958; O'Connor & Arnold Reference O'Connor and Arnold1961; Halliday Reference Halliday1967, Reference Halliday1970; Brazil Reference Brazil1975, Reference Brazil1978, Reference Brazil1985/1997), the book under review is aimed at learners of English as a second language and undergraduate students of linguistics.
As is customary in the British approach, intonation is conceptualised as a series of chunks, or intonation phrases. The central point of interest is the main pitch accent of each intonation phrase, the nucleus. Following Halliday, the book presents intonation according to the three concepts of tone, that is the type of nuclear pitch movement; tonicity, that is the location of the nucleus in the intonation phrase; and tonality, that is the division of speech into intonation phrases.
The chapter on Tone introduces basic distinctions between falling and non-falling tones and their connection with basic sentence types. The main body of this chapter is concerned with the functions of different nuclear tones. Some sections tackle the issue from the perspective of phonological form, describing functions of particular intonation patterns, such as the ‘definitive fall’ and the ‘implicational fall-rise’. Other sections adopt the perspective of grammatical or semantico-pragmatic function, such as questions, commands, lists, topic and comment, describing their potential intonational form. The chapter presents a successful combination of analysis and didactics. At times, however, the mixed presentation adds some unnecessary complication to the already complex issue of intonational contrast and meaning.
Tonicity, that is the question over which syllable in the intonation phrase receives the nucleus, occupies the subsequent chapter. It begins by introducing the basic principles of default nucleus placement on the stressed syllable of the last content word. Following sections first present the notions of information status and focus, and then discuss non-default patterns such as nucleus placement on function words and phrasal verbs, final but non-nuclear forms and issues around speaker knowledge. The final subsection is concerned with non-default cases of tonicity, such as unexpected nucleus placement on function words by announcers and media presenters; the chapter ends with the concession that there are ‘patterns of tonicity that still resist logical explanation’ (184).
The author applies unprecedented analytical rigour to explaining a large variety of nucleus locations; nevertheless the reader is left with the impression that there is the potential for many more, and that the explanations offered in this book are perhaps not the only constraints affecting nucleus placement. For example, interactional factors, that is those arising from the need to design talk for the collaborative accomplishment of conversational actions in multi-participant discourse, are rarely mentioned.
While the intended readership for this book is both learners of English and students of linguistics, from this chapter onwards the audience would seem to be primarily the latter. Many of the issues of nuclear placement addressed here, such as content and function words, compounds, old and new information and focus, could arguably also be explained by general rules of sentence stress. The theoretical framework of nuclei and intonation phrases, while of central interest to undergraduate students of phonology, is less helpful to English language teachers and learners.
The issue of Tonality, that is the question over where to place intonation phrase (IP) boundaries, occupies the following chapter. As the book treats intonation as a mirror of grammatical structure, IP boundaries are naturally placed between sentences, clauses and phrases, and in some exceptional cases between words or even syllables. Contrastive uses are introduced, in which IP boundaries disambiguate potential misunderstandings, with intonation breaks functioning as spoken punctuation marks. Subsequent sections describe the intonational patterns of those forms which are not essential parts of clause structure, such as vocatives and adverbials; and the implications of grammatical structures such as cleft sentences, defining or non-defining relative clauses, parallel structures and tag questions for tonality. The chapter is a detailed and highly insightful introduction to the subject of intonation phrases, and, like the previous chapter, of greatest value to students of phonology. As the book is concerned with the production of intonational forms, rather than with their analysis, it does not discuss the many questions surrounding the issue of IP boundary identification in natural speech.
The penultimate chapter goes ‘Beyond the three Ts’ in the sense that it describes realisations of other, non-nuclear elements of intonation phrases. Following Crystal's (Reference Crystal1969) tone-unit structure of [(prehead) (head) nucleus (tail)], the author describes potential tone structures for the head (simple and complex) and prehead. Subsequently, he presents finer distinctions of nuclear tones which go beyond the simple categories of fall, rise and fall-rise, and goes on to distinguish different types of non-nuclear accents. A final section describes Ladd's (Reference Ladd1978) concept of stylized intonation, that is the musical interval created by the ‘call contour’; and the notion of overall pitch range, referred to as ‘key’.
The last chapter gives practical advice to examiners of undergraduate students of phonetics, and presents four texts with which to practice IP boundary placement, nucleus placement and choice of tone.
Each chapter contains an extensive collection of examples and exercises, many of which can be found on the accompanying CD. Both the exercises and the examples are extremely well constructed, and for the most part carry the familiar ring of natural conversation. However, in comparison to the large variety of engaging and interactive exercises provided by other ELT publications in the area of pronunciation, exercises in this book, although ample, are mainly of the ‘listen and repeat’ type, or pre-scripted dialogues to be read aloud.
Overall the book under review is an extraordinary work of analytical finesse and descriptive detail, and its presentation is perfectly pitched to anyone who comes to the phonology of intonation as a beginning reader. It admirably updates and enlarges the material and analytical methods of its predecessors, and will make an outstanding basis for courses on English intonation which follow the British school of analysis.
For English language learning and teaching, the information is presented more densely and less interactively than would be expected were the book primarily an ELT publication. Yet, the book can be highly recommended for individual study, or as accompaniment to a course on English pronunciation.
