A Review of A Grammar of Speech 33
conversation – that there was no possibility of the speaker going. If the
utterance had ended at this point, the concomitant mid termination
would mean that any responding yes would be expected to be mid key –
some kind of supporting yes that indicated the hearer’s understanding
that he/she couldn’t. By adding the tag however, the speaker alters the
utterance-fi nal termination choice to high. The addressee is now invited
to adjudicate: ‘... Could I, or could I not?’ In (90), [here (54)] there
is a high-key choice in the assertion and this gives it a force of a denial
that the speaker could go. If he/she stopped at this point, the concord
expecta tion would operate in such a way as to invite the hearer to say
whether the denial was justifi ed or not. The speaker evidently does
not want his/her assertion to be evaluated in this way, since the mid
termination in the tag invites concurrence.In other words, the termination choices in the second and increment-fi nal
tone units override the termination choices in the fi rst and increment-initial
tone units. In a similar manner Brazil (1984: 37) describes the relative pitch
level of prominent syllables in tags solely as termination selections and does
not discuss the communicative value putatively realized by the simultaneous
selection of key. Indeed, a tone unit by tone unit analysis of the communic-
ative value of the key and termination selections in examples (53) and (54)
results in a far less intuitively satisfying analysis. The high key/termination
tag in (53) presents the proposition could I as contrary to expectations and
invites adjudication. However, the initial mid key/termination has previ-
ously labelled the proposition as neither contrary to expectations nor invited
adjudication; the communicative values expressed by the key/termination
selections are contradictory. In (54) the high key/termination projects the
content of the initial tone unit as contrary to expectations and simultane-
ously invites adjudication. The mid key/termination projects a context
where the second tone unit is additive and also expects concurrence. But
the question arises as to what exactly the tag adds to the context and what
exactly the hearer is expected to concur with. The answer seems to be that
the tag adds nothing to the context of interaction and that if one adopted a
tone unit by tone unit analysis of key and termination selections that the
communicative value of (54) would be identical to that of (55).
(55) // i ↑COULDn’t go could i //However, this does not appear helpful, for if speakers wished to concomitantly
signal that the utterance was contrary to expectations and invite adjudication