M.A.K. Halliday and Intonation in the Grammar of English

雖然零零星星從眾多古今中外語音學家的觀點學說裏知道了不少有關英語語音語調、輕重長短的知識，但一直困惑，不知道一個句子擺在眼前的時候，是否也能夠象做數學題一樣，總有與之相應的公式可套，或者說有沒有這樣的公式可循。Michael A.K. Halliday 和 William GREAVES合著的這本Intonation in the Grammar of English, 我拿到手快兩年了，幾次試著讀，卻總也讀不進去，因為對我，這本書裏的生詞實在太多了，書中提到的那些術語概念，我又一點兒基礎都沒有。幾個月前再一次把它翻出來，硬著頭皮，忽略掉所有不認識的字，囫圇吞棗地掃過一遍之後，竟然生出許多親切之感。我雖然還不能理解這本書裏講到的許多技術細節，更談不上有能力應用其中的一些理論，但我讀著讀著，就不禁會下意識地想起Theory of Computation, 想起automata，覺得這本書是對所有句子都給出了語音表達式的。

我的思維常常有點兒發散，有時聯想走得太遠，邏輯會亂，甚至離譜。我不太拿得準上麵的聯想和比喻是否有道理，加上我現在讀這本書還是很吃力，而且才剛剛讀了100頁，也許憑直覺做出的判斷並不準確呢？後來Billnet說這真是本好書，我接著又到網上做了點兒調查，心裏才踏實了。

Billnet在前麵的帖子裏提到過這本書，不知道他是否有繼續展開探討相關話題的打算。我知道對已經掌握了Bill語調係列內容的人，如果不做這方麵的研究或教學，可能對這些並不感興趣；而那些需要知道、掌握這方麵知識的人，又可能因為還沒走到這裏而不能馬上領會並應用這些理論和規則。對於跟我一樣屬於後麵一類的朋友，如果在能夠徹悟之前多接觸、了解一些有關理論，後麵的路走起來應該能避免不少不必要的彎路。記得當初我剛剛到這裏來讀新概念II的時候，李唐認真提醒過我意群的重要性，還在這裏示範了怎樣劃分意群。我想當時我並非沒有懂，不過理解到一定深度卻是很久以後的事；這時候再回頭看，就想了：如果當初沒有人這樣提醒，恐怕現在還是浮在麵上，半懂不懂呢！我知道象bill目前這樣在這裏講語調，是一件很有點兒枯燥的事，因為（當時）能夠得到的共鳴有限。不過以我的私心 -- 這個私是代表所有跟我一樣還很需要這方麵知識的人的 -- 還是希望老師能夠講下去，總有一天我們這些聽眾、學生裏麵會出幾個能夠提供有價值的反饋的人的！

Halliday在上個世紀四十年代曾經留學中國，在嶺南大學和北京大學，分別師從王力和羅常培，學習漢語。其他有關Halliday的信息，可在網上搜得，或參考wiki聯接：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Halliday

對Intonation in the Grammar of English這本書的評論很多，我草草讀過的幾篇似乎有點兒好評如潮。有興趣的朋友可以看看Ross Forman寫的這篇，這是原連接：http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/aral/article/viewFile/2024/2406，全文內容我抄過來放在這裏：

 

Review by Ross Forman
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney

I nail my colours to the mast first. Meeting Halliday’s ideas on language in the early 1980s had an impact as profound as that of reading Greer on women, or Camus on outsiderness. And later, in teaching phonology and pronunciation, my central reference has remained Halliday’s 1970 work A Course in Spoken English: Intonation. It has been a tantalizing wait, then, for this new publication by Michael Halliday and William Greaves. But its development over the past ten years, which included extensive trialling with students in Canada and elsewhere, has fully paid off in the achievement of depth, clarity and integrity. This book represents a unique contribution to the scholarship of phonology.

One of the most powerful dimensions of systemic functional linguistics has been its recognition of the spoken features of rhythm and intonation (prosody) as grammatical. Thus, far from being simply paralinguistic, prosody serves to systematically realise meaning in all three metafunctions of language: Ideational, where language construes experience; Interpersonal, where it enacts relationships; and Textual, where it engenders discourse.

How does the current publication sit in relation to phonology worldwide; and in relation to the teaching/learning of L2 pronunciation? First, the field of phonology remains primarily centred upon the segmentals of speech, with attention in recent years additionally being extended to macro issues of language variety (English as a Lingua Franca) and speaker identity (see in particular the 2005 special issue of TESOL Quarterly, 39/3). However, prosody – in the middle, and in the centre, so to speak – remains relatively neglected, notwithstanding work in the Hallidayan tradition (for a summary see Greaves, 2007), as well as that of the Birmingham school. Second, while L2 pronunciation is repeatedly identified as an area of prime importance to learners and their teachers, the majority of existing materials inadequately or even wrongly present the prosodic features of English (a notable exception, dating from 1994, being Halina Zawadzki’s In Tempo). This new publication by Halliday and Greaves will make a major contribution both directly and indirectly towards that understanding of prosody which is fundamental to
effective teaching of the spoken features of English.

Intonation in the Grammar of English is in two main parts, with a third providing an analysis (coding) guide.

