# intonation **Opening (not a real abstract):** The term intonation refers to a means for conveying information in speech which is independent of the words and their sounds. Central to intonation is the modulation of pitch, and intonation is often thought of as the use of pitch over the domain of the utterance. However, the patterning of pitch in speech is so closely bound to patterns of timing and loudness, and sometimes voice quality, that we cannot consider pitch in isolation from these other dimensions. The interaction of intonation and stress — the patterns of relative prominence which characterise an utterance — is particularly close in many languages, including English. For those who prefer to reserve ‘intonation’ for pitch effects in speech, the word ‘prosody’ is convenient as a more general term to include patterns of pitch, timing, **Authors:** [[nolan]]