Experimental Study On English Intonation

Based on intonation pattern, this study thoroughly analyzes the sentence range, tonegroup range and foot range of 432 sentences spoken by four British people, among which there are sentences with one tone group, two tone groups and three tone groups, and all the sentences are read aloud in four basic intonation moods (declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory). Besides, the thesis makes detailed study on the undulating scale of different levels of prosodic units within the sentences and makes comprehensively compared research on intonation representation in different tonegroups and different intonation moods. Through the comparative study on sentence range, the intonational function of the middle sound segments and the markedness of middle line in intonation pattern, the thesis gets the distributing modes of four moods in intonation pattern. These results not only help us understand the underlying English intonation, but also provide some practical vales in language engineering, especially on the prosodic control of English intonation and moods. The contributions of this theses are:a) Within the neutral-focused English sentences, the ending sound segment is the intonation prominence and the information focus of the whole sentence.b) In the sentence range level, the sentence range of declarative sentence