engleski

A Comparative Study of English and Russian Intonation Patterns

How often do we hear a phrase: “It is not what you said, it is how you said it”? This simple sentence demonstrates why the understanding of intonation in communication and meaning transmission is decisive. The aims of this paper are divided into general and specific ones. The general aims are to present and compare intonation patterns and their usage in English and Russian, i.e. different approaches to the study of intonation according to various authors, all substantiated with respective examples. Comparison of intonation patterns of the two languages will point out their similarities and differences. The specific aim of the paper is to provide pragmatic data for the EFL and RFL (Russian as a Foreign Language, i.e. РКИ - Русский язык Как Иностранный) students, the ones that both student groups could benefit from in learning and understanding similarities and differences of intonation patterns, all presented and discussed by using descriptive and comparative methods. While, on the one hand, the English language uses only four different intonation patterns, the Russian language, according to Bryzgunova (Hobzová: 2011), differs between the seven of them. The examples used in the paper show that the English language, in the majority of cases, uses only two basic tone movements (falling and rising) in all types of sentences, while variations (fall-rise ; rise-fall) are used only to give special emphasis to the text, or to change the style from formal to less formal and vice versa. Furthermore, this paper shows that English syntax allows the free exchange of the intonation patterns, while its usage in the Russian language is extremely restricted.

intonation, intonation patterns, English, Russian, description, comparison, EFL, RFL

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