Key and Termination – Increments 177
(24) so they rea–LIZED // well THERE S a possi↑/\BILity now //
c N V a N V d N+ a
we can set the LEbanon against \↑ISrael now // [Sn-40]
N V V' d N P N A #The high termination, prior to the increment fi nal high termination,
invites the hearer to actively consider the proposition contained within the
tone unit it is in. Sn invites the hearer to fi rst give active consideration to
the proposition that there’s a possibility now. The presence of the non-fi nal
high termination adds force to the increment by highlighting the possibility
of something which must be considered before the hearer is in a position to
form an independent judgement of the proposition expressed by the entire
increment. Had all the non-fi nal termination choices been mid, the utter-
ance produced would neither have highlighted as explicitly the existence of
the possibility nor invited the hearers to make a mental note of the existence
of the possibility before inviting consideration of the proposition expressed
by the increment. The local meaning generated by the increment medial
high termination is to make the possibility more real and by so doing project
a target state where the assumed speaker/hearer state of convergence
contains an awareness of the very real danger faced.
7.2.3 Simultaneous selection of high-key/high-termination
The purpose of this sub-section is not to re-investigate the communicative
values established above for high key and high termination in increment
initial, medial and fi nal positions. Instead, it examines if the position of the
high key/termination in the increment tends to determine whether high-
key or high-termination values predominate. As it is not possible to test for
the presence or absence of a high termination value^15 this section in practice
can only examine whether high-key values appear to be present in minimal
tonic segments and co-exist with the default high-termination value. Table 7.6
lists the high key/terminations located in the corpus. It was found that
52.4 per cent of high keys/terminations occur in initial position, 23.4 per
cent in medial position and 24.2 per cent in increment fi nal position. The
tendency for readers’ high key/terminations to occur in initial position
suggests that increment initial high key/terminations may have more of a
tendency to project high-key values than high key/terminations in fi nal posi-
tion with medial high key/terminations occupying an intermediate status.
Table 7.7 details the communicative value of increment initial high key/
termination.