Contrastive emphasis Questions Intonation Intonation contours in English Not all rises and falls in pitch that occur in the course of an English phrase can be attributed to stress. The same set of segments and word stresses can occur with a number of pitch patterns. The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called its intonation contour . Normally this focus accent goes on the last major word of the sentence, but it can come earlier in order to emphasize one of the earlier words or to contrast it with something else.
People have a tendency to think of intonation as being directly linked to the speaker's emotions.
In fact, the meaning of intonation contours is as conventionalized as any other aspect of language. Different languages can use different conventions, giving rise to the potential for cross-cultural misunderstandings. Many other languages use only syntactic devices for contrastive emphasis, for example, moving the emphasized phrase to the beginning of the sentence. Instead of I want a car for my birthday. It's a car that I want for my birthday.