美语口语发音训练 第一册34

Complex Intonation

Word Count Intonation Patterns CD 1 Track 34

This is the beginning of an extremely important part of spoken American English—the rhythms and intonation patterns of the long streams of nouns and adjectives that are so commonly used.

These exercises will tie in the intonation patterns of adjectives (nice, old, best, etc.), nouns (dog, house, surgeon, etc.), and adverbs (very, really, amazingly, etc.)

One way of approaching sentence intonation is not to build each sentence from scratch. Instead, use patterns, with each pattern similar to a mathematical formula. Instead of plugging in numbers, however, plug in words.

In Exercise 1-2, we looked at simple nounverbnoun patterns, and in Exercise 1-22 and 1-23, the syllable-count intonation patterns were covered and tested. In Exercises 1-24 to 1-37, we'll examine intonation patterns in two word phrases.

It's important to note that there's a major difference between syllable stress and compound noun stress patterns. In the syllable count exercises, each syllable was represented by a single musical note. In the noun phrases, each individual word will be represented by a single musical note—no matter how many total syllables there may be.

At times, what appears to be a single syllable word will have a "longer" sound to it— seed takes longer to say than seat for example. This was introduced on page 3, where you learned that a final voiced consonant causes the previous vowel to double.