The semantics of phonetic terms denoting units of intonation in English and Russian

Matveeva Eugenia Evgenievna

The article deals with the semantic structure correlation of the phonetic terms denoting the basic unit of intonation. The analysis of definitions in specilialised English dictionaries revealed synonymous terms ‘intonational phrase’, ‘tone unit’, ‘tone group’, ‘intonation group’. By means of comparing their functional characteristics and frequency of occurrence obsolete terms as well as lexical units most commonly used nowadays have been identified. The synonyms in question have been contrasted with the meanings of Russian terms «синтагма» and «фраза», which allowed to determine that the Russian term «фраза» is equivalent to the English special lexemes denoting the basic unit of intonation structure.

Keywords:term, phonetic term, semantics, intonation, intonational phrase.