A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

The Psychological Foundations of the Grammar 63

Phonetically, the contradiction contour is a high fall from elephantiasis
followed by a low rise from incurable (Ladd 1980: 150 and Gussenhoven
(1983: 255). Liberman and Sag’s claim is that the intonation contour of
a high fall followed by a low rise always realizes a contradiction. Brazil
(1985: 379), however, points out that:

An assertion like ‘Elephantiasis isn’t incurable’, if placed in a discourse

at a point where it denies the truth of some preceding assertion or

implication will be ‘contradictory’ whatever contour is chosen: the value

of the intonation has to be seen as some socially motivated modifi cation

of the act of contradiction.

In other words, the utterance Elephantiasis isn’t incurable when intoned without
the contradiction contour may realize a contradiction depending on the
context in which it is uttered: see example (9) from Gunter (1972) where a fall
accompanies a contradiction. The strong version of the one-to-one hypothesis
is untenable. This fi nding is in accord with Gussenhoven’s (1983: 194) obser-
vation that it is not generally believed that one-to-one correspondences exist
between linguistic forms, including intonation, and speech acts.
Couper-Kuhlen (1986: 165) demonstrates that the weaker version is
equally untenable. She provides the following examples^16 and shows that
utterances with explicit performative marking ‘do not appear to differ sys-
tematically in terms of intonational shape’.

(11) Utterance Speech Act

I invite you to our \city Commissive

I apologise for the \mistake Expressive

I request the honour of your \presence Directive

I ask whether that is \right Assertive

She notes that, even though each utterance realizes a different and distinct
illocutionary force, they can all naturally take falling intonation. Any
potential role intonation may have in marking the illocutionary force of
utterances with explicit performative marking is neutralized by the explicit
performative verbs.
Sag and Liberman (1975: 488 and 494) argue that intonation can disam-
biguate the illocutionary force of utterances which do not contain explicit
performatives. To illustrate they provide example (12),

(12) Why don’t you move to California