English Pronunciation Tip of the Day
Tip 99
Category:
Intonation
Author: JAM
Nuclear tones: Low rise
We looked at the form of the high fall nuclear tone in Tip 90. In this tip we'll deal with the tone known as low rise. Here are a couple of pictures with associated sound clips. In both examples, the first syllable is the nucleus.
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In the top one we have a low rise on the single syllable No. As you can see, the pitch starts low in the speaker's pitch range and rises to about mid pitch. In the lower picture, there is a tail after the nucleus. This time the rise spreads over the tail and the final syllable has a slight rise.