Booklet Phonetics 2 E&B - 2021 With Table of Contents

ISP JVG- Phonetics & Phonology II- Streams B & E
Lecturer: Prof. Lic. Andrea Perticone

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Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires Instituto Superior del Profesorado

Ministerio de Educación “Dr. Joaquín V. González”
PROFESORADO DE INGLÉS
PROFESORADO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR EN INGLÉS
ASIGNATURA: FONÉTICA Y FONOLOGÍA II
COMISIONES: 2º B Y E
CÁTEDRA:
Prof. Lic. Andrea Perticone
Cursada: 2021
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INDEX
Contenidos ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Metodología de trabajo .............................................................................................................................. 8
Actividades ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Bibliografía obligatoria.............................................................................................................................. 9
Bibliografía complementaria ................................................................................................................... 10
Sitios y Recursos de Internet para consulta y práctica de percepción auditiva ................................... 10
COURSE REGULATIONS..................................................................................................................... 10
List of Acronyms used in this course ...................................................................................................... 13
Tonality or chunking ............................................................................................................................... 14
Intonation Phrases (IPs) or tone units ...................................................................................................... 15
To chunk or not to chunk... And where to chunk ................................................................................ 16
Tonality: practice exercises. Internal criteria. .......................................................................................... 21
Tonicity: Inside the Intonation Phrase .................................................................................................... 22
FOCUS and domain or scope of focus: awareness activities .................................................................. 23
Focus and scope of focus: broad and narrow focus ............................................................. 25
What about function words? ................................................................................................................... 25
When is information ‘new1’? ................................................................................................................... 26
Types of old information: verbatim, paraphrastic, physical evidence, given or implied by context. ...... 26
Reaccentuation of old information: when? .............................................................................................. 28
Prominence from a perceptual point of view ........................................................................................... 29
Prominence, sense selection, predictability and focus: The discoursal approach from a cognitive point
of view ..................................................................................................................................................... 30
Relationship with the concept of “Old Information” by A. Cruttenden .................................................. 42
Practice: sense selection and unpredictability ......................................................................................... 43
More on tonicity and nucleus placement ................................................................................................. 45
Hypernyms, hyponyms, old information and narrow focus. ................................................................... 48
Diálogos en español para reconocimiento de foco y núcleo .................................................................... 52
Tonicity: Exceptions to the LLI Rule. ELLIRs. Awareness activity ....................................................... 53
ELLIRs: Exceptions to the Last Lexical Item Rule ................................................................................. 55
An algorithm for the determination of onset and nucleus placement. ..................................................... 61
Tonicity and ELLIRS: Non –nuclear or non-tonic expressions .............................................................. 62
Tonicity: ELLIRS- practice exercises. From Dickerson. ........................................................................ 65
Dialogues for transcription. Mark onset and nucleus. From Dickerson. ................................................. 66
More dialogues for transcription (Dickerson) ......................................................................................... 67
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in Causative have/get................................................................................... 68
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in Noun+ short, predictable Rel Cl .............................................................. 69
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in Existential constructions ......................................................................... 69
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in structures with Wh-Adjectival+Direct Object ......................................... 70
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ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in ‘Explanation’ Sentences (explanatory function) ..................................... 70

Contrastive Focus: nucleus on function words. Practice. ........................................................................ 71
I can't stand the stuff: Non- prominence on final nouns of general reference and approximatives ..... 73
Tonicity: highlighting polarity. ................................................................................................................ 76
Nuclei on Time-focusing adverbials (TFAs) ........................................................................................... 80
Prominence in reflexive and emphatic pronouns:.................................................................................... 81
Accentuation of compound nouns ........................................................................................................... 84
More on tonicity ...................................................................................................................................... 86
The third intonation system: tone and its metafunctions. ........................................................................ 87
An Outline of Brazil’s Discoursal Approach to Intonation: Introduction to the forms of intonation . .... 87
Proclaiming and referring tones: the influence of phonetic form on perception ................................. 88
Abstract meanings of intonation.......................................................................................................... 91
A summary of the attitudinal approach (O’Connor & Arnold, 1972) and its shortcomings. ................ 101
Brazil’s Discoursal Approach to Intonation: proclaiming and referring tones with a transactional
function. ................................................................................................................................................. 112
Assigning proclaiming and referring tones ....................................................................................... 112
Proclaiming and referring tones in Question- Answer Exchanges .................................................... 113
Use of referring tone to express reservation (implicational fall-rise)................................................ 114
The interactional function of tones. ................................................................................................... 116
The Intonation of Questions- discoursal approach (Brazil) .................................................................. 118
Tone in questions and social elicitation ................................................................................................. 122
Tone Meanings according to Linguistic Metafunctions: Chart ......................................................... 128
The intonation of questions- grammatical approach ( by W.R. Lee)..................................................... 129
Key and Termination: Guiding questions .............................................................................................. 130
Key: practice activities .......................................................................................................................... 131
Dialogues for transcription from The New Making Polite Noises ........................................................ 132
1. Introductions........................................................................................................................... 132
2. Showing interest. .................................................................................................................... 133
3. Asking for information. .......................................................................................................... 133
4. Requests for service: showing appreciation. .......................................................................... 134
5. Asking for things. ................................................................................................................... 134
6. Invitations: acceptance and refusal. ........................................................................................ 135
7. Offers ...................................................................................................................................... 135
8. Suggestions for joint action. ................................................................................................... 136
9. Asking for permission. ........................................................................................................... 136
10. Complaints and apologies....................................................................................................... 137
11. Persuasion and advice. ........................................................................................................... 137
12. Modesty .................................................................................................................................. 138
13. Asking for help ....................................................................................................................... 138
14. Sympathy and encouragement................................................................................................ 139
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STUDY GUIDE: Questions for revision and exam preparation. .......................................................... 139
Prominence ........................................................................................................................................ 139
Prominence in the word..................................................................................................................... 140
Discourse analysis ............................................................................................................................. 141
Questions on Brown & Yule (see Bibliography) .............................................................................. 141
Cruttenden, Intonation, Chapter 4 ..................................................................................................... 141
The structure of spoken discourse. Mc Carthy (see Bibliography) ................................................... 142
Word stress ........................................................................................................................................ 142
Features of spoken discourse: elements of Conversation analysis. (Yule)........................................ 143
The tone unit (O'Connor vs. Brazil) .................................................................................................. 143
Paul Tench, The Intonation Systems of English, Chapters 1-3 ......................................................... 143
The fall (all three approaches) ........................................................................................................... 144
The rise (ditto) ................................................................................................................................... 144
The fall- rise ...................................................................................................................................... 144
Key and termination .......................................................................................................................... 145
Intonation of questions ...................................................................................................................... 145
Orientation......................................................................................................................................... 145
ABOUT THIS BOOKLET

This booklet explores the main aspects of the forms and functions of the English intonation systems, and
provides you with opportunities for application of the theory to the practice. It is not intended to replace a
careful reading of the assigned bibliography, but to supplement it.
Reading, doing the practice activities and taking an active participation in class are essential for your learning
process.
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Contenidos
Unidad 1: Fonología suprasegmental. Prominencia y grados de acentuación.
Introducción y sensibilización auditiva a los fenómenos prosódicos. Identificación auditiva

de puntos de prominencia. Categorización de prominencia según grados.
Definiciones: fonético vs. fonológico. Acústico/fonético y percepto.
Detección auditiva de eventos prosódicos que contribuyen a la prominencia en la emisión: el step-up, el
onset; el núcleo, el tono descendente. Sílabas no prominentes.
1.a Conceptos fundamentales de la teoría de prominencia.

