Here’s a text that will get you started thinking abut the purposes and dynamics of intonation at a level not usually covered in ESL/EFL books and materials. You may be able to find it in a university library, but I checked and found it on Amazon as well.
Title: Intonation in Text and Discourse: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
Author: Dr Anne Wichmann
Publisher: Longman
Every time I think of writing something for publication, I discover that someone has already done it, or is in the process of doing it. It used to disappoint me, but now….now I’m just happy someone else did it for me so I can use it. This is one of those books.
Dr. Wichmann has written a great study on the English intonation patterns we use to clarify the relationship between successive utterances, that is, what we do acoustically with our voice that, in writing, we convey by using semi-colons, transitional words, paragraph changes, etc.
In speaking, we have a set pattern of acoustical signals to convey the introduction of a topic, the continuation of the topic, an elaboration of a part of the topic, an aside or parenthetical statement, and a conclusion to a topic.
Dr. Wichmann also addresses turn-taking signals, both harmonious and combative, as well as intonation patterns used for phone-speak.
Because I work with advanced clients, these are some of the issues that they don’t understand—there’s a lot of published material on intonation patterns within a sentence, but very little easy-to-understand and easy-to-use materials for discourse intonation instruction.
This is one of those rare books that covers the research, yet still is accessible, interesting, useful, and best of all, right to the point! Hallelujah.