The significance of intonation in discourse 4316a // he GAMbled // and LOST //
Here the choice of high key and the consequent contrastive meaning indicate
an interaction-bound opposition between ‘gambled’ and ‘lost’; perhaps the
‘he’ usually wins when he gambles.
16b // he GAMbled // and LOST //
Here the mid key choice and consequent additive meaning simply convey
that he both gambled and lost.
16c // he GAMbled // and LOST //
Here the low key and consequent equative meaning, carries ‘as you would
expect’, i.e. there is an interaction-bound equivalence between gambling
and losing.
In examples (16a, b, c), we see key being used to indicate relationships
between successive tone units in a single utterance, but these same relationships
can occur across utterance boundaries. If we begin with the polar options
‘yes’ and ‘no’, we quickly realize that they only carry contrastive information,
that is they are only in opposition, when they co-occur with high key. In
other words, when wishing to convey ‘yes not no’ or ‘no not yes’, a speaker
must select high key. (To simplify the presentation all the examples used in
the presentation of key are assumed to have a falling, proclaiming tone.)
In (17) below, B chooses contrastive high key in (a) to mark the choice
of opposite polarity in his response; in (b) he chooses to highlight an agreed
polarity, and this apparently unnecessary action is usually interpreted as
emphatic, and then in a particular context as ‘surprised’, ‘delighted’, ‘annoyed’,
and so on. Much more usual than (b) is (c), while (d) sounds odd because
the speaker is heard as simultaneously agreeing and contradicting, or perhaps
rather agreeing with something that has not been said; the normal interpretation
would be that he had misheard. This contradiction is, in fact, only made
evident by the repeated auxiliary, ‘will’, which carries the polarity. Interestingly,
because ‘yes’ is the unmarked term of the pair if the speaker does not
repeat the auxiliary he can choose either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, as in (e) or (f), to
convey the same interactive meaning of agreement, an option which at
times causes confusion even for native speakers.
17 A: // well you WON’T be HOME // before SEVen //
B: (a) // YES // I WILL //
(b) // NO // I WON’T //
(c) // NO // I WON’T //
*(d) // YES // I WILL //
(e) // NO // (I agree I won’t)
(f) // YES // (I agree with your assessment)