Intonation refers to the rising, or falling pitch in a person's voice as they say words or phrases. In many languages, the changes in pitch reflect a change in meaning of what is being said. Intonation varies from language to language; the same way you would stress a word in your native language is not always pronounced in the same way in English.
Transcription of intonation
Most transcription conventions have been devised for describing one particular accent or language, and the specific conventions therefore need to be explained in the context of what is being described. However, for general purposes the International Phonetic Alphabet offers the two intonation marks shown in the box at the head of this article. Global rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-to-right [↗] and falling left-to-right [↘], respectively. These may be written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a broader scope:
He found it on the street?
[ hiː ˈfaʊnd ɪt | ɒn ðə ↗ˈˈstɹiːt ‖ ]
Here the rising pitch on street indicates that the question hinges on that word, on where he found it, not whether he found it.
Yes, he found it on the street.
[↘ˈjɛs ‖ hi ˈfaʊnd ɪt | ɒn ðə ↘ˈstɹiːt ‖ ]
How did you ever escape?
[↗ˈˈhaʊ dɪdjuː | ˈɛvɚ | ə↘ˈˈskeɪp ‖ ]
Here, as is common with wh- questions, there is a rising intonation on the question word, and a falling intonation at the end of the question.
In many descriptions of English, the following intonation patterns are distinguished:
• Rising Intonation means the pitch of the voice rises over time [↗];
• Falling Intonation means that the pitch falls with time [↘];
• Dipping or Fall-rise Intonation falls and then rises [↘↗];
• Peaking or Rise-fall Intonation rises and then falls [↗↘].


Functions of Intonation
All vocal languages use pitch pragmatically in intonation — for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Tonal languages such as Chinese and Hausa use intonation in addition to using pitch for distinguishing words.[2]
Many writers have attempted to produce a list of distinct functions of intonation. Perhaps the longest was that of W.R.Lee[3] who proposed ten. J.C. Wells[4] and E.Couper-Kuhlen[5] ) both put forward six functions. Wells's list is given below; the examples are not his:
• attitudinal function (for expressing emotions and attitudes)
example: a fall from a high pitch on the 'mor' syllable of "good morning" suggests more excitement than a fall from a low pitch
• grammatical function (to identify grammatical structure)
example: it is claimed that in English a falling pitch movement is associated with statements, but a rising pitch turns a statement into a yes–no question, as in He's going ↗home?. This use of intonation is more typical of American English than of British. It is claimed that some languages, like Chickasaw and Kalaallisut, have the opposite pattern from English: rising for statements and falling with questions.
• focusing (to show what information in the utterance is new and what is already known)
example: in English I saw a ↘man in the garden answers "Whom did you see?" or "What happened?", while I ↘saw a man in the garden answers "Did you hear a man in the garden?"
• discourse function (to show how clauses and sentences go together in spoken discourse)
example: subordinate clauses often have lower pitch, faster tempo and narrower pitch range than their main clause,[6] as in the case of the material in brackets in "The Red Planet [as it's known] is fourth from the sun"
• psychological function (to organize speech into units that are easy to perceive, memorize and perform)
example: the utterance "You can have it in red blue green yellow or ↘black" is more difficult to understand and remember than the same utterance divided into tone units as in "You can have it in ↗red | ↗blue | ↗green | ↗yellow | or ↘black"
• indexical function (to act as a marker of personal or social identity)
Example: group membership can be indicated by the use of intonation patterns adopted specifically by that group, such as street vendors or preachers. The so-called high rising terminal, where a statement ends with a high rising pitch movement, is said to be typical of younger speakers of English, and possibly to be more widely found among young female speakers.
It is not known whether such a list would apply to other languages without altera