Rhythm and intonation

IndE has its own syllable-timed rhythmic patterns. Here syllables are uttered with an almost equal prominence. This also means that often IndE does not use weak forms of vowels in unstressed positions. Thus a sentence like I’m thinking of you can be heard as: . Here the first person singular pronoun, the auxiliary and the preposition too have a relative stress and hence they are not realized in their shortened forms like [a:ɪm] or [əv] etc. Since the syllables are articulated more fully, IndE takes relatively more time in articulating similar stretches of the English language than, say, RP.

IndE reveals a falling intonation in statements, such as in: The boy is running on the road = . A falling intonation can be perceived in commands and exclamations.

Rising intonation is visible in yes-no questions, tag questions, some wh- questions, and in dependent clauses: