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

Is there a correlation between the falling and rising tunes and sentence types at the level of intonation unit2. SCOPE OF THE STUDY Under the scope of this mini study, the author would

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

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

iii

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

LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

IU: Intonation Unit

(123) | So you are thirteen years/ old|

(123) Intonation Unit Number

old: Tonic syllable

v

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

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

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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

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

“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 aloud conversations or speech, sometimes isolated utterances from official corpus (Ladd, 1985 as an example) Therefore, a closer look into naturally-occurring discourse can hopefully be contributable to the field of intonation and

read-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

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

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

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

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

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 pitch-tracking 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

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 low-rise) Crystal and Ladefoged in Celik (2001) identify four basic ones: rise, fall-rise, 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

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) restrictive relative clauses (a) implies that only some Conservatives like the proposal whereas (b) implies that all Conservatives like it

non-(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)

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

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

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 group 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

intonation-of the final syllable; and a potential change in the pitch direction intonation-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?

(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:

(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), wh-interrogative (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,

beginning of the sentence, and is followed by the finite verb Unless the wh- word 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 word functions as subject, the word order of the interrogative is simply: wh-word (=subject) + verbal For example:

wh-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,

interrogative and exclamatory sentence types and final falling or rising intonation (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996)

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

Falling-Rising

Rising-Falling

Terminal falling pitch

Falling-Rising

Statement as questions intonation

patterns

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

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

vary from intelligent or funny children, or small business owners, or sometimes normal people becoming famous with a popular video clip on the website Youtube.com or other Internet website The diversity of the guests in the program creates an ideal environment to carry a research on the use of intonation

as a functional tool for communication in international real-life context

The selected interviews for the study are from the „Most popular‟ videos stored on the official website of the Show:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheEllenShow/videos Due to the variety of activities in the episodes, the extracts with more time spending on interviewing would be chosen All of 10 selected excerpts are marked with more than 4 million views on the website Youtube.com The following table shows the summary on the length of the excerpts, the participants and some background information about them

Excerpts Length Name Guest(s) Background information for the

conversation

Gomez Gives Details on Justin Bieber!

Selena Gomez Selena Gomez is an American artist

and actress She was in the public relationship with Justin Bieber at the

JustingBieber is also a popular Canadian pop musician, actor and singer-songwriter The relationship is

a very hot topic for media at that time

Toturial Gone Wrong

Tori Locklear Tori is a thirteen-year-old gril from

America Tori posted a video on the website Youtube.com in which she tried to make a tutorial on hair making-up but unfornately burned off her piece of hair Ellen invited her to the show to interview her about the experience

Bieber Gets

Birthday Present on the Show!

pop musician, actor and songwriter, who is very popular in America He was invited to the show

unexpectedly got a birthday present from his manager, Scooter Braun

Kristen‟s

Kristen Steward,

Kristen Steward, Robert Pattison, Taylor Lautner co-starred in the

Scene was Too Steamy

Taylor Lautner

launched a short time before The Twilight Saga is filmed based on the series of four vampire-themed fantasy romance novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer

Bell‟s sloth Meltdown

actress and film producer She was interviewed about a special birthday present from her boyfriend by Ellen after a video of her crying when receiving the gift posted on the Youtube.com

Gomez on Justin Bieber

Selena Gomez Selena Gomez is an American artist

and actress She was in the public relationship with Justin Bieber at the

JustingBieber is also a popular Canadian pop musician, actor and singer-songwriter The relationship is

a very hot topic for media at that time

and Ellen Play Taboo

(born October 25, 1984), better known

by her stage name Katy Perry, is an

businesswoman, philanthropist, and actress She was born and raised

in Santa Barbara, California

Julia Roberts Backstage

Julia Roberts Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28,

1967) is an American actress She was invited as a surprise gift for the host of the show, Ellen, on her 53th birthday

Hathaway and Elle have some fun!

Anne Hathaway

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress

Bought a Shake Weight!

November 30, 1985) is an American actress She was invited to the show and the interview spun around the funny item that she bought before