B1 — intermediatePitch accent and prosody

Sentence intonation

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

The melody of a sentence: statement, question, exclamation, list

In “What pitch accent is” we talked about melody inside a single word: on the stressed syllable the voice either rises or falls. But speech has a second, larger melody as well, one that stretches over a whole sentence. It is what separates a calm Ti si kod kuće. (“You’re home.”) from a surprised Ti si kod kuće?! (“You’re home?!”): the words are the same, the voice does something different. This is sentence intonation, in Serbian intonacija rečenice, and today it is our only subject.

It pays to keep the two levels apart from the start. Pitch accent belongs to the word and is in the dictionary: it is part of the word itself. Sentence intonation is the shape of the voice over the whole utterance. It is not in any dictionary; it is born at the moment of speaking and depends on what you want to do: state something, ask, exclaim, list, pick out one word. One layer lies on top of the other: inside the sentence every word keeps its own accent, and over them runs the common wave of a question or a statement.

A statement: the voice comes down to the full stop

A neutral statement in Serbian behaves just as you would expect from English: towards the end the voice goes down and settles on the last stressed word. That is the signal “the thought is complete, I’ve said what I wanted to say”.

The fall does not have to be steep; a gentle lowering is enough. That lowering is what puts the “full stop” into the sound: the listener understands that the turn is over and there is no need to wait for more. If your English rises at the end of statements (“uptalk”), leave that habit behind: in Serbian a rising statement is heard as a question.

A yes/no question: the voice rises when no word marks the question

A question that is answered “yes” or “no” can be asked in Serbian in three ways:

The third way does not change a single word of the statement: it is the same Marko živi u Beogradu, but instead of falling the voice rises towards the end, and the statement becomes a question. English does the same with “Marko lives in Belgrade?”. Here the rise is a must: nothing else marks the question (in writing, the question mark takes its place). Say the sentence with a fall, and it is a plain statement again.

In the first two ways the question is already marked by a word: da li at the start, or li after the verb. So the rise is not required: such a question can be said with a light rise, or with the voice settling calmly at the end, much as in a statement, and it is still a question. Both ways are neutral, fine in conversation and in writing. In conversation da li is often shortened to je l' (from je li, often written jel): Je l' može? (“Is that OK?”), and here too the voice does not need to climb. We covered the grammar of these questions in “Yes–no questions”; here we care only about their melody.

Deeper contrast

English swoops, Serbian climbs gently

In English, a yes/no question is marked mainly by grammar: the verb jumps to the front (“Is it far?”) or a helper appears (“Do you know?”). With the words already saying “question”, the melody is free to show attitude. A high, steep rise sounds surprised, even incredulous; a fall sounds brisk and matter-of-fact.

Serbian has no “do”, and a question without da li or li keeps the word order of a statement, so there the rise itself does the work, and it does it calmly: the climb is spread over the end of the sentence, and the peak is not sharp. So an imported English fall can turn a voice-only question into a statement, and an imported “surprise” rise adds a note of disbelief you never intended and marks you as a foreigner at once. Aim for the middle: a clear but modest rise.

Cheat sheet

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The melody of a sentence: statement, question, exclamation, list

Two separate layers. Pitch accent belongs to the word and is in the dictionary. Sentence intonation is the shape of the voice over the whole utterance, born as you speak. The types of melody are familiar from English. The difference is the range: Serbian is calmer and more even, without steep swings.

Shapes of the voice

Examples

Sentence type	Voice
Statement	down, settling gently on the last stressed word
Yes/no question by the voice alone	up towards the end: a must
Yes/no question with da li, li, je l'	the rise is optional: a word marks the question
Question-word question	down: the word already asks
Exclamation	the key word higher, then down
List, unfinished thought	“hangs” on each item, falls only on the last

Statement: down to the full stop

Yes/no question: three ways

In the third way the rise is the only sign of the question (in writing, the question mark). With da li or li the rise is optional. In casual speech da li is often replaced by je l' (from je li): Je l' može? Is that OK?

Question-word question: voice down

Question words: ko (who), šta (what), gde (where), kada (when), kako (how), zašto (why).

Exclamation: the key word higher, then down

Kako je lepo! How lovely! Kakav lep dan! What a lovely day! Koliko ljudi! So many people! But Kako je? (“How are things?”) asks.

Lists and unfinished thoughts: the voice “hangs”

The voice hangs on hleb, mleko, sir and falls only on jaja. A raised first part (Kada stignem) says: more to come.

Contrastive stress

The speaker’s free choice, unlike the pitch accent: one word is said louder and higher, and the meaning shifts.