An attempt has been made in this thesis to look at intonation
as pitch contours of information units. Each information unit has one
intonation, which is the product of many interrelated systems: (a) phonological
accents of the words composing the information unit realized
as rhythmical variation of stressed and unstressed syllables; (b) the
syntactic and pragmatic structure of the information unit in relation
to other information units of an entire speech realized as variation of
pause and prominent stressed syllable placement; and (c) the two systems
of pitch fluctuation, namely, the tone which is the inherent property
of the syllable used to convey word meaning and the tune which is the
property of an utterance used to convey syntactic and attitudinal meaning.
The thesis consists of-five chapters. Chapter I deals with
the theoretical problems concerning the study of intonation in tone
languages, and those problems particular to Thai. This is followed by
the author's suggested solution. An overview of Thai phonology, morphology,
and syntax which is needed for the discussion in later chapters
is given to help readers unfamiliar with the Thai language.
Chapter II describes the accentual system or the phonological
system of potential stress placement restricted to the lexical level.
This chapter is essential for the understanding of rhythmical variation
and pitch fluctuation caused by stresses in real speech. The accentual
system of monosyllabic words, monomorphemic polysyllabic words, compounds,
and different types of reduplicative particular to the Thai language is
given. The description suggests that words in Thai have a favoured accentual
pattern i.e. the double accented pattern. Although the primary
accent is always assigned to the final syllable of a word, the assignment
of the secondary accent varies according to the types of word.
Chapter III which is a study of the tonal behaviour of one-word
utterances, attempts to find answers to the following questions.
what is the behaviour of the five contrastive tones when different
intonations are superimposed on them? Does the system of intonation
contaminate the system of tone? How many contrastive intonation contours
or 'tunes' are there in Thai? Are there universal 'Falls' and 'Rises'?
The answers to these questions are drawn from experiments on one-word
utterances with different syntactic functions and different attitudinal
meanings elicited from three subjects. The cue-card technique, which
is the combination of the reading and questioning method of elicitation,
is used. Both acoustic and auditory analyses are done to give the clearest
view of the interrelationship between tone and intonation.
Chapter IV describes intonation in Thai connected speech. The
author divides speech into units of information using phonetic, syntactic,
and pragmatic cues. Each information unit is a unit of intonation or a
'tone group'. A tone group is divided into units of rhythm or 'feet'.
A foot is divided into stressed and unstressed syllables. There are five
sections in this chapter. The first section is a phonetic analysis of
connected speech in terms of pause-defined units and prominent stressed
syllables. The second section is the phonological postulation of intonation
units. Section 3,4, and section 5 are a description of Thai intonation
in terms of 'tonality', 'tonicity', and 'tune' contrasts respectively.
Chapter V deals with 'stylized intonation' which has definite
phonetic characteristics i.e. pitch levelling and lengthening of duration.
This intonation conveys the core meaning of the utterances in
terms of stereotype and predictability. The study covers both stylized
forms of speech such as chanting, recitation, calling, etc. and nonstylized
forms of speech such as normal conversation and reading
