Learn English – the difference between “inflection” and “intonation”

differencesmeaningtoneword-choice

And which is utilized when turning this…

The monkey is fat.

…into a question:

The monkey is fat?

Best Answer

Intonation would be the most fitting:

Not to be confused with inflection [...]

In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words.

So when your voice rises at the end of a question, that is technically called intonation.

Inflection has two meanings: it can sometimes mean intonation, as Dictionary.com shows:

modulation of the voice; change in pitch or tone of voice.

However, Wikipedia defines it exclusively as the form of a word, and not the sound:

[I]nflection ... is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case. Conjugation is the inflection of verbs; declension is the inflection of nouns, adjectives and pronouns.

Since inflection is ambiguous and not the correct technical linguistics term, it would be better to use intonation, so everyone can understand what you're talking about.

Related Topic