Rasgos prosódicos que contribuyen a la prominencia y su jerarquía: variación tonal, altura tonal, intensidad,
duración, calidad. Distintos grados de prominencia en la palabra aislada. Diferencia entre Accent (acento
prosódico primario) y stress (acento prosódico). Notación. Desplazamiento del acento (stress shift).
Bibliografía1: Ortiz Lira , págs. 9-17; Gimson (cualquier edición).
1.b Acentuación léxica. Acentuación en palabras simples: sustantivos, verbos lexicales,

adverbios. Acentuación en polisílabos. Interacción entre prominencia y afijos: afijos que atraen el
acento; afijos que lo repelen; afijos neutralizantes. Acento primario. Regla de alternancia y acento
secundario. Representación interlineal. Altura tonal y movimiento tonal: introducción a la noción de
tono ó acento tonal.
Bibliografía: Ortiz Lira, págs. 20-29
Actividades de práctica: Hewings, págs. 26-37
1.c Acentuación de palabras compuestas. Principales reglas y sus excepciones. Stress shift.
Compuestos comunes en los libros de enseñanza elementales.
Acentuación post-léxica. Grados de prominencia y su distribución en la emisión. Ritmo. Diferencias
entre el inglés (isocronicidad) y el español. Interacción entre la isocronicidad y el proceso de
gradación.
Bibliografía: Ortiz Lira, págs 30-47; Wells, págs. 100-105
Actividades de práctica: Hewings, págs. 38-47
1.d Dos enfoques de la prominencia en unidades de habla. El enfoque tradicional (gramático-

prosódico/ acústico, centrado en las categorías gramaticales del lenguaje) y el
cognitivo/mentalista (centrado en el hablante/oyente).
Bibliografía: Kingdon, pp. 173 a 207;
Unidad 2: Prominencia según el enfoque discursivo de la entonación
Características sistémicas. La estructura de la unidad tonal. Segmento proclítico, segmento tónico

y segmento enclítico. La entonación y la estructura del discurso.
Bibliografía: Brazil (1997) Cap 1.
La prominencia según el enfoque discursivo: Predictabilidad de los ítems de información.
Paradigmas general y existencial. Relaciones paradigmáticas (verticales) y sintagmáticas
(horizontales). Sistemas binarios. Relaciones de sinonimia existencial. El contexto de situación y
de interacción. Proyección. Selección de sentido. Predictabilidad y no-selección.
1 Ver títulos y datos de las publicaciones en la Sección de Bibliografía obligatoria

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Bibliografía: Brazil (1997) Cap 2; Perticone (2016) (ver el artículo en cuadernillo de cátedra)
Actividades de práctica: Bradford, Unidad 1. Brazil(1994) Unidad 7.
Unidad 3: Entonación y sus sistemas. Las tres Ts.
3.a Sistemas. Elementos estructurales. Las funciones de la entonación: organización de la

estructura de la información, función comunicativa, expresión de la actitud, marcador de estructura
sintáctica, marcador de estructura textual, identificación de estilo discursivo.
Bibliografía: Tench (1996) Cap 1.
3.b Tonalidad. Definición de tonalidad. División de la emisión en frases entonativas. Pausas y

otros marcadores de fronteras prosódicas: criterios fonético/prosódicos y gramaticales/ sintácticos.
Tonalidad marcada y no marcada.
Bibliografía: Tench (1996), Cap 2; Wells, Cap. 4; Cruttenden, cap. 3
Actividades de práctica: Hewings 70-71; Cuadernillo de cátedra.
3.c Foco. Definición de foco. Dominio y su relación con grados de prominencia. Foco amplio y
foco estrecho. Foco contrastivo. Estado de la información: nueva y dada o predecible (old) ó
recuperable a través del contexto o co-texto. Relaciones de sinonimia existencial, hiponimia,
perífrasis, repetición verbatim. Evidencia física. End-weight and end-focus principles. Acentuación
de information dada: insists and counterpresuppositionals.
Bibliografía: Cruttenden, p. 75-95; Tench Cap 3; Hurford & Heasley, Units 9-10-11.
3.d Tonicidad: definición. Emplazamiento de la sílaba nuclear o tónica. Regla del foco amplio o
último elemento lexical. (LLIR) La estructura de la frase tonal según O’Connor y Arnold. Tonicidad
marcada y no marcada.
Excepciones a la regla de foco amplio:
Acentuación primaria de la frase nominal en event sentences, explanation sentences.
Deacentuación de estructuras verbales de baja carga semántica o recuperables a través del
contexto. Marcadores discursivos textuales, interpersonales e ideacionales. Adverbiales
contextuales, vocativos y apelativos en posición final. Ítems de baja carga semántica: pronombres
reflexivos, adverbs of proper functioning, nouns of general reference, nouns of wide denotation y
otros elementos deacentuados.
Acentuación contrastiva; reactivación de la información dada.
Tonicidad en foco lexical: el caso de los ítems enough, again, one, so, too, as well, indeed,
instead, either, at all, anyway.
Foco y estructura gramatical: anticipación (even), anticipatory it, cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences.
Bibliografía: Tench, Cap 3; Wells, Cap 3 (págs 93-184), Ortiz Lira, págs 54-73.
Actividades de práctica: Cuadernillo de cátedra (Dickerson); ejercicios en Wells, Cap. 3; Hewings págs. 72-83.
Unidad 4: Nociones fundamentales del análisis del discurso, análisis de la conversación y

pragmática.
Elementos de análisis del discurso: El contexto de situación y de interacción según el modelo de

Hymes. El Principio Cooperativo de Grice. El Principio de Cortesía. La imagen social. Análisis de
la conversación. Estructura de la conversación: intercambios, pares adyacentes. Características
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de la interacción: negociación, turnos, reciprocidad, estructura de la información. Teorís de los

actos de habla. El lenguaje como conducta. Forma y función ilocucionaria de los actos de habla.
Funciones del lenguaje: textual, transaccional e interaccional. Características.
Bibliografía: McCarthy, Caps 1 y 5; Widdowson, cap. 6; Yule, Cap. 7; Hurford & Heasley, caps. 1-3 y 6-7.
Actividades de práctica: Cuadernillo de cátedra.
Unidad 5: Tono o acento tonal nuclear según enfoques gramatico-actitudinales.
Enfoque gramatico-actitudinal. La forma acústica de los cinco tonos ingleses: descenso,

ascenso, descenso-ascenso, ascenso-descenso, sustentación.
Relación entre tipos de oración y tonos: declarativas, interrogativas, imperativas, exclamativas.
Significados locales. Tonos por defecto. El acento de descenso-ascenso implicativo. Secuencias
tonales: tonos de aproximación y tonos de cola. Uptalk o el uso de HTR (tono de ascenso alto) en
declarativas. Patrones entonativos pre-nucleares: estáticos y dinámicos.
Bibliografía: Wells, cap 2; Lee, ‘Intonation at work’, pp.29-71 (Significados actitudinales más comunes de los
cinco tonos.); Tench (1996) pp. 109-115; O’Connor and Arnold, Cap II: ‘Intonation and meaning’, pp. 46-89.
Unidad 6: Enfoque discursivo de la entonación. Niveles de análisis. Actos de proclama y de

referencia. Convergencia y divergencia.
Función transaccional de la entonación. El estatus de la información en el discurso: nueva y dada.

