NON - NATIVE INTONATION IN ACTING

Anastasia Georgountzou

The American College of Greece

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting the most salient intonational features that were observed in the speech of two native Greek (NSMG) and one native American speaker (NAS) when reproducing the second act of a play in English. Focusing on tonicity and nuclear tone choice of specific sentence types and using O'Connor and Arnold's (1973) pedagogical model, the subjects' expected and unexpected intonational patterns have been attributed to various intralingual as well as interlingual (interference/negative tranfer) factors respectively.

1. Introduction

Despite the fact that intonational research has been characterised by a number of "unresolved issues and fundamental differences of approach (Ladd 1996:1), the importance of intonation in the speech communication process has been unanimously accepted. What would human speech sound like if it were produced without intonation? Roach (1991: 163) holds the view that this sort of speech would have been "a mechanical speech". Then, he lists and discusses the most fundamental functions of intonation (attitudinal, accentual, grammatical and discoursal (163)), while Maidment (1991: 19) and House (1991: 38) recognise the importance of context and, thus, the pragmatic aspect in utterence interpretation.

Indeed, intonation constitutes a vital part of the suprasegmentals of any language and human speech without intonation is probably non-existent simply because we know no language to be spoken in a monotone (Lucas 1992:141).

Therefore, if the "colour" or "tone of voice" plays such a significant role in everyday oral communication, one can imagine the importance of intonation in special cases such as reciting in poetry and role playing in acting Unfortunately, while significant research has been realised for many years on intonation in conversational and reading style, researchers have been really "frugal" in discussing the intonation of poets when reciting or actors in role - playing.. Along the lines of the discoursal function of intonation, I would distinguish Brazil's work (in Coulthard 1992) which is a comprehensive account of the different intonational decisions readers make when reading sentences and verses aloud.

3. Subjects and data

Three subjects were used in the present study. Two were native speakers of standard Greek (Athenian) accent and one a native speaker of Ohio, whom I considered a representative token of General American (Gen Am) (Wells 1982:118). All subjects are senior undergraduates of the American College of Greece as well as active members of the Drama Club. The language of instruction and coaching is English (E).

The subjects were asked to reproduce the second act of a play by paying attention to the written directions given to them concerning the adjustment of their tone of voice. The whole act, which was familiar to all subjects as they had participated in the relevant theatrical performance, was in a dialogue form and subjects were asked to produce both parts of the dialogue trying to replicate interactive speech with an imaginary character. Their speech was tape - recorded and an auditory intonational analysis was achieved according to O'Connor and Arnold's (1973) pedagogical model. The present analysis focused on the following sentence types: wh questions, polar questions, negative statements, complete and non-complete (unfinished) simple, declarative clauses/sentences.

4. Results

4.1 Wh questions; nuclear tone

Table 1

Discussion

As can be observed in Table 1, there was a striking similarity of all subjects in the intonational treatment of wh questions, since most of them were produced with a

high - fall. However, the wh questions produced by the NSMG cannot be considered native E wh questions because the majority of them were produced with the nucleus on the wh word. This choice agrees with the native Greek tendency to place the nucleus on the interrogative word even when wh questions are quite long and there follows a long tail. Examples 1-3 below were produced by the two NSMG:

(1) WHAT are we going to do now?

(2) WHAT is this compound?

(3) HOW does it fit in?

In any case, given that the roles of both characters in the play required very straightforward and direct, non - polite questions, a nucleus on the wh word should not be considered totally unacceptable. In fact, nucleus shifting to the wh word was also observed in the speech of the NAS, although no shared or "background" knowledge (Sperber & Wilson 1986: 217) of the rightmost items could have been assumed:

(4) so NOW what happens?

(5) what IS this compound?

A small number of wh questions were produced with a falling - rising tone (indicated as: FR in Table 1). This choice agrees with the native Greek tendency to produce questions of partial ignorance with a falling - rising tone when a more "searching" /"gossipy" or polite overtone is sought (Georgounztou 1993:157). Thus, as the protagonists did not in the least want to sound polite, the 11% of the wh questions produced by one NSMG must be regarded as totally unexpected:

(6) HOW did you get rid of the BODIES?

(7) WHY don't you pull the TRIGGER?

4.2 Polar questions; nuclear tone

Table 2

Discussion

The results reported from table 2 are quite interesting; contrary to prior research

(Georgountzou 1993 : 173 - 176) whereby an unexpected rising - falling nuclear tone is frequently used when NSMG produce polar questions in E, the present results show no interference from MG. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of these questions were produced with a high -rise. This choice has a two - fold explanation. First, a high - rise was an appropriate tone to be used given that most of these questions had an anticipatory and confirmatory overtone (Cruttenden 1986: 92-93) (in terms of structure, they were all lacking S-V inversion). Second, the high - rise is the most frequent tone used in polar questions in Gen Am (Bolinger 1985, Cruttenden 1986:134-135, Ladd 1996:122). As both native Greek subjects have been exposed to American E, they have obviously been influenced by the intonation of Gen Am.

