Key and Termination – Increments 171
the entire increment while high termination in any other position invites
adjudication of the tone unit which contains the high termination.
Prior to commencing the investigation it is important to identify more
precisely what is meant by the term inviting adjudication. Brazil (1997: 52–61)
and Brazil, Coulthard and Johns (1980: 75–9) initially introduced the
communicative value realized by high-termination choices as inviting an
adjudicative or evaluative high key yes/no response. In other words, the
hearer is invited to produce a verbal response judging: yes the speaker is right
or no the speaker is wrong. However, while Brazil (1997: 56) is probably correct
to claim that:
It seems, in fact, that there are probably no utterance types that could not
be responded to with yes or no, given appropriate discourse conditions.he is clearly correct in recognizing that the label invitation to adjudicate is
inappropriately precise (ibid. 59). Many utterances do not lend themselves
to adjudication. In (19) taken from O’Grady (2006: 186)^13 the speaker
produces an increment fi nal high termination, but it is clear that he is not
inviting the hearer to adjudicate if his summary of the plot of the novel
Scoop is right or wrong.
(19) and within a \/WEEK // he’s managed to create \↑RIOTS //
c p d n N V PHR-V' d° N #Table 7.5 Number of high terminations in increment initial, medial and fi nal
position
Text 1 Text 2Reader Initial Medial Final Total Initial Medial Final Total
Bc 30032002
Bs 210343512
Dc 11020145
Dmc110221710
Emi 01011023
Gc 11133126
Jt 00000112
Mh 20020022
Rf 00223115
Sn 0 2 0 2 4 6 16 26
Tr 00001258
Total 10 7 3 20 20 16 45 81