Posted by rahila on Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 8:04am.
It's pretty hard to read this because of the strange symbols that come through. I don't know why, but let's see if I understand what you've typed.
Let me know if these are correct:
a)I'm going to tell you a story
b) She's not going out tonight, is she?
c) I don't understand.
d) Goodnight!
give the meanings indicated by the
i) rise/fall intonation pattern
ii) fall/rise intonation pattern?
a)I’m going to tell you a story
b) She’s not going out tonight, is she?
c) I don’t understand.
d) Goodnight!
please help
a) I'm going to tell you a story.
In this sentence, the intonation goes down toward the end. It's simply factual.
b) She's not going out tonight, is she?
In this question, the intonation in the last part ("is she") rises. Partly, that is because a question is being asked, and partly because the person saying this sentence seems to be in disbelief or doesn't think it's a good idea for "She" to go out.
What do you think about c and d?
This is harder than it sounds because we honestly do NOT know.
It looks like you write this from China. In Chinese, different tones make completely different words. For example, 馬 and 嗎 have the same "sound" but they have a different tone. The first one means "horse" while the 2nd one means "I just asked a question."
In English, tones put emphasis on a part of the sentence. Write Teacher is right that the usual way to say, "I'm going to tell you a story" is to have the tone go down at the end. However, if we say, "I'm going to tell you a story" where the tone goes up at the end, it might mean, "I'm not going to tell you some stupid sentence...I'm going to tell you a story instead of a stupid sentence."
In the 2nd one, if we say, "She's not going out tonight, is she?" Again....Write Teacher is correct. However, if the "She" has a rising and falling tone (like 馬 does in Chinese), it might mean "Some other people are going out, but there's no way that she is going out."
The fact is this: Whoever gave you this assignment does not understand English well enough to be teaching it in China. Because of that, this is the ONLY time I will give you the answer I THINK they want.
I agree above with A and B.
C- I don't understand. It rises, then falls slightly at the end.
D- Good (goes up) night (goes down).
A warning to everyone else...I won't usually give answers this freely. I just don't think this teacher understands the English language well at all.
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