IX Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2017

There are a lot of intonation patterns in English. To express the attitude towards the listener properly we must know the difference between tones of models. Moreover, it is necessary to be aware of the shades in every group of patterns itself. For example, to say «hello» we use not only Low-Rise, and to express indifference – not only Low-Fall [1]. But the present paper is not about expressions of greetings or indifference. It is about another intonation pattern, no less important than others are – surprise. “Surprise” pattern is often found in exclamatory sentences. Their principal aim is to express the speaker’s mood, feelings and emotions [4].

The main goal of the paper is to show the many variants of intonation used to express the speaker’s surprise, and that surprise sometimes is not a pure emotion: it can be mixed with others.

As it was said before, there a lot of shades in every intonation pattern. The situations of pure surprise fill the broad page in wide range of human’s emotions, but they can be mixed with some other feelings or express various degrees on their own.

There are some features of using intonation to show that a person is surprised [2] (examples [1] are given with translation):

1. To express mild surprise but acceptance of the listener’s statement we use High-Fall (mostly it appears in questions).

She’s thirty-five – Is she? (Ей тридцать пять. – Серьезно?)

1. For showing typical surprise (pure surprise), High-Fall is used.

Good heavens! (Божемой!)

Goodness! (Господи!)

Well! (Нуину!) - when you have no words to describe the situation [3].

You don’tsay so! (Неможетбыть!)

1. When the speaker was taken by surprise and it’s mixed with some negative emotions, Ascending Scale + High Fall is observed.

↑What a surprise! (Вотэтосюрприз!)

1. To express surprise which has the shade of disbelief we use Low-Rise.

In_/deed? (Да что вы говорите!) – formal [3].

_/Really? (Серьезно, что ли?) – informal [3].

_/What? (Что?)

_/Oh! (Ой! Ай!) – usually when person is startled [3].

1. Astonishment is a peak of surprise. It’s a strong emotion and to show it speakers usually used Fall-Rise or High Rise Wide.

What’s the matter? – What’s the _∨matter? (Что случилось? – Что случилось, говоришь?)

^/Seriously? (Серьезно?)

1. When the person’s surprise contains self-possession or even sarcasm, we use Low-Fall.

Justfancy! (Можете себе представить!)

Look, who’shere! (Смотрите, кто здесь!)

Well, if it isn’t Jack! (Да ладно, это же Джек!)

1. In commands we also can express surprise, but it includes some kind of criticism. In this case Ascending Scale + High Fall is appropriate.

What on Earth shall I do? – ↑Try it again. (Что, ради всего святого, я должен делать? - Попробовать еще раз, что же ещё?)

1. Surprise provided that the subject of the emotion is obvious to both the speaker and listener is expressed with the help of Fall-Rise spread over the whole sentence.

Youdon’t, _/doyou? (Ты же не серьезно, ведь так?)

Fancy _/that! (Подуматьтолько!)

SOME FEATURES OF RUSSIAN “SURPRISE” INTONATION

We can’t imagine any language without phonetics and, of course, without intonation. Every language has the most typical level of the pitch used by the native speakers. In the Russian language it’s Mid-Level of the pitch. Russian speakers do not use High-Level of the pitch as a default intonation. Because of that some foreigners (especially the British) tend to think that Russians always sound unfriendly and monotonous.

The most typical intonation pattern to express surprise in Russian is either Mid-Rise or Mid-Level [5] [6]:

1. Mid-Rise is widely used when the speaker reacts to some unexpected or shocking information given him by the companion.

/Правда? /Вотздорово!

1. Mid-Level appears when the person is surprised by something that puzzles him.

Почему у тебя такой странный >голос?

To make a conclusion we should say that we have a variety of ways in English to express every emotion, particularly surprise. There are a lot of other feelings which can come with this one. To make sure we have expressed exactly the shade of the meaning we wanted, we must know enough about intonation patterns and in what case we need to use it. Besides, awareness of cultural features of intonation in a particular country is also important because we need to know how to pronounce the utterance not to sound unfriendly or too emotional.

Список литературы:

1. Хорошилова С.П. Практическая фонетика английского языка: продвинутый уровень. – Новосибирск: «Издательство НГПУ», 2015 – 300 с.

2. J.D. O’Connor, G.F. Arnold. Intonation of Colloquial English. – London: “Longman Group Ltd.”,1973. – 298 p.

3. Surprise [Электронный ресурс]. English Conversational Formulas. URL: http://english-l.chat.ru/surprise.htm

4. Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Нормативный курс. – М.: «Высшая школа», 1980. – 256 с.

5. Науменко Ю.М. Корректировочный курс русской фонетики и интонации для иностранных студентов I курса бакалавриата. – М.: «ФЛИНТА: Наука», 2012. – 80 с.

6. Муханов И.Л. Интонация в практике русской диалогической речи. - М.: «Русский язык. Курсы», 2006. - 176 с.

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