Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages

This is the first comprehensive study of the intonation of different languages of the world, written by a team of leading scholars in the field, most of whom are native speakers of the language in question and who live or work in that country. Surveying intonation of twenty languages, the volume describes how, paradoxically, every language possesses intonation, yet the specific features of a speaker’s intonation system are also highly dependent on the language, the dialect, and even the style, the mood and the attitude of the speaker. The volume introduces a new system for the multi-lingual transcription of intonation patterns. The chapters are organised following the same general outline to highlight the differences between languages. The emphasis is on description and comparison, rather than on theory, making this an invaluable sourcebook for researchers in the field.