Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast. My name is Amanda, and this is our 214th episode. Episode 213 was about the intonation patterns of W.H. questions. In that episode, I told you that the

unmarked pitch boundary, that's the intonation pattern for the most neutral meaning possible,

for a W.H question is falling. A rising pitch boundary for a W.H. question can be asking for the repetition or

clarification of information. A high rising pitch boundary can express surprise or disbelief.

Usually, the more it pitch changes in a sentence, the more emotion is being expressed.

Today I'm going to tell you about pitch boundary choices for yes-no questions.

As you probably already know, the unmarked pitch boundary for a yes-no question is a rising

pitch.

Some examples are, did you understand that? Do you have Dave's

phone number? Are you going on vacation? All of those questions ended in a rising pitch.

That is important, but I also want you to notice the pitch word of each

sentence. The pitch word is the most important key word of a sentence. It's usually a content word

and is often the final content word of the sentence. Pitch words are given greater emphasis

than the other words in the sentence,

and usually, as the name suggests, also have a change in pitch.

Pitch words and pitch boundaries work together to express meaning.

Let's look at those three questions again and notice the pitch words in addition to the rising pitch at the end of the sentence.

In the question, did you understand that?

The word understand has the most emphasis.

My pitch rose a little on that word, then rose even more through the end of the sentence.

I'll say it again. Did you understand that?

In the question, do you have Dave's phone number? My pitch word is the word phone.

...