Área de convergencia. Tonos de proclama y de referencia. Tema y rema.
Funciones textuales del tono. Topicalización. Convergencia y divergencia textuales.
Funciones interaccionales/ interpersonales. El significado social de los tonos. Convergencia y
divergencia interaccionales.
Bibliografía:
Widdowson,Cap. 6; Brazil (1997) Cap 4; McCarthy, Cap. 4; Tench (1992), cap 9; Brazil & Sinclair, Caps. 17, 18,
19, 20, 21.
Actividades de práctica: Bradford, Unidades 2y 3. Cuadernillo de cátedra.
Unidad 7: Clave de altura tonal.
Clave alta, media y baja. Funciones textuales de la clave alta: apertura de la secuencia tonal;
cambio de tópico o de estadío en la transacción; contraste: contradicción, oposición binaria,
particularización. Clave media: adición. Clave baja: cierre de secuencia; función de igualización:
reformulación, efecto, consecuencia lógica o por implicación; función restrictiva: frases nominales
apositivas, proposiciones relativas.
Bibliografía: Brazil (1997) cap 3. Brazil, Coulthard y Johns, cap. 2; Brazil &Sinclair, Caps. 22,23,24,25.
Actividades de práctica: Bradford, unidades 6 y 7. Cuadernillo de cátedra.
Unidad 8: Dominancia y control de la interacción. Valores interpersonales de los tonos.
Relaciones y estatus de los participantes en la interacción oral. Dominancia: definición. Tonos r+ y

p+.
Bibliografía: Brazil (1997), cap. 5.
Actividades de práctica: Bradford, unidad 5. Brazil (1994), unidades 5 y 6. Cuadernillo de cátedra.
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Unidad 9: La entonación de preguntas según el enfoque discursivo.
Pregunta transaccional: finding out questions y checking questions. Establecimiento de área de

convergencia. Metafunción interpersonal: función de suasión (Exchange of goods and services).
La pregunta fática: fórmulas y rituales sociales (social elicitation). Efectos de la dominancia en las
preguntas. Dominancia en el nivel interaccional y el textual. Preguntas declarativas.
Bibliografía: Brazil (1997), cap 6.
Actividades de práctica: Brazil (1994), Unidad 4; Cuadernillo de cátedra.
Unidad 10: La secuencia tonal y la clave de terminación.
Estructura de la secuencia tonal: paratono. Clave de terminación: alta, media y baja y sus funciones
interpersonales. Clave alta: adjudicación; clave media: concurrencia; clave baja: cierre de secuencia;
ausencia de constreñimiento de la reacción del interlocutor.
Concordancia tonal (Pitch concord). Ruptura de la concordancia. El rol organizador de la secuencia tonal en
el discurso.
Bibliografía: Brazil, Coulthard y Johns, cap. 5; Brazil &Sinclair, Cap. 26.
Actividades de práctica: Cuadernillo de cátedra.
Unidad 11: Orientación en el discurso
Orientación directa y oblicua. El tono de sustentación (tono “cero”). La entonación del discurso en
la enseñanza de la lengua inglesa. Prosodia y estructura discursiva de la interacción en el aula. La
entonación en el lenguaje de aula. La entonación en el relato de narrativas.
Bibliografía: Brazil, CV, cap 8; Brazil, Coulthard y Johns, cap. 7
Actividades de práctica: Cuadernillo de cátedra. Brazil PALE, Unidad 9.
Metodología de trabajo
Se intentará promover una construcción significativa de los nuevos aprendizajes dentro de un enfoque
pedagógico centrado en el alumno. Para ello se enfatizará la participación y responsabilidad del alumno/a
como principal protagonista del proceso de aprendizaje. Se asume que para que sea significativo, el proceso
de aprendizaje debe ser auto-iniciado y auto-gestionado; por lo tanto, se alentará a los alumnos/as para que
participen activamente en el descubrimiento y construcción de conocimientos y habilidades en vez de
recibirlos directamente de la docente.
Se pondrá énfasis en el aprendizaje como proceso, y no como mero producto. El foco estará en el desarrollo
paulatino de las habilidades lingüístico- fonológicas y la adquisición de estrategias de aprendizaje. Se
alentará a los alumnos para que desarrollen la propiopercepción y el monitoreo de la producción propia.
Se le dará importancia tanto al enfoque tradicional (gramatical-actitudinal) y al discursivo, tomando de cada
uno los aspectos que mejor contribuyen a la formación del futuro docente. En cuanto al enfoque discursivo
de la entonación, se incluirán algunas nociones básicas de pragmática, análisis del discurso y análisis de la
conversación. Se estimulará a los alumnos para que vean la entonación como una elección que hace el
hablante entre los distintos recursos que ofrece un sistema para transmitir su mensaje, el cual es no sólo un
código lingüístico sino también la resultante de la interacción entre variables individuales, contextuales y
sociales.
Actividades
o Actividades de aplicación de la teoría

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o Cuestionarios en clase y como tarea para el hogar.

o Transcripciones fonémico-tonéticas en clase y como tarea para el hogar.
o Dictados fonémico-tonéticos en clase y como tarea para el hogar.
o Cuadros sinópticos
o Cuadros comparativos (articulación transversal)
o Preparación y edición de notas de clase.
o Decodificación y transcripción fonémica y tonética de material de audio extraído de textos utilizados
en la EGB y enseñanza media. Justificación de la entonación encontrada, basándose en la teoría.
o Decodificación y transcripción fonémica y tonética de material auténtico, tomado de videos. Pueden
ser películas, series de televisión, programas de noticias, podcasts de radio, etc. donde se puedan
apreciar una o más variantes del inglés. Justificación de la entonación encontrada, basándose en la
teoría.
o Trabajo de integración: Análisis longitudinal del sistema de tonos del inglés. Usos y significados
de cada tono según los distintos enfoques vistos en el curso.
Recursos didácticos
La cátedra contará con un aula virtual en www.edmodo.com, que contendrá:

a) Material de referencia;
b) Guías de lectura;
c) Artículos escritos por la profesora;
d) Material de audio para práctica de dictado;
e) Textos para práctica de transcripción;
f) Links a videos asignados para decodificación;
g) Foro para consultas entre alumnos (las consultas a la docente se realizarán siempre en clase; nunca
en forma virtual);
h) Cronograma de evaluaciones y trabajos asignados;
i) Enlaces útiles.
Todos los alumnos deberán registrarse en el aula virtual. El nombre de usuario deberá ser el primer nombre y
el apellido. Sus perfiles deberán incluir una foto tipo DNI. Deberán configurar sus cuentas para permitir que
Edmodo les envíe notificaciones a sus casillas de correo electrónico cuando algún miembro publique ó suba
material al sitio. Los alumnos/as serán responsables de entrar al grupo de Edmodo frecuentemente y
mantenerse al tanto de cualquier anuncio, novedad o material subido por la profesora ó compañeros/as de
curso.
Bibliografía obligatoria
Bradford, B. (1990). Intonation in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brazil, D. (1994) Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brazil, D. (1994) The Intonation of Questions. Conferencia dictada por el Dr. Brazil en Buenos Aires,
Argentina. Transcripción realizada por la Prof. Graciela C. Moyano.
Brazil, D. (1997). The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Brazil, D. and Sinclair, (1982). Teacher Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brazil, D. J. Coulthard and C. Jones (1980) Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching. London:
Longman.
Cruttenden, A.(1997) Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dickerson, W.B. (1990) Stress in the speech Stream: The Rhythm of Spoken English USA: University of
Illinois Press.
Heargraves, R. And M. Fletcher (2002) The New Making Polite Noises: Social and Functional English for
Communication. UK: Brain Friendly Publications.
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Hewings, M. (2007). English Pronunciation in Use Advanced with Answers. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Lee, W.R. (1963). An English Intonation Reader. London: Macmillan.
McCarthy, M. (1991) Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
O’Connor, J.D. & Arnold, G.F. (1972). Intonation of Colloquial English. London: Longman
Ortiz Lira, H. (2008) Word stress and sentence accent. Cuaderno de la Facultad Nº 16, Serie Monografías
Temáticas. Santiago: Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación.
Tench (1992) Tone and the Status of Information. En Tench (1992) (Ed) Studies in Systemic Phonology.
London: St Martin's Press.
Tench, P. (1996). The Intonation Systems of English. London: Casell.
Wells, J.C. (2006) English intonation: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Widdowson, H (2007). Discourse Analysis. Oxford: OUP.
Yule, G. (1996) Pragmatics (Oxford Introductions to Language Study). Ed. H. Widdowson. Oxford: OUP.
Bibliografía complementaria
Brown, G. (1977). Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman

