Episode 79: Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation! (Patreon)

Spoken languages can change the pitch or melody of words to convey  several different kinds of information. When the pitch affects the  meaning of the whole phrase, such as rising to indicate a question in  English, linguists call it intonation. When the pitch affects the  meaning of an individual word, such as the difference between mother  (high mā) and horse (low rising mǎ) in Mandarin, linguists call it  tone.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren  Gawne get enthusiastic about tone, intonation, and the combination of  the two. We talk about various meanings of intonation, such as question,  list, floor-holding, emphasis, enthusiasm, and sarcasm, and how  different languages use different shapes of intonation contours for  functions like these. We also talk about things languages do with tones,  from changing meanings of individual words to indicating grammatical  information like negation. Finally, we talk about the many, many options  for writing tone and intonation (from highly technical proposals to fun  internet creations), how tone interacts with lyrics/melody in songs,  and how “high” versus “low” tone is actually a culturally-specific  metaphor -- could we start calling tones “thin” and “thick” or “big”  and “small” instead?

Read the transcript here.

Announcements:
In this month’s bonus episode, originally  recorded as a liveshow on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server, your  host Gretchen gets enthusiastic about how languages do gender with  special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod. We answer your questions about lots of  things related to language and gender, including: gender-neutral  versions of sir/ma'am and dude/bro, why linguistic gender even exists,  how people are doing gender-neutral and nonbinary things across related  languages, and how neopronouns are often made by recycling bits from a  language's canonical pronouns.

Click here for links to things mentioned in this episode.