Intonation provides an apparent counter-example to the claim made by proponents of the Extended Standard Theory of generative grammar that there is no direct interaction between phonology and semantics. In the light of recent work on phonological representations, a phonological analysis of intonation is proposed which breaks down an intonation contour into two component parts: the phonological structure and the underlying tone sequence. It is suggested that while the phonological structure is partly determined by the syntactic structure, the tonal sequence is assigned freely in the phonology. A further possible contribution to the intonation is the existence of tonal morphemes in the form of floating tones. It is argued that while the description of English intonation is simplified if we assume that there is a tonal emphatic morpheme, a similar analysis for “interrogative” intonation cannot be correct. It is suggested finally that the claim that phonology and semantics do not directly interact, rather than being disproved by the facts of intonation, provides an essential clue to the composite syntactic/semantic/pragmatic nature of intonation meaning.