10 Diagnosing Dysarthria in Adults intonation patterns can be rising or falling, although these are operationalized differently in each of the three languages. Intonation in Polish is founded upon logical and emotional factors, its main aim being to express the speaker’s attitude toward the content uttered. An utterance with a falling intonation pattern (cadence) starts with a higher pitch and ends with a lower pitch. In an utterance with rising intonation (anti-cadence) the reverse is the case. When the speaker’s attitude is objective, the intonation patterns is typically rise–fall. A subjective attitude, on the other hand, is expressed by means of the rising intonation in questions and the falling intonation in exclamations. The rising intonation signals that an answer to the question is expected, whereas the falling intonation expresses emphasis. Correct application of prosodic elements in language is crucial for effective communication. Sentence stress enables the speaker to give prominence to selected items in a sentence, whereas the intonation pattern marks (among other things) the illocutionary force of a sentence (e.g. declarative, interrogative, etc.), which may not be indicated syntactically. It has to be borne in mind that intonation patterns are language-specific. In English pitch modulation is often used for emphasis or markedness. The language sees both rising and falling intonation, but, unlike in Polish, the latter is also used in questions, both general and specific, next to statements. We do find rising intonation in interrogative sentences, similar to Polish, in the following marked questions: (5) Fighting them? Jack has smashed it? Hasn’t he dropped it all? Such contexts, albeit limited, show we might still find similar intonation patterns in both English and Polish interrogatives (cf. Jassem 1976, Cruttenden [1962] 2014, etc.). In Spanish, the intonation in questions and exclamations is of particular importance. Testing for such intonation is therefore an important diagnostic clue. Not without significance is the interrogative structure, which starts with an appropriate stressed interrogative pronoun. The onset of a question is also marked in spelling by an inverted question mark, next to the regular question mark at the end, as in: (6) ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy? [What is the weather like today?]
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