Brown, G. & G. Yule (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Caldiz, A. (2012) La prominencia prosódica en español y en inglés: Un análisis contrastivo [en línea]. IV
Jornadas de Español como Lengua Segunda y Extranjera, 7 y 8 de noviembre de 2012, La Plata, Argentina.
Experiencias, Desarrollos, Propuestas. En Memoria Académica.
http://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/trab_eventos/ev.2724/ev.2724.pdf
Kingdon, R. (1958) The groundwork of English intonation. London: Longmans.
Wennestrom, A. (2001)The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. New York: OUP.
Sitios y Recursos de Internet para consulta y práctica de percepción auditiva
English Speech Services (Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s page) https://www.englishspeechservices.com/

Dr. Lindsey’s Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtFuCBKQTItHCwfHRP9LIjQ
John Maidment’s Tip of the Day http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/eptotd/archive.htm
John Wells’ Blog: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/blog.htm
UCL University College London: Siphtra http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/project/siphtra.htm
Maidment, J. Newton: a resource designed to help you recognise General British English nuclear tones
http://blogjam.name/newton/index.htm
Real time Speech (pitch visualisation freeware) https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/sfs/rtpitch/
WASP (pitch contour tracking online) https://www.speechandhearing.net/laboratory/wasp/
WASP (freeware, installable) https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/sfs/wasp.php
COURSE REGULATIONS
THE LECTURER WILL:
1. provide syllabus contents and bibliography; as well as material for home dictations and
transcriptions, with and without key;
2. provide a set of home assignments; in the case of home dictations and transcriptions, the scripts must
be corrected by you (in colour) and uploaded to the assigned Google Drive, for teacher revision;
3. give feedback on your weekly reading, assignments and classroom activities;

11
4. present most (not all- see students’ duties below) of the theory and, based on your previous reading
of it, encourage you to make connections, reach conclusions, etc.
5. check that you have read (=studied) and check comprehension of the topics, especially home
readings and how your understanding of the theory is manifested in your application to the
practice; she will clarify any theoretical issues which may crop up as a result of your previous
and posterior readings.
6. keep students informed on their performance;

7. return marked assignments the next class.
Bear in mind that the class will be given on the assumption that you have
a) done your homework,
b) read the bibliography assigned, and
c) revised the theory taught in previous classes. You must always be responsible for keeping up to date with
the topics and skills already taught.
THE STUDENT WILL:
a) Always know what s/he is expected to do before and after each class;
b) Bring the necessary materials for each class;
c) do the homework for each class, using a pronunciation dictionary;
d) do the weekly reading before and after class;
e) let the teacher know about their difficulties and accomplishments in the subject.
f) Study on his/her own certain aspects of the theory that will not be presented by the teacher.
g) become familiar with the contents of the Edmodo group folders: books and their authors; book
chapters, lecturer's notes, class notes by classmates, links, audio, etc.
h) Be responsible for being up-to-date as regards posts and new uploads in Edmodo.
i) Upload weekly class notes to Edmodo (to be arranged with teacher).
MOST IMPORTANT:
The following is the key to success in this course:
You are here as a future professional. You want to become qualified for a future job and a profession.
Therefore, it is necessary that you assume responsibility for your academic development and your learning
process. The teacher will act as a facilitator, clarifying any theoretical concepts, suggesting sequencing of
readings and asking you questions to make you think. You will read, think, compare, contrast, organise,
systematise, make mind maps, tables, charts, and whatever is compatible with your cognitive and learning
styles and may promote your development.
12
Course tasks
You will be doing the following:
HOME READINGS
There will be a theory lesson every week and you will be expected to read the topic in the bibliography
before and after the class;
You will do the necessary research when this is requested.
DICTATION PRACTICE
There will be dictation practice to consolidate your acquisition of the English sounds and promote your
acquisition of basic intonation patterns. There will be dictations in class (as TPs with a mark). This practice
should be continued at home with the aid of recorded material, which will be available on Edmodo.
TRANSCRIPTION PRACTICE
The transcriptions are opportunities to practise predicting possible intonation patterns, based on your
knowledge of the theory. There will be transcriptions in class (as Tps, with a mark) and at home.
CONSIDERATIONS ON ALL ASSIGNMENTS (special & weekly homework)
Assignments will help you systematise the topics dealt with in class and provide further practice to keep you
up-to-date. There will be a lot of work to be done at home. Home assignments consist of dictations,
transcriptions, questionnaires, outlines, synopsis, etc. The hand-in dates will be announced by the teacher
ahead; therefore, assignments must be handed in on the appointed date, to ensure prompt correction. If you
have to miss class, you should send the assignment with a classmate. Not turning in the assignment on time
will impair your percentage of TP’s. Late assignments unduly justified will not be accepted.
CLASS WORK
Discussion of the theory topics covered so far and assigned ad home readings.
Practice activities and correction/ discussion of results/answers.
Special assignments, theoretical and practical- group or individual work.
Dictations and transcriptions in phonetic script.
Students’ reading aloud of home assignments and practice material.
A note on the use of our Edmodo group:

As stated in the syllabus, registration in our Edmodo group is compulsory. The aim of the group is to act as
storage of materials and as a medium for teacher announcements. Make sure you get notified by Edmodo of
every single action taken in the group, so as to keep up to date. Like the teacher’s posts to let her known
you have read them.
Any questions you may want to ask the teacher concerning theory, homework, etc., will have to be made
personally, in class, and not via Edmodo. You may use the group to ask fellow students, though.
If you happen to be absent from class, you are encouraged to post to the group, asking your fellow students
to tell you what was dealt with in class and what homework was set.
13
List of Acronyms used in this course
BF Broad Focus
Cf. Confere (Latin) = compare
CS Context-Setting
CVIE The Communicative Value of Intonation in English (bibliography)
DILT Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching (bibliography)
DO Direct Object
ELLIR Exception to the Last Lexical Item Rule
FCSAP Final Context Setting Adverbial of Place. Final: refers to unmarked position; Context-setting refers
to discoursal function
FCSAT Final Context Setting Adverbial of Time Final: refers to unmarked position; Context-setting
refers to discoursal function
FTFA Final Time Focusing Adverbial
H Head
HK High Key
IOI Implied Old Information
IP Intonation Phrase
LK Low Key
LLI Last Lexical Item ( = BR Rule)
LLI(R) Last Lexical Item (Rule)
MK Mid Key
N or Nuc Nucleus
NB Note Bene (latin) = note
NF Narrow Focus
O Onset
OI Old Information
p tone proclaiming tone (fall)
p+ tone dominant proclaiming tone (rise-fall)
PE Physical Evidence
pH pre-Head
POI Paraphrastic Old Information
r tone referring tone (fall-rise)
r+ tone dominant referring tone (rise)
Rel Cl Relative Clause
T Tail
TF Time Focusing
usu usually
VOI Verbatim Old Information
θ role theta role
0 tone zero tone (mid level)
A=P+S Accent is the combination of pitch height or pitch change and stress (loudness+duration)
14
Tonality or chunking
Awareness activities: Listening for Tonality
Track C1
As we speak, we group words into prosodic units depending on meaning. Listen and notice how this
speaker divides up what he is saying:
// I can remember as children// we were rather naughty// once// we stuck a picture// of an elephant// on the
back of Dad's coat// before he went out// of course he couldn't see it// so he didn't know why everyone was
laughing at him/ until he got to work// and took it off//
Track C7
Listen to the recording as many times as you need, and mark the boundaries ( // or /, depending on the degree
of disjunction) between IPs within these extracts. The first one has been done for you .
1 That's the main thing // and then If you've got any questions afterwards/ hopefully we'll still have time to
go through a few of them is that okay
2 She'd left when she had a baby and then decided not to go back although the job had been kept open for her
3 Tom dear where's the advert for this calculator because I don't know the address and I don't know who I've
got to make the cheque payable to
15
Intonation Phrases (IPs) or tone units
How do we identify intonation phrases (= tone units)? There are two kinds of criteria: external (auditory) and
internal (based on grammatical units).
External criteria: are based on clues perceived AUDITORILY. These clues can be given by the following
devices:
1) Pauses: The Prince of Wales (pause) visited Argentina.
2) Anacrusis: the rapid articulation of a number of unstressed syllables, e.g. and then there’s a in the
example below:
1 2 3
Óne twó thrée
One and two and three
One and a two and a three
One and then a two and them a three
One and then there’s a two and then there’s a three
3)Lengthening of a final syllable: On his way to the stationnn...
4) Changes in pitch direction. More technically, an obtrusion of pitch (the most prominent marker of
intonation group boundary)
Practice exercise: detecting prosodic boundaries and marking IPs following external (auditory) criteria.
Each of these extracts consists of three IPs. Put / in two of the four spaces to show where you expect the
speech unit boundaries to be.
EXAMPLE
when you read it carefully // it doesn't say anything // that's very critical
1 when I woke up I didn't even realise what time it was

