Nuclear Shift

In a normal utterance the syllable bearing the nuclear tone has more prominence that the prenuclear stresses. However, this difference in prominence is not great, it just indicates the centre of new information, but the nuclear word does not stand out as a special item of importance.

When it is desired to give extra prominence to the nuclear word it may be done by reducing or eliminating the prenuclear stresses, thus giving the nucleus greater relative prominence. E.g.:

I can't imagine what he looks like.

I can't imagine what he looks like.

Another commonly used device for giving greater prominence to one word in an utterance is the so-called nuclear tone-shift which means displacing the nuclear tone from its normal position on the last notional word in an utterance to a word at the beginning or the middle of it. The effect of such a deviation from the normal position is that of special prominence or contrast, e.g.:

I simply can't manage it.

Then let's all get down to it.

The effect of a contrastive tone-shift is always greater when the nuclear stress is given to a functional word or a pronoun, e.g.:

John rather liked the party.

Well, I don't know. It's the last party I shall go to there.

Nuclear shifts are often combined with emphasis which naturally increases the prominence of the word, e.g.:

a) It's only three weeks to the New Year.

Why, it's less than three weeks.

b) That would be nicer, wouldn't it?

That would be very nice.

4. Compound Tunes

Expressiveness of speech is often the result of using more than one kinetic tone in an intonation group, since kinetic tones are by their nature more expressive and colourful than static. Intonation groups having more than one kinetic tone are call­ed compound tunes (as opposed to simple tunes, with one kinetic tone on the nuclear syllable), e.g.:

Is it 'going to be fine at last?

I've 'done nothing but worry.

Why don't you wait for the others.

Although one or more of the prenuclear stressed syllables in a compound tune have some kind of pitch change (rising, falling, falling-rising), and the character of the pitch change - its interval, in particular - is such as to be perceived by the lis­tener and identified as a certain kinetic tone, yet the intonation group is not split into as many smaller groups as there are prenuclear kinetic tones. This can be ex­plained, first of all, by the absence of a pause after the prenuclear kinetic tones. Be­sides, there are some peculiarities in the pitch and duration features of these tones which mark them a s n o n-final accents closely linked within one unit - an intonation group. (These peculiarities needn't be described in detail here, since theyrefer to such phonetic features of speech which will be observed without a f special training, as soon as the learner aims at semantic integrity of the utterance or its part).

There is a clear resemblance in form and function between what has been defined as a compound tune and some of the types of heads, in particular, between the Ascending Head and the Low Rise + High Fall compound tune, the Sliding Head and the Fall + Fall compound tune, the Scandent Head and the Rise + Rise compound tunes, the other possible combinations of kinetic tones resembling the so-called heterogeneous heads.

While numerous combinations of kinetic tones in one group are possible, some are much more frequent than others. The commonest compound tunes are: High Rise+ High Rise, Low Rise+ Fall, Fall + Fall-Rise, Fall-Rise + Fall, Fall + Fall.