THOUGHT GROUP OR TONE UNITDEFINITIONS

“a group of words which go together to express one idea or thought” (Rogerson & Gilbert, 1990:53)

“units of one or more syllables which somehow ‘belong together’” (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994:46)

“a discrete stretch of speech that forms a semantically and grammatically coherent segment of discourse” (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996:175)

“a basic building block of spoken English” (Brazil, 1994:7)

THOUGHT GROUP or TONE UNIT

a unit of information which:

1. may be set off by pauses before and after.

2. contains at least one prominent syllable.

3. has an intonation contour (pitch movement) of its own.

4. (normally) has a grammatically coherent internal structure.

5. has a tendency to correspond with syntactic units (clauses or smaller constituents):

may be signalled by one or more of the following:

use of pauses lengthening of final syllable before boundary increase in the speed of unaccented syllables following the boundary completion of the pitch movement of the nuclear tone rapid change of pitch height at boundaries  

USE OF PAUSESdepends on different factors:

a.individual speakerb.context c.speaking vs reading aloud

TONE UNIT BOUNDARIES

The boy / and the girl dressed in blue / were crossing the street / when a taxi stopped suddenly to avoid hitting them.The man in the red car behind the taxi / crashed against the back of the taxi.The man / who was driving the red car quickly / got out of the car after the crash. The man / said the taxi driver / was responsible for the damage to his car.

The boy and the girl dressed in blue / were crossing the street / when a taxi stopped suddenly to avoid hitting them.The man in the red car behind the taxi / crashed against the back of the taxi.The man who was driving the red car / quickly got out of the car after the crash. The man said the taxi driver / was responsible for the damage to his car.

A

B