A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

128 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse

(13) because you are up against...

w N VPHR

(14) because you are up against...

w N V A+ P

The difference in coding refl ects the difference in meaning produced by
the elements are up against in (13) and in the constructed example in (14).
In the former case the meaning of the elements can be summarized as
facing a diffi cult problem and in the later case they refer to the fact that you
are physically blocked by something or leaning against something. The elements
go down and go back were coded as V'A respectively rather than as VPHR
in (15) and (16) to indicate that the

(15) and go down to London

c Ø V' A+ P N

(16) I think we’ ve got to go back

phr N V V' V' A

meaning of the V'A elements in (15) and (16) can be paraphrased as travel
to and revisit. The sequence of elements go down and go back can on occasion
realize a meaning which is better captured by the coding VPHR e.g.

(17) Crime has gone done = been reduced

V'PHR

(18) We go back years = have known one another for years

VPHR

There were no instances of verbs in phase located in the corpus, however,
examination of the published corpus in Crystal and Davy (1975) found ten
instances of verbs in phase. In nine cases the verbs in phase were unambigu-
ously found within one tone unit. (19) illustrates:

(19) Extract 1 (Talking about Football)

and within a \/week // he’s managed to create \↑riots //

c p d n N V PHR-V' d° N