The significance of intonation in discourse 49choice indicates that what follows is additively related, or topically linked,
with what has just ended. Thus in (39), the doctor ends one part of his
examination and begins another linked one. (Three slashes, ///, indicate a
pitch sequence boundary.)
39 D: // IT’S DRY skin // ISn’t it //
P: // MM //
D: // SCAly // LET’S have a LOOK /// OPen your mouth WIDE //
On other occasions, the next pitch sequence begins in high key and the
contrastive meaning serves to mark the beginning of a completely new
topic. In fact, if we now generalize, we discover that the frames which
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) isolated on item-specific intonation criteria
are actually pitch sequence initial items following low termination, pitch
sequence final ones.
40 T: So we get energy from petrol and we get energy from food.
// TWO kinds of ENergy /// NOW then //...
Indeed, once one recognizes them, pitch phenomena appear to be much
more important than lexical items in marking boundaries: a re-examination
of some of the classroom data shows that at certain points, where on topical
grounds one felt a need for a boundary but had accepted that as no frame
occurred the teacher had not marked and probably had not intended one,
there are boundaries marked by pitch:
41 T: Good girl, energy, yes, you can have a team point; that’s a very
good word.
// we USE // we’re USing ENergy // we’re USing ENergy /// when a
CAR // GOES into the GARage //...
In other words, the low termination/high key pitch sequence boundary, here
occurring between ‘energy’, and ‘when a car’, appears to carry the transaction
boundary signal.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
My intention in this chapter has been to present a brief (and therefore
necessarily partial) introduction to Brazil’s intonation system, in order to
allow readers to cope more easily with several of the subsequent chapters
which draw directly on, and assume a knowledge of, his system. Those who
wish to enter more deeply into the system are referred to Brazil (1992).
‘The significance of intonation in discourse’, is a substantially modified
version of ‘Intonation and the description of interaction’, first published in
Coulthard (1987a) Discussing Discourse, 63–79.