Contexto laboral

CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION

This work has delved into a relatively novel area in the study and analysis of speech, which is acoustic study. This chapter therefore summarises the procedure for the research and juxtaposes the findings with the research questions to ascertain how far they answer the questions and justify the purpose of the study.

high), and tone is itself the height of pitch and change of pitch (associated with pronunciation of syllables or words and which affects the meaning of the word). It was again confirmed from the results that no two speakers speak on the same pitch level; one may speak on a lower pitch than the other. On the other hand, every individual has control over his or her pitch. Hence, an individual may choose to speak with a pitch higher than normal to achieve intended meaning, or as a result of individual difference in pronunciation. The above observations therefore, answer our first and second research questions on different modes of realisation of intonation and regular suprasegmental features of tone.

Our third research question seeks to establish the tones and stress that correlate. Strictly speaking, our study observes that stress is not used in Igbo as it is used in English. All the same, as stress is the pronunciation of a syllable or word with more respiratory energy or muscular force than other words or syllables in an utterance, stressed syllables have greater overall acoustic intensity than the more weakly stressed or unstressed ones as indicated by pitch values and durations of the utterances investigated and it has greater length and is more prominent and audible. Thus, we identify various types of stress as primary stress, secondary stress and tertiary stress with the primary stress as the most prominent. Stress therefore results from a combination of loudness, pitch and duration and is applied to syllables and not individual segments.

Stress is used lexically in English to distinguish different words such as word class and establish the meaning of the word. Similarly, in tone language, tone distiguishes words with the same segments and as well establishes their individual meanings. Notably, tone can be high or low. High tone results when vocal cords vibrate rapidly making the affected syllable to be more prominent and to sound higher, thus, becoming the focus in that word or structure as is the case with stressed syllable.

The above observations therefore relatively equate stressed syllables with high tone in this study in line with their acoustic properties. They also justify the objective of the research, which aims to determine the features of tone that English and Igbo (intonation and tone) languages share.

On tone, it needs to be restated that English does not have lexical tone, that is, fixed pitch as is the case with tone language like Igbo. In English tone, pitch is used over syntactic units to distinguish meaning. All the same, the tone could be high (rise) or low (fall), but they are increased or reduced at the instance of the speaker to achieve the meaning he wants to convey, thus resulting in different intonation patterns. However, whereas certain pitch pattern (tone) is applied to every syllable of an utterance in tone languages, only one syllable in an intonation phrase bears the default tone, which is used mainly to express attitude. Hence, the tonal specification of an English utterance is said to be closely related to the notion of focus.

In this work, the fall and rise pitches respectively correlate with the low and high tone of the tone language. These tones have been ably reproduced in the nuclear tones of the statements (with definitive fall) and yes-no questions of the native Igbo speakers. The fall-rise default tone of the tentative statement is greatly manifested in the utterances of both the Control and the Consultants.

The variations noticed here are quite insignificant and can be attributed to individual differences usually noticed during speech. These tones satisfy both the attitudinal and grammatical functions of intonation. Therefore, this aspect of the analysis answers the fourth research question on the areas to expect correlation between tone and intonation, and justifies the objective of the study that was set to indentify the nature and point of relatedness of the suprasegmental features.

Expectedly, the results confirm that some challenges do manifest as the native Igbo speakers (tone language speakers) speak English (intonation language), although the challenges are few. Some variations are noticed in the utterances of the native Igbo speakers of English in the areas of pitch height which are lower than those of the Control. In the same vein, some of the utterances of the Consultants last longer than those of the English. The reason for these variations can be attributed to

the vowel types and vowel quality of the English vowels, some of which are noticeably different from the Igbo vowels. Secondly, English, being stress-timed as against Igbo that is syllable-timed contributed to the variations noticed in the rhythm of the utterances. With these explanations, the fifth research question is answered, and the fourth objective justified. Both were set to ascertain if and where native Igbo speakers encounter problems in articulating non-segmental features of English.

Finally, our findings have all helped to answer the research questions and justify the objectives of this study. We have as well succeeded in presenting the necessary information about the interface of intonation and tone using the speeches of native Igbo speakers of English. It can therefore be asserted that this study confirmed that virtually all languages of the world are intonational.