Part 1, chapters 1–4, is concerned with the study of speech sounds. It explores the acoustic dimension of speech; describes its prosodic organisation; and specifies the role of intonation within the lexico-grammar of English. The descriptive insights offered by computer-based instrumental analysis are indeed impressive, and are laid out here in remarkably clear fashion. But I also liked the caveat (p. 5) that human perception of speech sounds is still foundational to analysis; and would note that such awareness is not often easily developed by language teachers, particularly perhaps when that language is ‘their own’.

Part 2, chapters 5–7, expands on the three systems of Tonality (taking the form of Tone Groups), Tonicity (placement of the Tonic), and Tone (melodic contour). These ‘3 Ts’ are used to analyse the functions of intonation in each of the three metafunctions, beginning with Textual, and working through Interpersonal to Ideational. Each chapter proceeds to set out principles and examples with unalloyed clarity of meaning. A minor issue rests with the actual terms, which although transparent to those who know them, often, due to phonetic similarity, represent a source of confusion for students. The section dealing with the Textual metafunction shows how the tone group (in ‘the sounding’), maps onto the clause (in ‘the wording’) as the unmarked option, the latter which is suggested to constitute 60% of ‘continuous dialogue’ (p. 101). The role of the Tonic is fully demonstrated, and the semogenic power of Theme/Rheme in relation to Given/New is illustrated with examples of unmarked and marked options. There is a nice metaphor of the engendering of text as a current alternating between ‘known’ and ‘unknown’. A little more explanation of the occurrence and impact of ‘silent beats’ would be welcome here, as this is another feature which often proves challenging to student
perception (and one which is vital to fluency – see Szczepek Reed, 2006).

The next section on intonation in Interpersonal meaning explores systems of mood and modality through the four major speech functions of statement, question, offer and command (with a reminder that commands include requests), demonstrating again both unmarked and marked options, as Tone (in the sounding) plays ‘with’ or ‘against’ Mood (in the wording). One example is reproduced below (p. 113). It illustrates a marked option,
where we have a statement realised in the lexico-grammar as declarative mood, and co-realised in the prosody as a rising tone (Tone 2). The communicative outcome is ‘a challenge’, for in a productive tension of meanings, it is always intonation which wins out.

// 2 ^ no I*/ haven’t / got the / tickets //
(Tone Group is marked by double slash; feet by single slash; Tone by Arabic numeral;
silent beat by caret, and Tonic syllable by bold font + preceding asterisk.)

Halliday and Greaves then build upon earlier work in illustrating seven primary tones: five ‘simple’ tones, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5; two ‘compound’ tones of 1–3 and 5–3 (the addition of the hyphen a useful guide to the pronunciation of ‘one-three’, ‘five-three’). There is not much space for discussion of dialect differences, but it is correctly noted that the high rising terminal (Tone 2) is becoming the unmarked option for a statement among some speakers in Australia and New Zealand.

In exploring the role of intonation in the Ideational metafunction, we meet the corealisation of logical relations across clauses (rather than in the realisation of transitivity, the latter in which intonation plays no part). Intonation beyond clause-complex, ie in ‘paragraph’ type stretches, or ‘Paratones’, is not dealt with here (but see, for example, Tench, 1996).

A microtext of a Radio chat show is analysed acoustically, phonetically and semantically, with rich results. As the authors note: ‘The listener is always processing at all strata at once, and it seems to us desirable for the analyst to do the same’ (p. 163).

Chapter 7 is mainly concerned with illustrating the 19 ‘secondary’ tones of English, which represent more delicate exponents of the 7 primary tones. The authors here provide counter-examples through ‘Tone substitution’ in order to illuminate meanings. As Halliday and Greaves note, there is further work to be done in describing what we might call ‘tertiary’ tones: this is an exciting prospect, and one in which technology will prove an asset. This section is a particularly welcome addition to the literature: nowhere else, to my knowledge, are the systems described with such insight and elegance. An appendix to this section analyses a series of spoken texts, both Australian and British.

The third part of the book, a brief Analysis Guide, serves to describe the SFL model in an economical way. There is a coda to that section which could possibly assist the reader better if transposed as an introduction.

The book comes with a CD-ROM which provides video extracts from Anne Thwaite’s Language in Contexts (Thwaite 1997), audio clips, and a digital version of the print text itself. The video clips naturally embody context of situation and culture; their richness may remind us of the constraints of working with monomodal texts in this field. Audio clips also provide an interesting range of voices and dialects. The speakers in the latter are not credited but certainly include both Halliday and Greaves, a fact which might be of interest to readers.

The book is clearly signposted and pleasantly laid out. An index would have been useful; as would headers/footers to remind us of chapter number and chapter section. I consider this to be a landmark study. The fusion of human and technological perception with grammatical analysis – and always, the ‘return to the data’ – results in an exceptionally lucid and scientific work. I believe it will provide a source of insight to linguists and language teachers for many years to come. There is another recent publication which has applied Hallidayan prosodic analysis directly to the field of second language teaching and learning: John Wells’ English Intonation: An Introduction (Wells 2006); and this, I suggest, could well serve as a companion to the present volume.