42 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
Many scholars such as Pike (1945), O’Connor and Arnold (1973), and
Brown (1990) recognize high, mid and low variants of falling and rising
tones but as their theories of intonation are premised upon the belief that
the primary function of intonation is attitudinal, discussion of their views
will be confi ned to points where direct links can be made between their
views and those of others who recognize that intonation also functions
communicatively to regulate discourse.
Halliday (1967: 53) and Tench (1996: 75) argue that a mid fall is the
neutral or unmarked choice; high and low falls realize secondary tones.
Mid falls indicate either major information and/or they complete the utter-
ance (Tench 1996: 80–1). Selection of a marked tone, they claim, realizes
an additional attitudinal function. A high fall signals a forceful attitude or
the unexpectedness of the information;^19 a low fall signals a mild attitude or
that the information is expected.
Pike (1945) notates both the pitch level from which the tone movement
occurs and the pitch level to which it rises or falls. He marks four levels of
pitch with 1 the highest and 4 the lowest. Falls from 2 to 4 are moderate
and recognized as neutral and are, according to Pike (ibid. 45), ‘possibly
the most frequent for the majority of English speakers’. Pike classifi es falls
from 1 to 4 as ‘wide’ while falls from 3 to 4 are ‘narrow’. Wide and narrow
falls have distinctive meanings which Tench (1990: 425) points out are
‘identical to Halliday’s’. However, Pike also recognizes ‘half falls’ such as
2 to 3, 1 to 3 and 1 to 2 which do not appear in Halliday’s taxonomy and
to which Pike ascribes distinctive attitudinal meanings. Half falls, however,
are classifi able in terms of high, mid and low termination: any fall from 1 is,
in Brazil’s terminology, a fall coupled with high termination; from 2 it is
a fall with mid termination and from 3 a fall with low termination. Brazil,
however, unlike Pike, does not regard the depth of the fall as communica-
tively signifi cant.
Prior to moving on to discuss termination coupled with rising tone it is
useful to draw some similarities between the work discussed above and
that of Brazil. The notion that ‘mid’ is the neutral value accords well with
Brazil’s view that mid termination expects concurrence: speakers neither
invite adjudication of their utterances, i.e. invite a contrastive high-key
response, nor signal that they have no expectations as to their hearer’s
response. The factor ‘high’ adds forcefulness or signals the unexpectedness
of the information which appears to be precisely the sort of information
which a speaker might invite adjudication of, and the factor ‘low’ indicates
that the information is expected or routine, i.e. information that neither
invites adjudication nor expects concurrence.