A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

Key and Termination – Increments 185

speech into paragraphs. Tench (1996: 28) notes that intonational para-
graphing is more prevalent in scripted than unscripted discourse and while
possible is rare in spontaneous conversation.
Table 7.10 shows that low termination occurs predominantly as expected
in increment fi nal position but 3.5 per cent of low terminations occur in
increment initial position and 19.2 per cent occur in increment medial
position. In other words approximately a quarter of pitch sequence endings
occur within increments e.g. (36).

(36) it s ↑MY intention to LEAVE the g\EIGHT // WITHin the NEXT

N V d N+ V' d N P+ d e

COUple of \HOURS // and go DOWN to \LONdon //

e P dº N # c Ø V' PHR P N #

and get a /REport // FACE to \FACE // with the po\LICE //

c Ø V' p N phr P d N

and the eMERgency \SERvices // and the MINisters that have

c d N c d N W+ V

been \↓DEAling with this // and /THEN // to reTURN LAter

V' V' P N c a Ø V' A+

this \/EVEning // [T1-JT-8–10]

d N #

There are three increments contained within example (36). Jt produces
a low termination in the tone unit immediately prior to the initial tone unit

Table 7.10 Number of low terminations in increment initial, medial and fi nal
position

Text 1 Text 2

Reader Initial Medial Final Total Initial Medial Final Total

Bc 0 1 4 5 0 0 8 8
Bs 0 3 7 10 1 4 21 26
Dc 0 0 5 5 0 1 4 5
Dmc 0 0 7 7 1 1 13 15
Emi 0 4 2 6 0 3 9 12
Gc 0 2 3 5 1 1 7 9
Jt 0 1 4 5 1 5 5 11
Mh 0 2 7 9 0 2 9 11
Rf 1 2 6 9 0 0 21 21
Sn 0 1 2 3 1 1 3 5
Tr 0 2 2 4 0 1 5 7
Total 1 18 49 68 5 19 105 129