Key and Termination – Increments 193
Ten out of the eleven low keys in the corpus project the equivalence of
tonic segments within the increment e.g. (45) and (46). The sole excep-
tion, which has been presented as (42) above, results from Gc’s momentary
diffi culties with the text. He repeats the tone unit but does not reselect low
key; in other words the value of terrorism is not presented as being equivalent
to the previous tonic segment.
(45) and REACH the con/CLUsions // that we were ↓GOing to \REACH //
c Ø V' d N+ W+ N V V' V' Ø #
INT2 INT3 INT4 INT5 INT6 TS
[T1-Bs-12]Bs’ selection of low key in (45) projects a context where irrespective of the
terrorist attack the discussion will continue and as a result arrive at the only
set of possible conclusions. Gc in (46) projects a context where he equates
this country and the other civilised nations throughout the world. By so doing he
includes this country in the set of civilised nations and distinguishes this set
from others who are not civilized.
(46)... // in this /COUNtry // and in other ↓CIVilized NAtions throughOUT the \↓WORLD //
Int Int Ts
[T1—Gc-21]Table 7.12 shows that the readers selected low key/termination far more
frequently that they did low termination. There was a strong tendency for low
key/termination (79.2 per cent) to occur in increment fi nal position which
may suggest that the low-termination value overrides the low-key value.
Brazil (1997: 64), however, in a brief and terse discussion of low key/
termination argues that:
there is a special constraint inherent in the equative function... [it] is
not potentially redundant... The ‘additional information’ it projects has
to have some kind of justifi cation in the context of interaction.Thus, it seems that all the instances of low key/termination should be
justifi ed as equative in the context of the interaction. All instances of
low key/termination were examined in order to see whether or not this
proved to be the case. The results are summarized in Table 7.13.