American English Intonation: Vietnamese Accents

Common simple or compound sounds, heard in English, are introduced and classified, by nomen-define classification, into colloquial-compose accents, colloquial-intonate accents, critical-emphatic accents, critical-aid accents, front-aid accents, tail-aid accents and critical-mix accents.

A critical-emphatic accent or critical-intonate accent can be classified, by its grammatical, syntactic or punctuative role, as an informative-attention accent, coordinate-list accent, end-clause accent, end-inverseclause accent, interrupt-block accent, inverse-block accent, infinitive-verb accent or colon-introduce accent.

A comprehensive set of colloquial-intonate rules are designed according to which the critical-emphatic syllable of any identified colloquial-intonate word is modulated with a colloquial-intonate accent so as to connote a colloquial-intonate sense that is equivalent to a written punctuative sense indicated or implicated by an inter-word sign- ie. a space, coma, semicolon or hyphen.

The intonation of a front-sentence unit is composed by applying intonative rules on every identified critical or emphatic word to modulate its critical-intonate syllable with a critical emphatic accent represented by a colloquial-intonate symbol, such as an intonate-outline, draft, graph or diacritic symbol, drawn adjacently above or below the same syllable.

The intonation of a tail-sentence unit is composed by applying tail-intonate rules on an identified tail-sentence unit, in the tail-modulate investigation of the tail-characterize treatment of a specified intonative system, to modulate it with a primary or elongative pitch-distribute pattern-ie. a tail-intonate pattern represented by a glissando or slur-ie. a 3-pitch transition.

The intonation of a whole written statement, made up of the intonations of a front and tail-sentence units, is illustrated by an intonative illustrative diagram made up of colloquial intonative symbols concatenated or interconnected with straight-dash lines marked with intonative markers-ie. a vertical bar or arrow head- at critical points.

A practical application of intonative rules or diagrams is illustrated or explained in the following circumstance or example:

As an American speaks English in a hurry, he happens to pronounce an inter-word pause as equally long as inter-syllable pause. Because the original inter-border pattern, formed & observable conspicuously in a specified written statement, is lost or become obscure in the corresponding spoken statement; so, it is impossible to recognize each separate constituent word of the spoken statement.

In order to restore the original inter-border pattern as well as to aid in textual recognition, each hidden interword border, located thruout the whole statement, should be marked out conspicuously according to the following scheme:

• The last syllable of every intonative word identified in the front unit should be modulated with a critical emphatic accent to mark out the following interword border on its right side.
• Every trivial interword border, not preceded by any intonative word, should be modulated so that its corresponding interword pause become distinctively longer than inter-syllable pause.
• Either next-border syllable of every interword border, located in a tail-sentence unit, including the front-tail border, should be elongated or modulated with a tail-aid or elongate accent to mark out the next or adjacent interword border.

After conducting such aid-recognition scheme, because every interword border become conspicuous again; so, every separate word of the spoken statement can be identified clearly so as to understand its meaning.