A STUDY OF ENGLISH INTONATION IN INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS


ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 2, June 2013 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

A STUDY OF ENGLISH INTONATION
IN INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS

Roni Nursyamsu
Department of English Education, University of Kuningan, Indonesia

E-mail: roninursyamsu@gmail.com

Lukluk Argita Munif
Department of English Education, University of Kuningan, Indonesia

E-mail: luklukargita94@gmail.com

APA Citation: Nursyamsu, R. & Munif, L. A. (2013). A study of English intonation in
Indonesian EFL learners. English Review: Journal of English Education,
1(2),223-230

Received: 12-02-2013 Accepted: 03-04-2013 Published: 01-06-2013

Abstract: This study examined the patterns of intonation and kinds of information structure
that occur in EFL learners. The objectives of this study were: (1) to know the patterns of
intonation that occur in EFL learners; (2) to know kinds of information structure that occur
in EFL learners. The method used in this study is descriptive qualitative and the subjects of
this study is a debater and also a student in English Department at one of private university
in Kuningan, West Java. Techniques of collecting data used in this research were library
research, observation and interview. Halliday’s theory and PRAAT Software Analysis use
in this research to analyze the data. Based on the data analysis, it can be known that: (1)
There were 5 kinds of intonation pattern used by the speaker: fall, rise (final), rise (non-
final), fall-rise (final), fall-rise (non-final); (2) There were 158 clauses with 25 independent
clauses and 133 dependent clauses from the respondent’s performance; (3) There were three
systems from information structure: tonality, tonicity, and tone; (4) In tonality system, H-
TS-T with the percentage 18% was the most pattern used by the respondent; (5) Given-New-
Given (G-N-G) with the precentage 36% was mostly used in her performance based on
tonicity system; (6) Incomplete information (rise non-final) was the most dominant
intonation pattern used by the respondent with the precentage 33%.
Keywords: intonation, information structure, EFL learners

INTRODUCTION
Phonology is the study of the

organization of sounds in language
(Marlett, 2001, p. 2). It is different from
phonetics, which is the study of the
production, perception, and physical
properties of speech sounds; phonology
attempts to account for how they are
combined, organized, and convey
meaning in particular languages. Only a
fraction of the sounds humans can
articulate is found in any particular
language. In phonology, speech sounds

are analyzed into phonemes, the smallest
units of sound that can change the
meaning of a word. A phoneme may
have several allophones relating to
sounds that are district but do not
change the meaning of a word when they
are interchanged. In a brief explanation,
phonology is the study of sound
structure in language, which is different
from the study of sentence structure
(syntax) or word structure (morphology),
or how languages change over time
(historical linguistic) (Odden, 2005).



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As the part of phonology, intonation
is the kinds of pitch modulation found in
whole utterances (Carr, 2008). The term
of intonation refers to mean for
conveying information in speech which
is independent of the words and their
sounds. Intonation is also often referred
to in everyday language as speech
melody or sentence melody, terms that
focus on pitch variations and modulation
(Chun, 2002). Central to intonation is the
modulation of pitch, and intonation is
often thought of as the use of pitch over
the domain of the utterance. However,
the patterning of pitch in speech is so
closely bound to patterns of timing and
loudness, and sometimes voice quality,
that we cannot consider pitch in isolation
from these other dimensions. The use of
an inappropriate intonation pattern may
give rise to misunderstandings. The
misunderstanding can be major or minor
depending on the context in which the
intonation pattern is used. As there is no
one to one correspondence between
intonation and meaning, an appropriate
meaning can often be found when it fits
with the ‘wrong’ intonation pattern.

The aim of this research, for that
reason, is not to find fault, but to find out
information functions such as the
segmentation of discourse that
represents the speakers’ management of
the total message into separate pieces of
information and then after that it is
located on the most prominent word in
organization of information then the last
is decision of status in each unit of
information, focusing attention on
important elements of the spoken
message and also helping to regulate
conversational interaction.

The interaction of intonation and
stress — the patterns of relative
prominence which characterize an
utterance — are particularly close in
many languages, including English. For

those who prefer to reserve ‘intonation’
for pitch effects in speech, the word
‘prosody’ is convenient as a more general
term to include patterns of pitch, timing,
loudness, and (sometimes) voice quality.
In recent years, “the focus has been on
generative models of intonation, also
form-based, that rely on metrical
representatives of text, indications of
stressed vs unstressed syllables, and on
phrasal tunes represented by strings of
two discrete tones, high (H) and low (L)”
(Chun, 2002 , p. 15).

In linguistics, stress is the relative
emphasis that may be given to certain
syllables in a word, or to certain words in
a phrase or sentence. Stress is typically
signaled by such properties as increased
loudness and vowel length, full
articulation of the vowel, and changes in
pitch. From the perceptual point of view,
all stressed syllables have one
characteristic in common, and that is
prominence; stressed syllables are
recognized as stressed because they are
more prominent than unstressed
syllables (Roach, 1991).