4.3 Negative Statements; tonicity and nuclear tone

Table 3

Discussion

As table 3 indicates, the NSMG gave appropriate nuclear patterns which agreed with the contours produced by the NAS. As with polar questions, the results here deviate from my previous findings (Georgountzou 1993: 137-141) according to which NSMG have a regular tendency to tranfer their Greek intonational habits and, thus, place the nucleus on the negative word or the word with the negative meaning when producing negative statements. Why are the present results not in accordance with prior research? Apart from the fact that both NSMG (and especially one of the two) have an excellent command of English, a plausible explanation must be related to the subjects' attempt to make their speech particularly emphatic. Indeed, nucleus placement later than the negative word, or on the last lexical item, is used in MG in cases of "contrastive" and '"emphatic stress". Accordingly, the present results must be attributed to positive transfer. Examples 8-9 below constitute unexpected patterns while example 10 reflects the typical English tendency to produce negative statements with the nucleus on the last content word:

(8) You DON'T have the guts to do it yourself

(9) I'm basically your NON-violent type

(10) You wouldn't lift a FINGER against me

4.4.1 Complete, declarative clauses/sentences; tonicity

Table 4

Discussion

As table 4 shows, great unanimity was observed in the subjects' intonational choices; when no background knowledge was assumed, they placed the nucleus on the rightmost item. However, in a limited number of sentences all subjects proceeded to deaccentuation of the last content word, even in cases where this had not been prementioned (unexpectedly). Since this tendency was also observed in the NAS (10% of her statements), one cannot attribute such cases to negative transfer. Additionally, more deaccentuation of the last content word was observed in the speech of the NSMG who gave the most appropriate (native English-like) intonational patterns. The NAS gave two types of unexpected answers; with an early nucleus and two or more nuclei (with or without pauses). Both of these unexpected answers must be explained as an attempt of the NAS to cope with the emotional intensity that was required. Therefore, the present results prove that a common way to achieve emphasis in MG and in E is by nucleus shifting and increasing the number of pauses in an IG (though not necessarily). Indeed, Cruttenden (1986) accepts that two common ways to make utterances emphatic in E is through "contastive stress" (103, 109) and subject "topicalisation" (77) while Bolinger (1972) recognises that some content words are more "semantically heavy" than others and, thus, tend to attract the nucleus even though they are not the last items of the IG. Examples 11-14 below refer to unexpected choices in terms of tonicity:

(11) The sea would be ALL dark around (NSMG)

(12) We will ALWAYS be enemies (NSMG)

(13) I'm A MAZED at your stupidity (NAS)

(14) I shoot just SHOOT you / right NOW (NAS)

4.4.2 Complete, declarative clauses/sentences; nuclear tone

Table 5

Discussion

The script consisted of specific written directions guiding the informants to modify their tone of voice according to the circumstances. As table 5 and Fig 1 below show, by far, the commonest nuclear tone used to express non-emphasis, anger, irony, indifference, superiority/arrogance, disgust and surprise was the high - fall. Unemotional statements combining the high - fall with a rising head (and, sometimes, a high prehead) gave the utterance a protesting overtone (this pattern is called "the long jump" by O"Connor and Arnold 1973:191). One NSMG also produced more low - falls than the other two subjects while it was quite interesting that all subjects tried to convey irony through a falling - rising tone spread through the IG ( indicated as F-R in table 5 and Fig 1). Irony was also expressed with a high - fall by the two NSMG and with a fall - rise (both movements realised on the last lexical item and indicated with a FR in table 5):

Simple, declarative clauses: nuclear tone

Figure 1

4.4.2 Non-complete or unfinished clauses/sentences; nuclear tone

Table 6

Discussion

On the whole, table 6 presents similarities in the treatment of incomplete/unfinished clauses; the low -rise proved to be the most frequent "referring" tone (Brazil 1975) by all informants (when listing items and in narrations). The basic intonational difference between the NSMG and the NAS in this particular area was focused on the realisation of the falling - rising tone; it was more typical Greek to spread the falling - rising pattern (F-R) through the whole IG by giving an early nucleus (falling tone) on a content word that was (or was not) part of background knowledge. On the other hand, the NAS used a fall - rise (FR) on the last lexical item while an early nucleus presupposed backgound knowledge. Nevertheless, in cases where special emphasis was sought, the NAS proceeded to nucleus shifting. Examples 15-18 below have an unexpected early nucleus:

(15) If SOMETHING went wrong.../ (NSMG)

(16) If you want to lick the BIGGER problem..../ (NSMG)

(17) If you MUST tie me up.../ (NAS)

(18) I'll IGNORE your insults..../ (NAS)

Conclusions

The present paper revealed impressive similarities between native American and

non - native Greek intonational similarities when informants were reproducing an act of a play. Actually, it was shown that the informants' intonational performance turned out to be much higher than expected since the two native Greek subjects gave few unexpected answers.

The NSMG who gave fewer unexpected answers is quite fluent in E, has good pronunciation skills and is frequently using E in her everyday oral communication. Therefore, one can obviously conclude that long exposure to the second/foreign language environment , in real interpersonal communicative situations, enhances the improvement of oral (including intonational) skills in the second language.Furthermore, the positive attitude towards the second/foreign language constitutes an invaluable cognitive factor which undoubtedly contributes to intonational aptitude (Littlewood 1984:62-63), as both native Greek informants proved to be motivated to "sound" English .

Unexpected intonational performance was attributed to interlingual and intralingual phenomena. Interlingual (non - native) unexpected answers were associated with negative transfer from the Greek intonational habits while intralingual native American and non - native Greek unexpected answers were attributed to a number of idiosyncratic factors all of which related to the informants' attempt to indicate various degrees of emphasis with their tone of voice.

Contrastive stress or narrow focus and more than one nucleus in an IG (with or without pauses) seem to be operating quite frequently when speakers are involved in role - playing. Given that acting obviously involves a more marked setting, it seems more difficult to decide what constitutes "normal" stress and to predict nucleus placement. This observation maybe complicates the teachers' task when correcting their non - native English students' intonational performance in role playing situations. Therefore, since the present results are by no means exhaustive, I consider this a particularly important as well as stimulating area for intonational rersearch..

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