A Review of A Grammar of Speech 47
clear that it is not an initiating increment which requires adjudication.
Yet, by defi nition, all high terminations invite adjudication. In (67), the
hearers did not overtly respond: their silence can be taken as a tacit positive
adjudication. The lack of negative adjudication signals that the speaker
has completed a telling increment. As an invitation proffered is still an
invitation which the hearer may at least potentially decide to take up it is
possible to imagine a context where the speaker and hearer are both rail-
way buffs and the speaker is not entirely certain of his own knowledge. In
which case the invitation to adjudicate functions in a similar manner to the
high termination in (66); the increment is transformed into an initiating
increment. Overt adjudication completes the increment while silence,
i.e. tacit positive adjudication, retransforms the initiating increment back
into a retrospective telling increment.
In (67) one further instance of high key/termination and two of high
key occur. The initial high key on by functions to signal that a new topic
which was not predictable from the context has been introduced into
the discourse. The high key on trains in the third tone unit of the fi rst
increment indicates either that the information that the trains could manage
the gradients contrasts with the previously established context or more likely
signals a particularizing key: trains is highlighted as crucial over and above
the surrounding information; the trains and nothing else could manage
the gradients.
Had the speaker completed his utterance after the tone unit containing
the high termination on across he would have completed an increment and
invited overt adjudication that the Great Central line usually went across the
valleys. However, for his own individual reasons, he chose not to invite
overt adjudication. Instead he produced two further referring tone units
both of which ended in mid termination and signalled that he anticipated
concurrence of the increment. The high termination on across functions to
focus the hearer’s attention by inviting them to make a mental or private
adjudication ‘yes or no’. Such an invitation to privately adjudicate whether in
fact the trains went across and not through/round/under etc. the valleys heightens
the signifi cance of the lexical element across. The speaker presents across as
the most salient lexical item within the increment.
Example (67) suggests that increment-fi nal termination invites adjudication
of the entire increment. Increment-initial high key indicates that the following
increment is contrary to previous expectations such as the abandonment of
the previous topic or the introduction of a fresh topic. Instances of high key
and high termination internal to increments add communicative value to
tone units within the increment.