A Review of A Grammar of Speech 31
Brazil’s presentation of (47) (1997: 163) as an example of high key
suggests that concomitant high key/termination may not always realize
harmless contrastive implications.
(47) // AS for the SECond half of the game // it was ↑MARvellous //He argues that different situations might favour either the interpretation
that the second half of the game was marvellous against expectations or that the only
word to describe it is marvellous. While he does not discuss whether or not the
high key/termination simultaneously realizes a concomitant invitation to
adjudicate, it presumably does. Therefore it seems that the simultaneous
selection of high key and high termination may, depending on the context,
indicate:
- That the speaker invites adjudication and that any contrastive implications
are harmless and overridden by the context. - That the informational content of the tone unit is contrary to expectations.
It is not clear whether or not the speaker must also invite adjudication, or
whether the speaker’s invitation of adjudication can be overridden by the
context.
Speaker selection of low termination in a minimal tonic segment simulta-
neously realizes the communicative purposes realized by the selection of
low key. Brazil (1997: 64) argues that the extra implications realized by the
selection of low key instead of a more communicatively appropriate mid
key, in order to realize low termination may be redundant; low key signals
that the tone unit is both additive and equivalent whereas selection of mid
key is simply additive. However, the communicative purpose of equivalence
realized by low key is not necessarily redundant as Brazil himself (1997: 64)
illustrates:
(48) // he GAMbled // and ↓LOST //
(49) // he GAMbled // and LOST //
(50) // he WASHED // and put a ↓RECord on //
(51) // he WASHED // and put a RECord on //He comments that a relationship of hyponymy exists between examples
(48) and (49): there is no set of circumstances in which (49) is appropriate
but (48) is inappropriate. Both examples assert that a man gambled and that
he lost. Example (48) provides additional information that the gambling and