Intonation in the Grammar of English is written for scholars interested in language but not necessarily linguists or phoneticians. An introduction covers speech sound, locating it in relation to other phenomena and disciplines, discussing its representation and interpretation, and introducing the systems and strata which frame its analysis in terms of systemic functional linguistics. The three kinds of meaning -- textual meaning (relating language to its ever changing context), interpersonal meaning (allowing us to enact our social exchanges with others) and ideational meaning (construing the logic through which we represent the world we live in) -- are each achieved in part through intonation. We make these meanings through choices: in terms of locating the main rise or fall in an intonation contour; in terms of fitting an intonation contour to part of a clause, to a whole clause, or to more than a clause; and in terms of the shape of the intonation contour. A CD ROM integrated with the book provides examples as the systems of intonational choices are presented, and also gives examples of these systems being drawn on in different dialects of English, and in the many different exchange situations in which speakers find themselves in the course of a day.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction; 2 Intonation and meaning; 3 A detailed demonstration: How sound makes meaning in the microtext; "Prince Lazarus"; 4 Secondary delicacy; 5 Examples of register and dialect variation

Author Biography

M.A.K. Halliday was born in Yorkshire in 1925. He was trained in Chinese for war service with the British army; studied in China, taught Chinese in Britain for a number of years, then moved into linguistics, becoming in 1965 Professor of General Linguistics at University College London. In 1975 he was appointed Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, where he remained until his retirement. William S. Greaves is Emeritus Associate Professor in the English Department at Glendon College, York University, Toronto. His co-edited (with James D. Benson) book Functional Dimensions of Ape-Human Discourse will be published in 2004 by Equinox Publishing Ltd.