Increments and Tone 147
Sn, unlike BS, chooses the option of increment closure only once. Bs chooses
the option on the penultimate and fi nal tone units of (12b). He projects two
target states with target state 72 functioning as the initial state for the next
increment which is the fi nal increment of text 2. Bs’s choice of falling tone
realizes the meaning that he has told what he needed to tell to realize his com-
municative purpose and coupled with the low termination (see Chapter 7)
signals that he has fi nished telling. The combination of telling and fi nality
highlights the speaker’s role as teller but at the same time distances him from
his hearers. The text produced is authoritarian and homoglossic with the
pronoun we apparently referring to the reader and others in authority. By
contrast Sn’s choice of fall-rise projects her text as heteroglossic. She shares
an unspoken implication with her hearers and generates a local meaning
that she and her hearers are united in a shared effort and will jointly stay the
course. The pronoun we is projected as inclusive and referring to the speaker
and the hearer who are engaged in a common effort.
In conclusion increment fi nal fall-rises project that the target state
achieved contains a contextualized implication. Like increment fi nal rising
tones they project solidarity between the speaker and the hearer by project-
ing the speaker and the hearer as intimates who are able to communicate
more than is actually said.
There were three unexpected instances of level tone found in increment
fi nal position.^8 Brazil (1997: 136) in his discussion of level tone rules out
the possibility of level tone occurring in fi nal position. In fact the only
scholar who unambiguously appears to describe level tone in fi nal position
is Crystal (1975: 35) who claims that the presence of level tone in fi nal posi-
tion signals the absence of emotional involvement which may, depending
on the context, be interpreted as boredom, irony or sarcasm. Halliday and
Greaves (2008: 114) argue that tone 3 coupled with a declarative clause in
fi nal position labels the statement as being tentative rather than assertive.
However, it is not clear that what they describe as tone 3 is in fact a level
tone. In earlier work e.g. Halliday (1967: 16) and Halliday (1970: 11) tone
3 is described as a low rise to mid which opposes tone 2 which is a high rise.
In Halliday and Greaves (2008: 44–5) tone 3 is described as ‘level rising’.
Thus, tone 3 as a category seems to include tones some of which have been
classifi ed here as rises and others as levels. Example (13) provides a repres-
entative example of an increment fi nal tone unit with level tone.
(13) it ’s par↑TICularly bar\BAric // that this has /HAPpened //
N V A E W N V V'