2 of course it's written in a language that hardly anyone can understand
3 I was working late because they want it done as quickly as possible
4 because he was ill I didn't expect him to come to work
5 if I get some time I'll be over on the weekend to see you both
6 luckily we haven't had any rain since the day we arrived
7 it should never have been built in my opinion this new office building
Now listen to Audio Track C8 and check your answers. Then read the extracts aloud . Put short breaks
between IPs and link the words within them smoothly together without silent pauses.
16
Predicting possible IP boundaries

INTERNAL CRITERIA: based on grammatical and/or syntactic constituents.
IMPORTANT: We are going to use these criteria to chunk written texts. We may chunk subject, predicate,
adverbial adjuncts, non-defining relative clauses, and others. But this is not automatic; not every syntactic or
grammatical boundary may be chunked. Everything depends on the utterance we're analysing.
Although we're going to use grammatical criteria, we should bear in mind that we're going to analyse spoken
discourse. The unit of speech is the utterance, not the sentence.
To chunk or not to chunk... And where to chunk
1- FRONTED ADVERBIALS: when any adverbial is fronted in the sentence, it deserves a separate IP 
Chunk after the adverbial.
||After the party, they went home. || 2 IPs
2- FRONTED DISJUNCTS: Chunk after the disjunct.
||Obviously,  he didn’t know the answer. || 2 IPs
3- INITIAL VOCATIVES: when fronted, vocatives /  / constitute a separate IP. This is done
in order to highlight the vocative, which otherwise would be in its unmarked or canonical position, i.e.,
final.
|| Mary,  pass me the salt. || 2 IPs
NO chunking WHEN VOCATIVES ARE FINAL (though later on, we shall see an alternative analysis of final
vocatives):
|| Pass me the salt, Mary || (No chunking) 1 IP
4- TOPICALIZATION OF A DIRECT OBJECT. One way of marking information as the topic consists
in placing it in a position that is NOT the usual one for that particular constituent. For example, the
canonical or unmarked position for a DO (Direct Object) is after the transitive verb, as in:
I love chocolates, but I hate veggies.
Fronting of the direct object allows us to highlight the items ‘chocolate’ and veggies’, i.e. these DOs can be
made the topic or can be topicalised by placing them at the beginning of the sentence, a position which is
marked for the DO. This will require chunking of the fronted constituents.
||Chocolates/ I love/| but veggies/ I hate.||  notice how the fronting allows us to highlight the direct objects:
chocolate, veggies.
More examples of fronting:
||His explanations I find unacceptable. || The DO is fronted or topicalized; therefore, it deserves a
separate unit.
17
||Well I like her | but her husband  I can’t stand.||

Two co-ordinate clauses; one topicalised DO.
5- POSTPOSITION OF THE SUBJECT
For example, the canonical or unmarked position for a subject is the initial position, as in :
These chocolates are very fattening. We may choose to say this sentence as one IP or two IPs.
|| These chocolates | are very fattening|| 2 IPs (but usually there will be NO silent pause fater ‘chocolates’)
||These chocolates are very fattening|| only 1 IP
However, postponing the syntactic subject will require chunking:
||Very fattening  these chocolates||  Must be uttered in two IPs.
6- When the REFERENT of a pronoun is introduced later in the sent (informal, colloquial style):
||He behaved very well,  John did.|| 2 IPs
7- COORDINATE CLAUSES
||She got her degree  and we all celebrated. ||
The coordinating conjunction usu. belongs to the 2nd IP.
Cf:
||She got her degree and   we all celebrated. || (= Not only did she... but also we ...)
When the strong form of the coordinating conj. is used, its meaning changes ant it belongs to the 1 st. IP.
2) So far we have referred to clauses. Now we are going to refer to other types of grammatical units.
2-a) ADVERBIALS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE.
||He was at once employed in a `car factory.|| 2 IPS
First we have to apply the criterion of MAJOR CONSTITUENTS. The Subj. here is a pronoun. There is no
chunking after a pronoun so the suitable place for a chunk is that AFTER THE ADVERBIAL.
2-B) DISJUNCT AFTER THE SUBJECT
Peter, of course, earns a lot of money.--> admits two possible treatments of tonality.
The Subj. and the disjunct are both very short so, in this case, the disjunct can be assigned to one or the other
IG:
18
||Peter, of course, | earns a lot of money. ||
OR:
||Peter, | of course, earns a lot of money. ||
2-c) DISJUNCT AT THE END OF A SENTENCE: chunk BEFORE the disjunct.
||Richard has resigned, | officially. ||
‘Officially’ is not qualifying ‘resigned’; it is not an adverbial adjunct of manner. It is a disjunct reflecting
how the speaker got to know the news, or how the news was broken out, (with an official status) so it
qualifies the whole sentence. It may be fronted:
||Officially, | Richard has resigned. ||
Another example:
||The nursery, | incidentally, | grows very fine tomatoes. ||
||The nursery grows very fine tomatoes, | incidentally. ||
||Incidentally, | the nursery grows very fine tomatoes. ||
As can be seen above, the disjunct can be placed at the beginning of the sentence, after the Subject or at the
end; in any case, a disjunct modifies the whole sentence, so it deserves a separate IP.
NOTE ON DISJUNCTS AND IPs
In the example above, ‘incidentally’ may form IPs in the way ‘of course’ does. But ‘of course’ is more of a
speech filler, whereas ‘incidentally’ does have a meaning of its own (=’by the way’). Therefore,
‘incidentally’ is more deserving of a separate intonation phrase than ‘of course’.
2-d) PSEUDO-CLEFT SENTENCES: the copulative verb can be attached to either part of the sentence
because the verb is simply linking the clauses.
||What you should do | is read more||

Su
||What I want | is a chance to try||

OR:
||What I want is | a chance to try||
2-e) MEDIALLY-PLACED VOCATIVES: attach vocative to first unit (the vocative here is final in the
Subj.)
|| What you should do, John, | is read more. ||

