font for IPA text, for which see Template:IPA#Usage. {| |-align=center |[ | | | | |] |-align=center |[|| || || ||||] |} Functions All vocal languages use pitch pragmatically in intonation—for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Tonal languages such as Chinese and Hausa use intonation in addition to using pitch for distinguishing words. Many writers have attempted to produce a list of distinct functions of intonation. Perhaps the longest was that of W.R. Lee, who proposed ten. J.C. Wells and E. Couper-Kuhlen both put forward six functions. Wells's list is given below; the examples are not his: attitudinal function (for expressing emotions and attitudes) example: a fall from a high pitch on the 'mor' syllable of "good morning" suggests more excitement than a fall from a low pitch grammatical function (to identify grammatical structure) example: it is claimed that in English a falling pitch movement is associated with statements, but a rising pitch turns a statement into a yes–no question, as in He's going ↗home?. This use of intonation is more typical of American English than of British. focusing (to show what information in the utterance is new and what is already known) example: in English I saw a ↘man in the garden answers "Whom did you see?" or "What happened?", while I ↘saw a man in the garden answers "Did you hear a man in the garden?" discourse function (to show how clauses and sentences go together in spoken discourse) example: subordinate clauses often have lower pitch, faster tempo and narrower pitch range than their main clause, as in the case of the material in parentheses in "The Red Planet (as it's known) is fourth from the sun" psychological function (to organize speech into units that are easy to perceive, memorize and perform) example: the utterance "You can have it in red blue green yellow or ↘black" is more difficult to understand and remember than the same utterance divided into tone units as in "You can have it in ↗red | ↗blue | ↗green | ↗yellow | or ↘black" indexical function (to act as a marker of personal or social identity) example: group membership can be indicated by the use of intonation patterns adopted specifically by that group, such as street vendors or preachers. The so-called high rising terminal, where a statement ends with a high rising pitch movement, is said