Preface

Summary

This was the first textbook on intonation for linguists and the first textbook which attempted to widen the discussion of intonation to include languages other than English. There have been a number of excellent textbooks which have been pedagogically oriented to the needs of speakers of English as a second or foreign language (see in particular Palmer, 1922; Armstrong and Ward, 1926; Kingdon, 1958a; O'Connor and Arnold, 1961 and 1973; Halliday, 1970; and Pike, 1945, as the sole American book of this sort). Such textbooks have all included at least some (and often a large amount of) practice material. The present book is not intended as a practice book; those whose ears and mouths need to practise the skill of recognising and producing intonation patterns should use one of the above books, preferably one which uses the same tonetic-stress marks as the present book (e.g. O'Connor and Arnold, 1973). Among previous books on intonation the nearest approaches to the present volume are Bolinger (1972b), Crystal (1969a), Ladd (1980), and Couper- Kuhlen (1986). Bolinger (1972b) is a book of readings with the selective coverage which that entails; Crystal (1969a) is the most thorough bibliographic survey in print, but covers essentially only English; Ladd (1980) gets to grips with many of the difficult theoretical problems in intonational analysis, but is nevertheless selective and also limited to English; while Couper-Kuhlen (1986) thoroughly surveys a wide range of work on intonation, but is yet again limited to English.