The Cohesive Role Intonation Plays In Spoken Discourse

In English, an intonation language, intonation as a component of an overall sentence is nevertheless used to distinguish between meanings and implications of a sentence or a phrase and the change of pitch over the morphemes or words will produce no difference in meaning.Intonation has been studied at three levels: physical, perceptive and functional. Intonation, as a suprasegmental texture, cannot exist without sentences, for single words cannot form intonation contour. Thus, intonation is always investigated in text.In this thesis, the author chiefly studies intonation in spoken discourse at the function level, more specifically, to see how intonation influences turn-taking.Turn-taking in conversation is so important, for without turn-alternation, there will be no such a thing as conversation.Hu Zhuanglin asserts that this phenomenon of turn-taking in spoken discourse falls into the scope of discourse cohesion. Therefore, in discourse, the cohesion role intonation plays is recognized.Then, to what extent does intonation affect turn-taking, and how does this in turn influence discourse cohesion? In an attempt to answer these questions, the author starts the research with the collecting of sound materials.By analyzing the turn-final intonation type and the influence that intonation has exercised on topic development, the author comes to the conclusion that generally speaking, H*L% is of the highest cohesive function but, as for declaratives and special questions, L*H% is more cohesive.