A Review of A Grammar of Speech 41
2.3.3 Terminal pitch level
Termination has only been discussed above tangentially in relation to pitch
sequence closures. This section attempts to link Brazil’s work on termina-
tion with the wider literature in order to show that while phrased differently
Brazil’s claims are supported. This section fi rst discusses the diffi culty of
identifying termination values in the work of other scholars; then reviews
the work of others who have not decoupled termination from tone; fi nally
it reviews the work of one scholar, Esser, who, like Brazil, recognizes three
termination values: high, mid and low.
Tench (1990: 276) argues that termination ‘is the way Brazil distinguishes,
for example, between falls, fall-rises and rise-falls from high, from mid and
from low, and rises to mid and to high’. Tench’s remark suggests that it may
be diffi cult to abstract the communicative value of termination in the systems
of others who do not decouple tone and termination, and to compare their
claims directly with those of Brazil. Cruttenden (1997: 106) describes
Brazil’s approach as a two tone approach: the distinction between tones
that fall and those that rise. Confl ating these two primary tones with the
three termination values gives a taxonomy of six secondary tones whose
communicative values are summarized in Table 2.2. Brazil et al. (1980: 25)
argue that even though they hear termination ‘as an independent, simultan-
eous, choice rather than as a “secondary one” depending on the speaker’s
having selected a particular tone’, falling tone coupled with high, mid or
low key is ‘not unlike’ what ‘Halliday handles in terms of the three variants
of end-falling tone’. Similarly we can speak of three variants of end-rising
tone: high, mid and low.
Table 2.2 The communicative value of tone coupled with termination
Tone Termination Communicative value
Falling/rise-falling High Projected to alter the existing state of speaker/hearer
understanding: invites adjudication.
Falling/rise-falling Mid Projected to alter the existing state of speaker/hearer
understanding: expects concurrence.
Falling/rise-falling Low Projected to alter the existing state of speaker/hearer
understanding: releases from all expectations.
Rising/fall-rising High Projected not to alter the existing state of speaker/
hearer understanding: invites adjudication.
Rising/fall-rising Mid Projected not to alter the existing state of speaker/
hearer understanding: expects concurrence.
Rising/fall-rising Low Projected not to alter the existing state of speaker/
hearer understanding: releases from all expectations.