Since intonation is produced by vocal chords, and since vocal chords are 'par excellence' the organs of speech, intonation cannot be anything but speech. This dictum sounds very much like common sense, and although I, for one, am convinced of its fallacy, I will not reject intonation from linguistics. It can, indeed, be made to play a role similar to that of monemes, in such close co-operation with the most central and abstract of linguistic tools that any linguistic description would present wide gaps if all reference to intonation were to be avoided. Actually, no clarity can be achieved in our discipline without establishing some sort of hierarchy. We shall, no doubt, have to state that some feature or some aspect of speech is 'not' linguistic: this will be said, for instance, of the initial rise of the speech melody curve; this rise is due to the fact that the glottis, starting from a state of rest, will have to reach some degree of tension, and that the speaker is not likely to wait until that degree is reached.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.28-29

What we should call intonation is therefore what remains of the melodic curve of speech once all tonal and accentual features have been extracted, and, as rightly pointed out by many scholars, most of what is of interest there centres around final contours. It has become usual to analyse these contours by reference to three or four levels.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.35