ABSTRACT

It seemed it might be an illuminating exercise to take a portion of text and point out all the interesting intonational features described separately in this study. This has the advantage of showing the various features in combination and also in context-an important point, since the choice of a particular feature is not arbitrary, but depends to some extent on what has gone before, interaction between speakers, and so on. For the purpose of this explication, a passage out of text D (dialogue) was chosen, more or less at random. Text D itself was chosen because it has rather more varied intonation than text N (narrative). The passage is not from the beginning of the analysed text. It begins after a pause in the conversation, at a point where one speaker introduces a sort of recapitulation, and a new cycle of the argument begins. It ends where the same speaker, driven into a corner, makes an appeal for support to an outside observer, who has taken no part in the conversation hitherto. Thus the passage chosen has some sort of natural boundaries. It extends from the beginning of clause 114 to the end of clause 153. In the description which follows, interesting features are pointed out, and also comments are added, attempting to explain the reasons for particular choices in the intonation. The unit for description is the tone-group. Where the tone-group boundaries do not coincide with clause boundaries, this is noted, so that where boundaries are not mentioned, it may be assumed that they coincide.