A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

178 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse

Table 7.7 shows that increment initial high key/termination may realize
an independent high-key value which co-exists with the default high-
termination value. This independent value may signal that information in
the increment is contrary to the previously generated discourse expectations
and/or that the lexical item it is attached to represents a particularized
selection. Three of the 65 instances of high key/termination are, because
of lack of prior context, impossible to classify, e.g. (25):

(25) // i dont \↑THINK // –ERM // \ACtually // that it is

n v v' ex a W+ N V

ANything to /↑DO //

w V'

with a LOSS of aMERican INfl uence at \↑ALL // [T2-Sn-1]

p d N P e N APHR #

Table 7.6 Number of high keys/terminations in increment initial, medial and
fi nal position

Text 1 Text 2

Reader Initial Medial Final Total Initial Medial Final Total

Bc 4 0 0 4 3 1 1 5
Bs 0 1 1 2 11 1 4 16
Dc 2 0 0 2 5 3 2 10
Dmc 0 0 0 0 2 4 5 11
Emi 2 0 0 2 7 2 1 10
Gc 1 0 0 1 4 1 3 8
Jt 0 2 0 2 3 4 4 11
Mh 1 0 0 1 2 3 2 7
Rf 0 0 1 1 8 0 0 9
Sn 1 0 0 1 4 5 3 12
Tr 0 0 0 0 5 3 1 9
Total 11 3 2 16 54 26 26 109

Table 7.7 The communicative value of increment initial high key/termination

Contrary to discourse
expectations

Particularizing Neither contrary

nor particularizing

Unclassifi able Total*

Text 1 6 4 1 1 13
Text 2 29 11 18 2 60
Total 35 15 19 3 73

*^ The totals in Tables 7.7, 7.8 and 7.9 do not match the total for high key/terminations presented in
Table 7.6 because some high key/terminations have been double counted in Tables 7.7, 7.8 and 7.9. This
has been done where the high key/termination has realized a value of projecting the content of the
increment as contrary to expectations and has concomitantly particularized a lexical item.