Stressed syllables are often louder
than non-stressed syllables, and may
have a higher or lower pitch. They may
also sometimes be pronounced longer.
There are sometimes differences in place
or manner of articulation – in particular,
vowels in unstressed syllables may have
a more central articulation, while those
in stressed syllables have a more
peripheral articulation. Stress may be
realized to varying degrees on different
words in a sentence; sometimes the
difference between the acoustic signals of
stressed and unstressed syllables are
minimal.

An important role of intonation is as
the ‘punctuation’ of spoken languages,
marking the division between
grammatical units and more generally
helping the listener to follow the



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 2, June 2013 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

utterance. The function is brought
sharply into focus on occasion when the
words used allow more than one
grammatical parse.

Intonation in English is organized in
units Halliday calls tone groups.
Halliday (1970, p. 3) says of the tone
group:
The tone group is one unit of
information, one “block” in the
message that the speaker is
communicating; and so it can be of any
length. The particular meaning that
the speaker wishes to convey may
make it necessary to split a single
clause into two or more tone groups,
or to combine two or more clauses into
one tone group.
Tench (2005) summarized the major

contribution in triple systems which is
express information structure, those are:
tonality, tonicity and tone. The pattern
by which tone groups are distributed
throughout speech, called tonality, is
crucial to the sense of an utterance. The
speaker divides up the stream of spoken
words into groups, and this reveals to
the listener how to mentally organize the
information. Almost always, tonality
follows a predictable course, with tone
groups basically corresponding to
grammatical clauses.

Tone group is one of the intonation
feature of intonation that has three
primary system, those are unit of
information, focus of information and
status of information. It is related to the
number of tone group in utterance and
each such tone group is seen as one
‘move’ in a speech act.

Tonality, the segmentation of
discourse into individual units of
intonation in sequence, represents the
speaker’s perception of the number of
units of information. We use clauses to
convey information in grammatical
terms in order to represent situation and

we use intonation units to convey that
information in phonological terms.

Each tone group has a tonic syllable,
a place of prominence that the speaker
seeks to mark as most important and that
carries the most pronounced pitch
change. It often carries the burden of
“new information” in the clause and, as
such, the normative place of a tonic
syllable is on the last word in a clause.
Placement of the tonic syllable in places
other than this is understood to be
contrastive. The placement of tonic
prominence is referred to as tonicity.

Tonic segment is the most
prominent stress (= tonic syllable) and
carries the most significant pitch
movement of the whole unit. The
location of the tonic syllable relates to
another sub-system, known as tonicity.
In English, there is a very high level of
expectation that the tonic syllable will be
found on the last lexical item in each
intonation unit (unit of information –
tonality). This expectation is in the order
of 80% probability. It usually means that
all the information in the intonation unit
is new; thus the focus of information is
broad.

The tonic segment is usually
preceded in the intonation unit by a
stretch of sound known as the pre-tonic
segment. In traditional terminology, the
pre-tonic segment comprises a head,
which consists of the first stressed
syllable (the onset syllable) and all other
stressed and unstressed syllables up to,
but not including, the tonic syllable. Any
unstressed syllables preceding the head
are called the pre-head. The tonic segment
comprises the tonic syllable, often also
called the nucleus or nuclear syllable, and
any following stressed or unstressed
syllables, called the tail.

Tonality reflects the experiential
function, tonicity at least one aspect of
the textual function. Tone also reflects



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textuality in the sense that it represents
the speaker’s perception of the status of
information - the relative importance of
each successive piece of information
(status of information). It marks the kind
of activity involved, by a complex
pattern built out of a simple opposition
between certain and uncertain polarity. If
polarity is certain, the pitch of the tonic
falls, if uncertain, it rises.

Halliday (as cited in Roach, 1991)
has identified five basic tones, or pitch
contours, in English. Tone interacts with
tonality (distribution of tone groups) and
tonicity (placement of tonic prominence)
to create meaning in English intonation.
Following are the tones identified in
Halliday’s system:
Simple Tone Groups:
tone 1 falling
tone 2 high rising, or falling-rising

(pointed)
tone 3 low rising
tone 4 falling-rising (rounded)
tone 5 rising-falling (rounded) (Roach, 1991, p. 143)

In segmentation of tonality, there
are some divisions of intonational
contour. Roach (1991, p. 145) was the
first one to divide the structure of tone-
unit into four main segments:
1. Head is all that part of a tone-unit

that extends from the first stressed
syllable up to the tonic syllable.