Subj.
Cf.: ||John, | what you should do | is read more. ||

19
2-f) NON DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES TAKE chunking before & after.
||Workers, | whose wages have not been raised, | demand more benefits||
2-g) NOUN PHRASES AND NOUN CLAUSES IN APPOSITION TO A NOUN
||Gaudi, | the famous architect, | has given Barcelona an individual character||
Both the head and the appositive have the same intonation pattern, since they refer to the same thing. The
appositive provides further information on the head.
||I’ve just run across Mr. Green, | the butcher||
2-h) CHUNKING FOR EMPHATIC PURPOSES: some sentences, although short, may require chunking
for emphatic purposes.
|| I | beg | your | pardon|| (This type of chunking shows irritation, since every single word is highlighted)
2-i) PARALLEL STRUCTURES
|| But above all, / in formal sessions at ‘Downing Street, / in long private talks, / right through the evening, /
lasting far into the night,/ we discussed the ‘war problem||
All the FRONTED adjuncts are Prepositional Phrases. They are PARALLEL STRUCTURES in that they
exploit the same grammatical form.
2-J) PASSIVE VOICE: INFORMATIVE AGENT. We don’t normally chunk the agent if he/she/it is
predictable, but when it is pre- ir post –modified by semantically rich lexical items, we chunk them off, to
highlight the semantic content.
|| The murderer was finally arrested / by a very brave policeman.||
2-K) INTERROGATIVE TAGS admit several different treatments.
He’s passed, hasn’t he?
A declarative sentence and a tag, both with the same intonation pattern (fall) show that the speaker only
expects confirmation, is ascertaining / / a fact.
When confirmation is expected, there are two possibilities:
Either a) ||He’s passed / hasn’t he|| The speaker is almost certain and expects the listener’s
confirmation of this fact. (Notice the comma and other punctuation marks are not shown because the unit of
analysis is the utterance and not the sentence)
OR b) ||He’s passed hasn’t he|| No chunking; the tone is in the sentence, not in the tag.
20
|| He’s passed /  hasn’t he?|| This is in fact a checking question. The speaker expects an answer.
In this case there is only one possibility: chunking.
There is REVERSED POLARITY: neg/aff, aff/ neg. (Read more on polarity in Wells).
2-L) LONG GRAMMATICAL UNITS: Usually, into units have at the most 5-6 words, 6-7syllables.
||John explained / that it would be better to take precautions / before we sign the contract||
The that-clause is the DO to the verb ‘explained’. Within the DO, and Adverbial Adjunt of time is nested.
2-M) REPORTING CLAUSES
When the reporting clause is fronted, we may or may not chunk, depending on the length of the phrase.
||Peter said, / ‘I can’t come’|| Chunking here is made in order to highlight what Peter said.
||‘I can’t come’, Peter said.|| NO chunking. The Reporting Clause forms part of previous unit.
(Punctuation marks are shown only for illustrative purposes, but as stated above, they do not participate in an
analysis of the intonation. The correlate of stops, commas, question marks, etc., are represented by the tone).
2-N) CONDITIONAL SENTENCES.
|| I will if I can.|| NO chunking; although there is a conditional clause, it is too short to be chunked,
and the speaker utters is in one go.
|| If it rains, / I’ll stay at home.|| Adverbial of concession is fronted so as to highlight the condition under
which I’ll stay at home)
********************************************************************************
21
Tonality: practice exercises. Internal criteria.
Chunk the following texts wherever possible. When is it necessary to go against the guidelines on tonality?
Why?
1 Lost in London.
2 When the train reached London the young man left his carriage then stopped for a moment and glanced at
3 his diary to find the name of the hotel where he was booked to stay having gathered the necessary
4 information he signalled for a taxi jumped in and was taken through a maze of streets to a small hotel
5 somewhat off the beaten track he had never been to the city before and was thrilled with the novelty of
6 visiting it. after being shown to his room he changed his clothes and set out on a journey of exploration
7 growing tired he decided to return but he could not remember the name of his hotel nor even the street it
8 was in and he could not consult his diary because he had left it in the hotel he walked around miserably for
9 hours until he was almost in despair then he looked up and saw his hotel facing him
10
11 Buying a saw
12 I had needed some new bookshelves for a long time so during my holiday I decided to tackle the job
13 myself not that I am very clever with my hands but it did not seem too difficult and as I had already said
14 that we could not afford to go away I thought it would be prudent not to spend money having it done
15 professionally I bought the wood at the local handicraft shop and I had plenty of screws but I found that my
16 old saw which had been left behind by the previous owner of the house was not good enough and I decided
17 to buy a new one that was my first mistake my second was to go t the biggest ironmonger in London and
18 ask for a saw you would think it was simple wouldn’t you to buy a saw but it is not I said to the man
19 behind the counter I want a saw he was a nice man and did his best for me yes sir what kind of saw oh a
20 saw for cutting wood yes sir but we have fifteen different kinds for different jobs what did you want it for I
21 explained about my bookshelves and felt like an ignorant fool in a world of experts which was true. He saw
22 that I was a novice and was very kind he told me what I should need and advised me to have a ladies’ size
23 easier to manage for the beginner sir he was not being nasty just helpful and I was grateful to him he also
24 sold me a book on woodwork for schoolboys I and I’ve been reading it with great interest the next time I’m
25 on holiday I shall start on the shelves
More exercises on tonality
Track C9
Give special prominence to the words in bold by assigning an IP domain to each one. Read the
extracts aloud and then compare your rendering with the recording .
1 I've never seen such an incredibly exciting football match.

2 She has always helped me and has never refused any request I've made.
3 After the day of climbing I was completely exhausted.
4 She looked much older - grey and lined - and she used a walking stick.
Follow up: Record a short extract (about 15 seconds) from a radio or TV programme. Write out what was said
and then try to mark IP boundaries in the text. Listen to the recording as many times as necessary.

Tonicity: Inside the Intonation Phrase
The grammar (=structure) of the IP: obligatory and optional constituents.
IP= (pH)+ (H=O+…)+ N+ (T)
The brackets mean that constituent is optional.--> An IP must have at least a Nuclear syllable (primary
accent, i.e. the most prominent accent in the IP).
The beginning of the Head is the Onset syllable. The head may contain other syllables, stressed
or unstressed, but all heads must have an Onset syllable)
The nucleus or Tonic syllable is the most prominent syllable in the IP. All IPs must have
a nucleus. No nucleus, no IP.
IP
We had a WONDerful TIME yesterday
Nucleus or Tonic
(preH) ( Onset+…..) syllable-
+ + + (Tail)
obligatory
We had a wonderful time yesterday

   
The most important syllables are the ONSET & the TONIC (a.k.a. NUCLEUS or nuclear syllable)
We had a WOND er ful ex \ PER ri ence.
FOCUS and domain or scope of focus: awareness activities
Some of the IPs in these extracts have one prominent word (Nucleus or Tonic) and others have two (Onset and
Nucleus/tonic).
 Track C15 : Listen and mark the words which are made prominent. Use a raised (‘) to mark the onset
syllable and a \ to mark the tonic syllable.
NB tonetic marks are placed BEFORE the prominent syllable, e.g. a ' beautiful \elephant; long a \go; go a
\way;  under \stand; over \do; get \up; evalu \ation; pro nunci \ation.
1 // we've had wonderful weather// for the last two weeks// but Adam and Emma// have been up in Scotland//
where they've had heavy rain// and even flooding// in the western parts of the country//
2 // I was thinking of buying/ a second-hand car/ from this garage/ but because I don't know
anything about cars/ I paid for the AA/ to inspect it/ and they found all kinds of things wrong// so of course// I
didn't buy it//
Answer:
Do all the IPs you heard have a nucleus?
Do all the IPs you heard have an onset?
Do all the IPs have a Head?
Do all the IPs have a preHead? A Tail?
 Track C19 Listen and mark the words which are made prominent. Use a raised (‘) to mark the onset
syllable and a \ to mark the tonic syllable.
Answer:
Which IPs you heard have a nucleus?
Which IPs you heard have an onset?
Which IPs have a Head?
Which IPs have a preHead? A Tail?
1 A: Jean's got three brothers. B: She's got three sisters.

