Abstract:
The intelligibility of everyday speech is built on the mastery and the use of appropriate intonation patterns. This makes intonation the music of everyday speech of which its appropriate use has been the final hurdle that the majority of the speakers of English as a second language have not crossed. This study, therefore, investigated the intonation patterns of the randomly selected 45 bilingual educated speakers of English, from diverse educational backgrounds representing the three (3) senatorial zones, in Ebonyi State. The test material given to them was a paragraph from Roach (2010). The utterances of interest to the research were segmented into three (3) tiers on a text grid window on Praat including sentence, word and tone. Pierrehumbert’s Autosegmental Metrical approach to intonation served as the theoretical framework and the transcription was done using ToBI. The study revealed a low level of proficiency in the use and assignment of accurate patterns of intonation in the speeches of the participants, in spite of the recorded levels of educational attainment. Aside the widely known and commonly used intonation patterns of fall (L*), rise (H*), rise-fall (H*+L) and fall-rise (L*+H), it was observed that there was the presence of the use of low pitch accent, low boundary tone (L-L%) in the speeches of the participants. There was also a record of a preponderant use of unidirectional tones with a great inclination towards the use of the falling tone. Appropriate use and assignment of intonation patterns were discovered to have little or nothing to do with an individual’s bilingual make up or educational qualification.