2. Pre-head is composed of all the
unstressed syllables in a tone-unit
preceding the first stressed syllable.

3. Nucleus or tonic syllable is the
most prominent syllable in the
utterance or major pitch movement.

4. Tail is any syllables between the
tonic syllable and the end of tone-
unit.
Nucleus also has another name

called tonic syllable. Roach (1991, p. 145)
states that:

A syllable which carries a tone will
be called a tonic syllable. It has

been mentioned several times that
tonic syllables have a high degree
of prominence; prominence is, of
course, a property of stressed
syllables.
Chun (2002, p. 19) states that tone

is “the major pitch movement within the
tone unit or it can be said that the overall
behavior of pitch is tone”. The total tone
system to signal status of information is
as follows:
1. Low fall : Polarity (truth value or

validity) is known, stated or yes/no
question. The voice falls during the
word from a medium to a very low
pitch.

2. High rising: The polarity is
unknown and information is desired.
The voice rises during the word
from a medium to a high pitch.

3. Rise fall : Not doubt in order to
dismiss it. The voice first rises from
a fairly low to a high pitch, and then
quickly falls to a very law pitch.

4. Fall rise : Something is known, but
there is some doubt or reservation.
The voice first falls from a fairly
high to a rather low pitch, and then,
still within the word, raises to a
medium pitch.

5. Low rise : Imply uncertainty and
that the assertation is conditional or
something else. The voice rises
during the word from a low to a
medium pitch or a little above.
Halliday drew attention to

differences between major information
signalled by a falling tone and minor,
signalled by a low rising tone. In this
case, the theme is highlighted, as if the
speaker wished to say something like this
present visit (is, in fact, my first visit to
India). Thus the total tone system to
signal status of information is as follows :
fall : \ = major information (but I saw

him yesterday in the \library)



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 2, June 2013 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

(final) rise = minor information (but I saw
him yester \day | in the /library)

(non-final) rise : / = incomplete
information (but I saw him yester
/day | in the \library)

(final) fall-rise : \/ = implication (but I
saw him yesterday in the \/library)

(non-final) fall-rise : \/ = highlighting of
theme (but \/ I | saw him yesterday
in the \library)

(Tench, 2005, p. 10)
In this context of the research, the

respondent is joining debate competition
that uses British Parliamentary Debate as
the system of the debate competition.
Debate is a formal discussion on a
particular matter in a public meeting or
legislative assembly, in which opposing
arguments are put forward and which
usually ends with a vote (Simpson &
Weiner, 2010, p. 2). Debaters - they who
do debate - challenge ideas, they do not
attack each other. As in other sports, the
fair play is crucial.

On the basis of the background to
the present study mentioned above, the
research attempted to address the
following research questions: what are
the patterns of intonation that occur in
EFL learner? and what are kinds of
information structure that occur in EFL
learner ?

METHOD
This study uses qualitative method

to discover deep and whole
comprehension on the information
structures that occur in EFL learner and
the patterns that exist in learner's speech
when she used intonation for delivering
the message. The goal of qualitative
research is to discover and develop the
new and to develop empirically
grounded theories (Flick, 2009, p. 15).
Qualitative method is used for exploring,
understanding and analyzing
unstructured data. This method is

considered appropriate since this study
attempts to find out the kinds of
information structure that occur in EFL
learners and to know the intonation
patterns of the learners for delivering
their messages.

The respondent in this research was
purposively chosen because she is in the
3rd grade who has followed the 4th
semester of listening and speaking
classes in University of Kuningan. She
also is a debater who followed English
Debate Competition in IAIN Syekh
Nurjati Cirebon.

Three data collection techniques
were employed in this study, which were
library research, observation, and
interview. However, in collecting the
data, the researchers have to employ
appropriate instuments such as library
research, observation, and interview. All
data collection was recorded in order to
keep authenticity of the data.

In the library research, the
researchers found some theories to
support the data in this research from
many references (printed book, e-book,
journal, and online reading).

In the observation, the data was
analyzed in several steps. First, the
researchers transcribed the transcription
of audio recorder when the respondent
followed English Debate Competition.
Then, analyzing the data based on
intonation patterns and kinds of
information structure by using
Halliday’s theory and PRAAT Software
Analysis to analyze the data. Next,
identifying the data and interpreting the
findings of the data analysis.

In the interview, the data and
information were gained from the
respondent. The interview was
conducted to clarify the result of data
analysis from PRAAT in order to know
the respondent’s aim in delivering her
speech.



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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The findings of the study are

described in three categories. The first
category is unit of information. The
second category is about the focus of
information, and the third is the status of
information. All of them complete each
other reaching the objectives of the
research. In first step, the respondent’s
speech will be divided into different
clause segmentations based on grammar
level and marking the stress syllable
using PRAAT software analyses.