2 A: Have a good time in Paris this week. B: I'm going next week.
3 A: I thought the office was in West Newtown. B: It's in East Newtown.
4 A: You're at fifty-seven, aren't you ? B: We live at fifty-nine.
S A: You said you'd be there at 8.00. B: I said I'd be there later.
6 A: Do you think leaving school at 1 6 was a mistake ? B: lt was a big mistake.
7 A: I'll see you in the office on Friday. B: But I work at home on Fridays.
8 A: We took the first on the left. B: You should have taken the first on the right.
Track C 20
A: Why don't you come and see us ?
B: Where do you live ?
A: In an old house by the river.
B: I'd probably come by train.
A: It's only a short walk from the station.
B: And if I came by bus ?
A: It's five minutes from the bus stop.
B: It's in Mill Lane, isn't it? Where exactly?
A: The first house on the left.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Focus and scope of focus: broad and narrow focus
Focus is the concentration of attention on a particular part of the message. The speaker highlights one
or more items in the IP because they are important to convey the message.
When all the matter in the IP is brought into focus, we say that the focus is BROAD.
When the attention is narrowed down to only a part of the IP, leaving some of the matter out of the focus as
OLD Information, we say that the IP is in NARROW focus.
Example: the Ip // we've had \wonderful weather// is in narrow focus (henceforth, NF), because the
item ‘weather’ is old information. The topic of the weather was mentioned previously.
The square brackets show the SCOPE OF FOCUS:
//we've had [ \wond ] erful weather//
If the speaker had begun talking out of the blue, i.e. with no previous interaction or no previous
mention or implication of the weather, she would have said //we’ve had  wonderful \weather //, with
the nucleus on ‘weather’. In this case, the IP would have been on broad focus (henceforth BF) because
all the items are new1, unpredictable by the listener.
But in NF, // we've had \wonderful weather//, part of the information in the IP is old. This Ip can be
though ot as a reply to What was the weather like?
There is an opposition new1 versus old information. In other words, information (the (lexical ) items)
may adopt one of two possible states. Remember that ‘old’ means that the item is predictable by the
listener and can therefore be retrieved somehow.
Because old information is predictable by the listener, the speaker does not need to accent (make
prominent) that item. In English, whatever is predictable by the listener is deaccented. We may say
that lack of accentuation is an indicator of predictability.
In the following IP, all the lexical information has been brought into focus, because all the lexical
items are new1, unpredictable by the listener:
// for the [ ‘last ºtwo \weeks ] //
What about function words?
If function words have a deictic function, then they’re old information. In the example above, ‘we’
refers back to a specific group of people and the listener knows who are being referred to, so there is
no need to make ‘we’ prominent (= no need to accent the pronoun).
In other cases, as we shall see in the section on Prominence, the function words are predictable (and
therefore, old information) either from the knowledge of the grammar of the language (we know
which words may come after certain words), from the context of the interaction (the world of
circumstances surrounding and impinging on the verbal interaction), or a combination of both. This
shall be tackled in more depth when we deal with the discoursal approach to prominence.
When is information ‘new1’?
In the literature, the term ‘new1’ is used with two different but specific meanings. The first sense of
‘new’ is related to the scope of focus. An item is new when it cannot be predicted by the listener, nor
retrieved from the context or previous knowledge.
An IP is in broad focus (BF) when none of the LEXICAL items in it can be predicted by the listener.
Predictability means given or recoverable from various sources, e.g. from the speaker’s knowledge of
the world, from the context, from what is directly visible to the listener, etc.
When is information old? Relate deaccentuation to the concept of predictability.
Types of old information: verbatim, paraphrastic, physical evidence, given or

implied by context.
According to Cruttenden (2007), information is said to be old when it can be predicted, retrieved or
recovered by the listener, in different ways, e.g.
a) it has been mentioned before in exactly the same words. This is known as verbatim old
information.
Example: A: Jean's got three brothers. B: She's got three sisters.
In A’s utterance, all lexical items are new1, i.e. UNPREDICTABLE. The listener does not know and has no way of
predicting or guessing what items the speaker is going to utter until the actual utterance is made.
However, once the items have been mentioned, they’re recent enough to be stored in memory, so it may be said
that B’s utterance contains old information. The item ‘three’ is old in the second IP because it’s been
mentioned verbatim by the first speaker. Therefore, the second speaker does not need to accent ‘three’, as
the listener can retrieve this information form the context of interaction, i.e. what has been said before.
Information that can be retrieved or guessed by the listener is said to be predictable by the listener (and
by anyone listening to what A has just said.)
Because ‘three’ is old (= predictable), it may be omitted in the second move:
A: Jean's got three brothers. B: She's got three sisters.

Or: B: sisters.
The fact that we can omit ‘she’s got three’ without losing nor changing the content of the message is proof that
‘she’s got three’ can be retrieved by the listener. The old, predictable information could have been left out by
the speaker without causing misinterpretation. For some reason, speakers still will utter old information, but
they will show that it is old, predictable by deaccenting it, by not making it prominent. DEACCENTUATION is a
way of removing an item from the focus of attention so that the listener is made to pay full attention to what is
new1 and therefore unpredictable.
b) Another case of old, predictable information is that in which the item has been mentioned
before, but in other words, i.e. a paraphrase. This is known as paraphrastic old information.
Paraphrastic old information is predictable, recoverable from a non- verbatim previous
mention.
A: || I was in the middle of giving a conference | when I realised I had a huge LADDER in my
pantyhose|| (=Sp. Me di cuenta de que se me había corrido la media)
B: Oh, how awful. || I wouldn’t know where to \HIDE if I there was a flaw in mine.||
In this context, a huge ladder is interpreted as a paraphrase of a ‘flaw’.
But in cases of synonyms, only hypernyms can become old information. Hyponyms are new
information (why?), and therefore, are accented. Compare:
D’you like football?

Oh, I like \MOST ball games. NF.
BUT
D’you like ball games?

I’m quite keen on \FOOTBALL. NF.
For more on synonyms and focus, see Wells, 3.7 and the Section on hypernyms, hyponyms and
narrow focus.
c) When the information has been implied before, not as in a) or b) but somehow it is ‘in play’ in
the conversation.
A: I was in the middle of giving a conference when I realised I had a huge ladder in my pantyhose.
B: Oh, how awful. I wouldn’t know where to hide if I was in such an embarrassing situation.
The fact that A was in an embarrassing situation is implicit in ‘I had a huge ladder…’, so such an
embarrassing situation will be deaccented. In other words, it will be left outside the scope of focus.
d) When it constitutes physical evidence.
Remember: Normally Old Information will not be made prominent. I other words, it won’t receive accents,
since it is left outside the focus of the information.
NB that the terminology used here is, as stated above, the one proposed by Cruttenden (2007). In Tench (1996),
the term ‘old’ is not used. Tench uses the term ‘given’, or ‘recoverable’. It is important that you understand that
regardless of the different labels, the concepts are the same.
Practice: Go back on the exercises above and decide which information is old, and what type, according to
Cruttenden’s classification.
Decide whether there’s any old information in these IPs, and what type, according to Cruttenden’s
classification. Specify the type of focus.
Exchange 1) NEW1 OR OLD? FOCUS? IF OLD, WHAT TYPE?

A: I’ve broken another cup.
B: Soon, you won’t have any left.
Exchange 2)
A: So you think he’s dishonest?
B: I always thought so.
Exchange 3)
A: Blue and green are primary colours.
B: Blue is.
Exchange 4)
A: Shall we wash the clothes?
B: Oh, I hate doing the laundry
5)
He wanted to walk there,
but I don’t like going on foot.
6)
In the jungle,
you can get yellow fever,
dysentery
and other tropical diseases
Exchange 7)
A: It’s no good at all.
B: You’re always dissatisfied.
Find more examples!
Reaccentuation of old information: when?
Sometimes we accent OI, material that has already been mentioned or negotiated earlier in the interaction. This
is called reactivation of old information, or re-accenting, or recycling. Whichever we call it, it is important to
bear in mind that for this to happen, there’s got to be a good reason that justifies accenting old information.
One common example of reactivation/accentuation of old information is the case of echo questions, where the
second speaker repeats verbatim what the previous speaker has said, only that this time the tone is a rise:
A: I’m getting married.

