What is the role of intonation in signaling attitudes in questions and statements?

• A. Rising intonation often signals questions or uncertainty; falling intonation signals statements or concluded points; variations convey attitudes
• B. Intonation has no bearing on meaning
• C. Only punctuation affects meaning
• D. Uniform falling intonation for all sentences

Answer: (A)

Intonation is how our pitch rises and falls across a sentence, and it carries attitude and intent beyond the literal words. When the voice rises at the end, it often signals a question or doubt, inviting a response or expressing uncertainty. When the voice falls, the sentence tends to feel like a statement or a concluded point, giving a sense of finality or confidence. By tweaking pitch in different ways, speakers convey attitudes such as disbelief, politeness, friendliness, sarcasm, or insistence, helping the listener grasp what the speaker really wants to convey. That combination—rise for questions or uncertainty, fall for statements or conclusions, with variations hinting at attitude—is what makes intonation so important for understanding meaning in everyday speech. The other ideas miss this, since intonation does affect meaning, punctuation isn’t the sole carrier of tone, and not every sentence uses a uniform falling pattern.