The nuclear syllable
The main movement of the intonation tune centres on the "nuclear" syllable. The nuclear syllable is the stressed syllable of the last accented word in the "information unit". The most likely nuclear syllable has been written in bold type in the examples below. But what about the rest of the sentence? Let's look at an example in more detail. Take the sentence, "That's what everybody thinks." We can identify it as a statement, and therefore choose falling intonation. Except for specific meanings, such as, for example, "That's what everybody thinks, yes, but not what they say.", it will be the word "everybody" which is the most important. To make things even clearer, here is a possible context :
- I think John was right to have done what he did.
- That's what everybody thinks.
- Does that mean you don't agree?
- Well, I'm not really very sure ...
It is clear that in this context the "thinking" refers to an issue that has already been brought up (i.e. the proposition that John was right etc). In pronouncing the sentence used in the example the speaker is adding the idea of "everybody". That is why "everybody" is the accented word, and not "thinks".
So what happens to "thinks"? Consider what happens before the nucleus and after the nucleus.
Before the nucleus - "Head" and "pre-head"
"The head begins with the stressed syllable of the first accented word (before the nucleus); the pre-head consists of any syllables before the stressed syllable of the first accented word."[5]
After the nucleus - "Tail"
" all syllables following the nucleus are called the tail [...] there can be no accented word in the tail, though there may be stressed words in it ..."[6]
In statements, the head is normally pronounced on a high level, the pre-head and tail on a low level.
(1) -
Let's go on to another example. This time it's a "yes-no" question, and so the intonation pattern is a rising tune.
Are you going to the carnival tomorrow?
In one plausible pronunciation, the head begins with "you" (and continues with the syllable "go" of "going". "The" is a pre-head. The syllables following the nucleus "car" constitute the tail. Pre-head and head behave very similarly in both "yes-no" questions and statements. The tail, however, behaves quite differently. Whereas in statements the tail is pronounced at a uniformly low pitch, in rising intonation patterns the tail continues the rising tune.
(2) -
Here is another sentence, which is a fairly straightforward "wh" question:
(3) -
This next sentence is a request for confirmation with stress on the "wh" word (i.e. in a context where the fact that "he has told you something" has already been introduced into the discourse:
(4) -