The decided advantage in producing correct inflections. cure for monotone and sing-song delivery lies chiefly in the proper use of this modulation. Mrs. J. W. Shoemaker says: "Inflections show contrast. They tell the facts. Length of slides shows the importance of the facts. Straight slides show directness of purpose. Waves show beauty and sympathy. Broken slides show weakness and uncertainty. Zigzag or continuous wave movements represent sarcasm, irony, scorn and duplicity." The following rules are taken from Professor Plumptre's King's College Lectures:" USES OF INFLECTION LOGICAL USES OF THE RISING INFLECTION 1. So long as the meaning of a clause or sentence is incomplete or kept suspended, the rising inflection is to be used. 2. All clauses or sentences that are negative in structure take the rising inflection. 3. Clauses or sentences that express doubt or contingency take the rising inflection. 4. Sentences that are interrogative in character, and to which a simple affirmative or negative can be returned as an answer, end with the rising inflection. EMOTIONAL USES OF THE RISING INFLECTION 1. When a sentence is in the nature of an appeal, it takes a general rising inflection throughout its delivery, and the key of the voice is usually more or less high in pitch; but 1 Mrs. J. W. Shoemaker, Advanced Elocution, p. 36. 2 Charles John Plumptre, King's College Lectures, pp. 120, 146. in sad and solemn appeals the pitch of the inflection is always low. 2. Sentences that convey supplication or prayer take a general rising inflection throughout their delivery, the key of the voice varying from a low one, if the prayer is very solemn in character, to one more or less high, if the supplication is simply pathetic in its nature. 3. All sentences that express joy, love, friendship, hope, and in general all the more pleasurable and amiable emotions, partake of a rising inflection, and the voice is usually pitched in keys more or less high; tho where great tenderness, pity or pathos mingles with the affection, the voice is often modulated into a low, soft, minor key, as it has been termed in elocution. 4. Sentences that express wonder, amazement, or surprise take an extreme degree of the rising inflection, and the voice is usually pitched in very high keys, unless awe, dread, or terror mingles with the emotion, when keys more or less low in pitch prevail. LOGICAL USES OF THE FALLING INFLECTION 1. As soon as the meaning of a sentence, or clause of a sentence, is logically complete, then the falling inflection must be employed. 2. Inasmuch as a falling inflection always suggests to the mind a certain degree of completeness of meaning, it may be usefully employed in those sentences which consist of several clauses, conveying imperfect sense, and independent of each other's meaning, for the purpose of keeping the several clauses separate and distinct from each other. 3. Where a sentence is interrogative in its character, and one to which a simple affirmative or negative cannot be re turned as an answer, but something definite in expression must be given instead, such sentence requires at its close the falling inflection. EMOTIONAL USES OF THE FALLING INFLECTION 1. Where it is desired to convey the impression of solemn affirmation or strong conviction of the truth of what we say, emphatic falling inflections on the principal words, even tho the sentence may be negative in form of construction, produce the desired effect; and the keys in which the inflections are pitched are in general low. 2. Sentences that express command, reprehension, or authority, take emphatic falling inflections, and the range of the voice in pitch is usually from the middle to lower keys. 3. It may be said as a general principle that all the sterner, harsher, and more vindictive passions, such as anger, hatred, detestation, etc., take the most extreme degree of the emphatic falling inflection, and the voice, for the most part loud in power, is pitched in the lower keys. 4. In sentences that express gloom, dejection, melancholy, and similar distressing emotions, falling inflections predominate, and the voice is pitched in keys more or less low, and the time is slow. LOGICAL USES OF THE CIRCUMFLEX INFLECTION 1. When any word is introduced which suggests an antithesis without openly expressing it, such word should have emphatic force, and be pronounced with a circumflex inflection. An affirmative or positive clause takes a falling, and a negative or contingent clause a rising circumflex on the words suggesting an antithesis. 2. When words or clauses are antithetic in meaning, and emphatic in character, the falling circumflex inflection should be used on the positive or absolute member, and the rising on the negative or relative. EMOTIONAL USES OF THE CIRCUMFLEX INFLECTION 1. Whenever it is designed to make any passage ironical, an emphatic prolonged circumflex inflection should be given to the words in which the irony is meant to be conveyed. 2. All passages that express scorn, contempt, or reproach, take emphatic prolonged circumflexes on the principal words, the keys in which the voice is pitched varying according to the dominant emotion. When a question is followed by words closely connected with it, the end of the passage takes a rising inflection, as, "Am I my brother's keeper?" said the unhappy man. EXAMPLES 1. This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their punishment in their success. Laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence; and to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud, and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically subverted. BURKE. 2. If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any that can be named,—if the origin of language is by many philosophers even considered to be nothing short of divine,-if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated,-if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,— if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family, it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life,-who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence. CARDINAL NEWMAN. 3. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together. "The Spectator." ADDISON. 4. Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogs |