186 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
of increment 8 projecting that the pitch sequence (sequence chain) will be
maximally disjunctive (Brazil 1997: 117) and projects the information
in the pitch sequence as independent from what has come before. The
pitch sequence is completed by the low termination in medial position in
increment 10. While it is tempting to try to explain the mismatch between
the pitch sequence closure and the increment closure as arising from Jt’s
inexperience of reading aloud (see Esser 1988: 27) who provides evidence
that recognizing paragraph boundaries in text is an acquired skill) the tonal
composition after the low termination suggests otherwise. In terms of the
taxonomy presented in Brazil (1992: 220) Jt is at the very least producing
a level 4 (the lowest form of engaged) reading: his tone choices are infl u-
enced and constrained by the prior co-text. In other words his selection of
an increment medial low termination appears to be motivated.
Within the corpus approximately 77 per cent of low terminations were in
increment fi nal position suggesting that as expected if all things are equal
pitch sequence closures and increment closure equate. The reasons why all
things may not be equal are examined at the end of this section. Prior to
that it is worth examining the unmarked cases where low termination
occurred in increment fi nal position. In Text 1 36, or 49.3 per cent of,
increment fi nal low terminations were immediately followed by a high
key and three, or 4.1 per cent of, increment fi nal low terminations were
immediately followed by a high key/termination. In Text 2, probably
because of the less scripted nature of the original material the percentages
of co-occurrence between increment endings and pitch sequence closures
was slightly lower. There were 42, or 29.2 per cent of, low terminations
in increment fi nal position immediately followed by a high key and 14,
or 9.7 per cent, which were followed by a high key/termination.^16 Overall,
43.8 per cent of low terminations were in increment fi nal position and
followed by high keys. Example (37) illustrates.
(37) it s ↑REAsonably \↑CLEAR // that there have been a... a
N V E A W+ N V V' (d) d
SEries of \/TERrorist attacks // in \LONdon //
N P+ e N P N #
there are OBviously \/CAsualties // both PEOple that
N V e dº N c dº N W+
have /↑DIED // and people SERiously in\/↑JURED //
V V' c dº N Ø E A