Listening to people reading 219or no recognition in the literature that a ‘cited’ sentence might be performed
in a way which corresponds with any one of the three stages of engagement
we have postulated so far:
1 //p WHERE it CAME from is a MYStery //
2 //o WHERE it CAME from //p is a MYStery //
3 //r WHERE is CAME from //p is a MYStery //
This failure to be clear about just what a citation form is can seriously confuse
any argumentation that takes that form as its axiomatic starting point, particularly
when attention is being directed to explicitly phonological matters. Let us
take the common practice of equating the ‘citation form’, either explicitly or
implicitly, with an assumed ‘normal’, ‘neutral’ or ‘unmarked’ intonation for
the sentence in question—a base line from which the discussion of the significance
of other possible contours is expected to proceed. A much discussed observation
is that, while for many sentences, the favoured reading—and hence the ‘neutral’
intonation—puts the tonic syllable in the last content word,
//p i’m COMing on FRIday //the way some sentences are read provides reason for saying that ‘neutral’
intonation will place it earlier:
//p the POSTman’s coming //What is missing from the very considerable amount of discussion that this
‘problem’ has occasioned is any apparent awareness that, at least for the
two examples cited, ‘neutral’ intonation results from what we have called
Stage 3 engagement.
// i’m COMing on FRIday //or
// i’m coming on FRIday //reflect a reader’s experience that Friday would probably be selective in a
situated occurrence of the sentence: anyone’s reason for saying such a thing
is highly likely to be to specify when, out of a number of possible occasions,
he is actually coming. There might well be divided judgements as to whether
coming was also likely to be selective (and therefore to be made prominent)
or not. In
// the POSTman’s coming //the phenomenon to be explained is the lack of prominence in coming, and
hence the necessary occurrence of the tonic syllable in the preceding
word; and the explanation is simply that, in no communicative situation
that comes readily to mind, is there any likely alternative to coming. (If
we move outside the bounds of common probability and imagine a situation
in which there is an existential choice between coming and, let us say,