The ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan

intonation 
group.
If considered not only from the purely intonational point of view, but also from the 
semantic and grammatical points of view this unit is known as the 
sense-group. 
An intonation group may consist of a whole sentence or a part of it. In either case it may 
consist of a single word or a number of words. 
An intonation group has the following characteristics: 
a)
It has at least one accented word carrying a marked change in pitch (a rise, a fall, 
etc) 
b)
It is pronounced at a certain rate and without any pause within it. 
c)
It has some kind of voice quality. 
The number of intonation groups in the same sentence may be different.
In 
ˏ
June 
| Ju ly | and 
ˏ
August | our 'children 'don’t 'go to 
ˎ
school. 
In 'June, 'July and 
ˏ
August | our
'children 'don’t 'go to 
ˎ
school.
The end of each sentence is characterized by relatively long pause. The pauses between 
intonation groups are shorter. They vary in length. There may be no pauses between 
intonation groups at all.
Each intonation group is characterized by a certain intonation pattern, i.e. each syllable 
of an intonation group has a certain pitch and bears a larger or smaller degree of 
prominence. 
Intonation patterns containing a number of syllables consist of the following parts: 
the 
pre-head, the head, the nucleus and the tail
. 
The pre-head 
includes unstressed and half-stressed syllables preceding the first 
stressed syllable. 
The head
includes the stressed and unstressed syllables beginning with the first stressed 
syllable up to the last stressed syllable. 
The last stressed syllable is called 
the nucleus. 
The unstressed and half-stressed syllables that follow the nucleus are called 
the tail
.
It was a very sunny day yesterday. 
It was a …. – the pre-head 
…'very 'sunny – the head 
… 
ˎ
day … 
– the nucleus 
…yesterday – the tail
Note:
According to V.D. Arakin, the first unstressed syllable which may contain either 
unstressed or half-stressed syllables is called