Abstract
The paper considers the basic principles of the description of sentence intonation in Czech. Grounded in the essential study of František Daneš (1957), it takes into account the results of the current research on this topic.
In the analyses of the communicative functions of sentence intonation in Czech, the tone unit ( promluvový úsek in Czech terminology) can be proven to be the most relevant portion of sound stream in both the perception and production of speech. The variability in the tone unit shape carrying individual communicative functions can then be effectively captured as differences in the shape of the stress unit concatenation of which the tone units consist.
The present hypothesis is well supported by results based on intonation analyses when larger syntactic structures were explored. Some new findings on the shape of sentence final melodies are presented in the paper too.