In clause segmentation, these clauses
are differentiated into two units of
information using grammar level. It is
because we use clauses to convey
information in grammatical terms as we
use intonation units to convey
information in phonological terms. There
are 16 % or 25 independent clauses and
84 % or 133 dependent clauses, with the
total clauses are 158 clauses.

In stressing, the discussion can be
noted that the respondent put 279
stresses that draw 222 amounts of time in
a whole discourse. There are some words
that did not get any stresses in that
utterances. It is because the speaker
decided to encode the message with
stress placing. Languages differ,
however, in what might be termed their
prominence gradient, the steepness of
change between prominent and non-
prominent elements. It is because the
prominence of information has relation
to stress. As Chun (2002, p.148) states
that “stress is the linguistic means of
marking syllables or words as
prominence or perceptually silent in
relation to others no matter how
prominence is achieved”.

Based on Halliday’s theory, there are
three kinds of information structure:
tonality, tonicity, and tone. Tonality is
the chunking of speech into intonational
phrases or tone unit. The finding of this

division uses PRAAT software for
accurate analysis. It is because we cannot
make decision about how high the pitch
or how loud the intensity with human’
hearing as we know that every human
has different ability to hear clearly. There
are eight common patterns of unit of
information that are coded by different
colour. The first pattern is PH-TS with
10% or there are 16 units of information,
the second pattern is H-TS-T with 18% or
29 units of information, the third pattern
is TS-T with 17% or 27 units of
information, the fourth pattern is PH-H-
TS-T with 10% or 16 units of information,
the fifth pattern is TS with 17% or 27
units of information, the sixth pattern is
PH-TS-T with 18% or 28 units of
information, the seventh pattern is H-TS
with 7% or 11 units of information and
the last is PH-H-TS with 3% or 4 units of
information.

The second system to organize
information is focus of information
(Tonicity). Focus of information is
signaled by student’s stressing in the
form of speech. Speech is produced in
batches of segments that are
hierarchically ordered: within any such
batch except the lowest a smaller batch
can be identified (Gussenhoven, 2002:
276). In the discourse, it is found four
patterns of focus of information. In the
first patterns is Given-New (G-N) with
20 % or 31 units of information, the
second pattern is New-Given (N-G) with
21 % or 33 units of information in that
monologue, the third pattern is Given-
New-Given (G-N-G) with 36 % or 58
units of information and the last pattern
is only New in the utterances with 23 %
or 36 units of information.

The last system to organize
information is status of information
(Tone). Tone reflects textuality in the
sense that it represents the speaker’s
perception of the status of information -



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 2, June 2013 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

the relative importance of each
successive piece of information (status of
information). There are five status of
information in whole utterances in form
of speech. The first is incomplete
information (/) with 33 % or 52
incomplete information in whole
utterances. The second, is major
information (\) with 15% or 23 major
information in whole utterances. The
third, there are 13% or 21 implication
information (\/) in whole utterances.
The fourth status information is
highlighted theme (\/) with 32 % or 51
in whole utterances and the last is minor
information (/) with only 7 % or 11
minor information.

CONCLUSIONS
From the results and discussion in

the previous chapter, there are several
conclusion that can be drawn. First, there
are 5 kinds of intonation pattern used by
the respondent: fall \ , rise (final) / , rise
(non-final) / , fall-rise (final) \/ , fall-rise
(non-final) \/.

Second, there are three kinds of
information structures: unit of
information (tonality), focus of
information (tonicity), and status of
information (tone). In tonality, H-TS-T,
the percentage was 18% . It was the most
dominant pattern used by the
respondent to deliver the information. It
means that the respondent wanted the
listener to know and understand the
information from her speech, because
head (H) and tonic syllable (TS)
themselves are the stressed syllables
which have more prominence and major
pitch movement. The most unit of
information used by the respondent was
dependent clause. It was because the
respondent didn’t prepare any written
text when she delivered her speech, even
she didn’t give much attention on her
tone which influenced the information.

Given-New-Given was the highest
formula in tonicity with the precentage
36%. It means that the respondent
delivered the information in the simplest
way, so that the listener would get the
information easily, Given means known
or at least knowable by the listener at this
point in the discourse, New means
unknown or non-recoverable. The
respondent mostly used incomplete
information [ / : rise (non-final)] as her
tone means that the information is not
final or needs other information to make
it complete with the precentage 33%. It
happened because she could not control
over the content of her speech.

Third, from the interview, it can be
concluded that the respondent’s aim of
her speech was to convince all of the
participants and audiences that
presented in debaters’ hall when the
debate competition began. The
placement of pauses and the use of
intonation that inappropriate with the
aim of the respondent happened because
she was in spontaneous speech and did
not use any prepared text (impromptu
speech). It made her very nervous so that
she could not use appropriate intonation
and place the stress incorrectly.

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Not Careless But Weak: Language Mixing of Malaysian Chinese in a Business Transaction

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