| pitch
is nothing but consecutive occurence of high and low pitches. |
| The musical pitch
with fading affect occurs on the non-phonemic stretching of the vowel
and is used as a manner of speech to convey, ‘things taken easy’,
‘carelessness’, ‘avoidance’, ‘irresponsibility’,
etc. It always followed by a falling terminal. |
| 1.17.3.
Illustrations: |
| The different pitches
in different positions can be illustrated in the following examples,
without considering the junctures involved. The non-mentioning of
pitch on the intermediate vowels implies the continuation of the previous
pitch level. As indicated above, wherever /3/ occurs it is to be presumed
that emphasis either for intensity or contrast is also accompanying.
The stretch of pitch is indicated by a dash. |
|
3
2
1
|
|
enko ahonkohiju?a |
|
‘those
(only) boys will come’
|
|
2
1
2
|
|
enkoahonkohiju?a 
|
‘those
boys will come’
|
|
1
2 3
|
|
enkoahonkohiju?a |
|
‘those
boys will (slowly) come’
|
|
2 1
|
|
leltanai
|
‘I
(do) see’
|
|
1
|
|
leltanai
|
‘I
see!’
|
|
21
|
|
|
boo?hasutana
|
|
‘the
head is aching’
|
|
31
|
|
|
boo?hasutana
|
|
‘(it
is the) head (which) is aching’
|
|
2
1
|
|
|
|
‘I
am poor’
|
|
1
2
1
|
|
|
|
‘I
am (definitely) poor’
|
|
1
2
|
|
|
|
‘(do)
play, if you like’
|
|
3 1
|
|
hemar
|
‘yes!
(I am aware of), go on!’
|
|
|
| In the examples
it will be seen that interchange between /1/ and /2/ carries a little
difference in the shade of meaning, rather the use of the two depends
upon the position. In utternace beginning/2/ is preferred if /1/ is
not to continue for several syllables. For a plain statement the terminal
contour is optionally and sometimes preferably the falling one. The
terminal rise or fall also indicates pitch level higher than the next
level of the pitch. |
| 1.17.4.
Intonation pattern |
| In the intonation
pattern of Mundari, the following elements are distributed in many
different ways - (a) the stress for emphasis, used optionally hence
irregularly, (b) the stress for prominence and glottalization, (c)
pitch variation in /1/,/2/, /3/ and raising-falling as well as stretched
one, (d) the terminals of the types of sustained, falling or rising,
All of these form the part of intonation and are observable within
a phrase-structure between two pauses. These elements can be termed
as suprasegmentals which occur together with the segmental concurrently. |
| The particular manner
of distribution of such elements on the sentence level gives a type
of sentence like statement, option, etc. On the other hand, their
distribution is so dependent upon the context of the whole sentence
that no set rules for their permutation and combination within a sentence
is possible. |
| 1.17.5. Common
shifts |
| There are some intonation
patterns which contrast with the normal pattern and these can be defined
as shifts. There are at least three common shifts in this language: |
