70 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
(31) [(a) My new car manual is almost unreadable
L H%
(b) It’s quite annoying]
L L%
(c) I spent two hours fi guring out how to use the jack
L L%P&H state that the presence of an H% boundary tone in (30b) signals
that (30b) is to be interpreted as the opening part of a unit which is
completed by (30c). The referent of it in (30) is my spending two hours
fi guring out how to use the jack. The L% boundary tone in (31b) signals
that the utterance is not to be interpreted with respect to any following
utterance but is in fact the fi nal part of a unit. The H% in (31a) indicates
that the referent of it in (31b) is my new car manual. L% signals to the
hearer that the IP ‘has a separate and equal status in the discourse’ (1991:
307) while H% signals that the IP is incomplete in the sense that there is
more to come.
To conclude, P&H’s theory, rewritten in terms of tone movement, states
that rising tone indicates that the utterance is not yet complete and
that the interpretation of the part of the utterance with rising tone is
dependent upon a subsequent part of the utterance with falling tone.
Utterances with falling tone represent independent pieces of informa-
tion. These fi ndings appear, regardless of whether a tone unit most
closely corresponds to an IP or an intermediate phrase, to be almost
identical to Halliday’s view (1967: 37) that rising tone signals incomplete
or minor information while falling tone indicates major information.
Pierrehumbert’s claims are not incompatible with Brazil’s view that an
increment requires at least one falling tone unit before it has the poten-
tial to tell. Pierrehumbert’s fi ndings however, must be treated with some
caution because her fi ndings are based on utterances derived and elicited
by researchers under experimental conditions (Chun 2002: 39); there-
fore the data she studied may not be representative of how people use
language to manage their daily affairs.
Gussenhoven (1983: 17–22 and 201–2) argues that speakers label
their contributions to the discourse based upon the state of background
understanding existing between themselves and their hearers. Speech is
comprised both of background which is:
(the) body of knowledge around the world operated upon by speakers
and hearers which they assume to be mutually shared.^20