Intonation

Multiple-choice exercise

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  1. A rising tone followed by falling tone on something like "I think so" often indicates:
    1.   astonishment
    2.   a positive response
    3.   doubt
    4.   a question
  2. If I want to provide a simple positive response to a yes/no question, I'll usually use
    1.   a rising tone followed by a fall
    2.   a flat tone
    3.   a sharply rising tone
    4.   a falling tone
  3. The part in brackets in "The mastermind (as the police call him) has never been caught." will usually be:
    1.   spoken in a higher tone more slowly
    2.   spoken in a higher tone more quickly
    3.   spoken more slowly in a lower tone
    4.   spoken in a lower tone more quickly
  4. If I say "Good morning" with a rise on 'mor' and a fall on 'ning' I will usually sound:
    1.   sarcastic
    2.   friendly
    3.   bored
    4.   unfriendly
  5. Using intonation to signal the difference between a statement and a question is an example of:
    1.   grammatical function
    2.   discourse function
    3.   attitudinal function
    4.   focusing
  6. The fact that football chants often have specific intonation patterns is probably an example of:
    1.   discourse function
    2.   psychological function
    3.   indexical function
    4.   attitudinal function
  7. Which is correct?
    1.   Pitch refers to the how high a note is struck on a part of an utterance and is similar to stress.
    2.   Stress is signalled only by the speed with which one speaks.
    3.   Tonal languages distinguish lexical meaning by the pitch of the word.
    4.   If I want to stress a word I have to change the pitch.
  8. In general,
    1.   wh-questions show a rise towards the end of the sentence
    2.   wh-questions show a fall towards the end of the sentence
    3.   yes/no questions show a fall towards the end of the sentence
  9. The psychological function refers to:
    1.   where the speaker wants to focus
    2.   the speaker's attitude
    3.   how ideas are connected
    4.   how we perceive sense units
  10. If the utterance is "I saw a ↓fox in the garden last night.", the question was most likely:
    1.   When did you last see a fox?
    2.   What did you do last night?
    3.   What happened last night?
    4.   What did you say you saw in the garden last night?
  11. "It was Mrs Smith who arrived." is an example of:
    1.   emphatic stress
    2.   contrastive stress
    3.   new information stress
    4.   normal tonic stress
  12. "I played cricket." is an example of:
    1.   emphatic stress
    2.   new information stress
    3.   contrastive stress
    4.   normal tonic stress
  13. "It was exceptionally difficult." is an example of:
    1.   contrastive stress
    2.   new information stress
    3.   emphatic stress
    4.   normal tonic stress
  14. Tonic stress usually falls towards the end of the intonation unit.
    1.   False
    2.   True
  15. Punctuation marks are a more reliable and accurate way of clarifying meaning than spoken intonation patterns.
    1.   False
    2.   True