B: You’re getting married?
Another example is the repetition of something that has been said. This treatment of the old information can
sometimes denote annoyance, irritation.
Old Lady: Are you the manager? I asked to speak to the manager.
Mr. Fawlty: I’M the manager, madam. Can I help you?
Old lady: What?
Mr. Fawlty: I said I’m the manager.
Old lady: What??
Mr. Fawlty: I AM THE MANAGER!
For more details on accentuation of old information, see Wells, Chapter 3: Tonicity.
***********************************
Prominence from a perceptual point of view
Prominence is what makes a syllable stand out from other syllables. By extension, a word can be highlighted
and therefore be made to stand out from other words, from a perceptual (i.e. auditory) point of view. We may
also describe this process by stating that it is the speaker who decides to make some syllables in some words
PROMINENT.
PROMINENCE: a perceptual phenomenon (what the hearer perceives)
ACCENT AND STRESS: acoustic - articulatory phenomena (what the speaker produces using organs of
speech)
How is prominence achieved prosodically by the speaker? (i.e. acoustically?) By using two or more of the
following prosodic features.
Pitch movement
Pitch height
Stress (perceived as loudness by the listener)
Duration also known as quantity (perceived as length),
Quality of the sound segments involved in the prominent syllable
The distribution of prominence(s) in the utterance signals the domain or scope of focus.
FOCUS and domain or scope of focus: The relationship between prominence and focus marking: awareness
activities
Note focus is pronounced 
Match up each set of questions and replies (by Anne Campbell, 1995). Then, mark the domain of focus using
square brackets [ ]
a. I hope you enjoyed the film. 1. //p YES // p VERy interesting//
b. The film was interesting, wasn’t it? 2. //p YES // p VERy INTeresting//
c. I thought it was very good. 3. //p YES // p very INTeresting//
Double underline the last prominent word in each of the answers. Then, mark the domain of focus using square
brackets [ ]
A. Is your mother going to California?  No, my mother’s gone to California. 
B. Has your mother gone to New York? No, my mother’s gone to California. 
C. Has your father gone to California? No, my mother’s gone to California. 
D. Has Jane’s mother gone to California?  No, my mother’s gone to California. 
Ditto exercise above.

1. What did you do? I watched a horror film last Saturday.
2. Did you watch a love story? I watched a horror film last Saturday.
3. Did you watch a film last Saturday? I watched a horror film last Saturday.
Prominence, sense selection, predictability and focus: The discoursal approach
from a cognitive point of view
Lic. Andrea Mariana Perticone2017

This article is copyright
Key phrases:
Prominence and tonicity as percepts. Systems and paradigms.
Sense selection as a cognitive process reflecting the speaker’s apprehension of the world.
Predictability in one- item sets. Predictability and focus.
Accentuation as articulatory correlate of a cognitive process: to convey the speaker’s sense
selections.
In traditional accounts of prominence, it is assumed that accent is a property inherent to language,

i.e., accent is viewed as property of the word, and the so-called ‘sentence accent’ is a property of
the sentence (Kingdon, 1958; Ortiz Lira, 2008; Wells, 2006). Authors within this tradition have
accounted for prominence as grammatically-driven, albeit subject to deaccentuation when the
context so requires. The specifics of the context are not explored in depth in this approach, nor are
any systematic relationships established between the large number of variables in a context and
‘language’ behaviour.
Likewise, the nucleus is defined phonetically as that syllable which initiates an obtrusion of pitch
(Cruttenden, 2007). However, observation of spoken language shows that accentuation is not
directly tied to word category or syntactic function (Brazil, 1997). Rather, whether an item is made
prominent or not, depends to a large extent to conditions which lie outside language. Some of these
may be present in the context within which the verbal interaction takes place; others, however, have
to do with the speaker’s intentionality, and the speaker’s moment-by-moment assessment of the
world and assumed state of convergence between speaker and listener (Brazil, op.cit.).
In this article I will put forward the idea that the concepts of prominence and sense selection
proposed by Brazil (19972) in his discoursal approach to intonation can be regarded as being of a
cognitive3 nature. I will relate prominence and sense selection to the degree of predictability
associated with a specific linguistic item, and then consider predictability as a determiner of the
scope of focus. Put more plainly, I argue that the degree to which an item may be predicted by a
listener, as assessed by the speaker, is the source of the speaker’s act of sense selection and also
of the speaker’s accentuation of that item.
I will regard acts of sense selection as mental events which the speaker makes perceptually (i.e.)
auditorily prominent in order to convey his/her choice of items to the listener. The speaker uses
accentuation, a constellation of articulatory gestures, to render the act of sense selection (a
cognitive process) into something physical, objectively measurable (sound waves) which can be
perceived as prominence, a percept also in the realm of the cognitive, by a potential listener.
I will also argue that the notion of focus can be regarded as a cognitive process as well, since in
selecting items from a paradigm, the speaker reflects how the mind segregates the foreground (i.e.
the scope of focus) from the background.4
The starting point of this exposition will be an adaptation of a sample exchange considered by Brazil
(op. cit. p. 22). Brazil resorts to the context of a poker game to refer to the process of sense
selection and the phenomenon of prominence. I will use the same context to explore both the
process and the phenomenon. Within the context of the game each, each card constitutes an option
2 Brazil , D. (1997) The communicative value of intonation in English. Cambridge: CUP. Chapter 2.
3 Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the
senses." www.oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved 9/4/2017.
4 I shall develop this issue further in a forthcoming article, where I refer to the choice of tone as a cognitive mode.
available to a player. Let us analyse a variation of the exchange in Brazil’s discussion of sense
selection (op. cit.)
A: What did you get?

B: The QUEEN of HEARTS. What did YOU get?
A: The ACE of CLUBS.
C: And I got the FOUR of SPADES.
Each card referred to is the result of the speaker’s choice of two variables: number and suit.
The four poker card suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs.
The full pack showing the system of numbers (1 to 13) and the system of suits (4). A stands for Ace
(the number one card); J for Jack; Q for Queen; K for King.
Systems, variables, and speaker choices
A SYSTEM IS a limited set of options available where the selection of one member entails the
exclusion of all other possible members of the same set. The poker card pack comprises two
subsystems: the card number and the card suit. Each of these are sets of limited, finite options; i.e.,
they constitute systems.
The poker game and all the events that take place during the game, plus the participants, constitute
the context of situation. Each player represents a speaker-hearer.
This means that a set of infinite number of members does not constitute a system. For example,
cardinal numbers cannot be regarded as a system, according to this definition. (you can count from
zero to a number as high as you like)
Going back to the notion of system, here is an example: choosing the suit spade excludes diamonds,
spades and clubs; choosing card number 7 excludes the ace, 2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10, the Jack, the Queen and
the King. We may say then that the act of choosing the variables 7 and spade refer to an object:
and so does the string of words (or syntagm) “the seven of spades”, which of course has as its
referent a card like the one shown.
There are different types of systems. Binary systems are the most frequent.
Binary system: any system that has two members. Examples: Yes/no, on/off, inside/outside
(depending on the context of situation); upstairs/downstairs (normally, in a two storey house, you go
upstairs or downstairs, but not “sidestairs”, unless you’re drunk!). State of (non) pregnancy: either
you are or you aren’t! Polarity: affirmative-negative.
Ternary systems: The primary colour system: blue, red and yellow. The set of traffic lights: green,
yellow and green.
In order to account for the distribution of prominence in utterances, it is necessary first to handle
the concept of grammar of speech, i.e. the order in which words may be used and the idea that the
sequential nature of speech places constraints and decision-taking moments as speech is uttered.
These decision points involve different types of choices that the speaker will make depending on the
message s/he intends to convey.
The grammar of speech
Preliminary concepts: syntagmatic relationships; general paradigm
Speech is, by nature, a sequential process. Speakers utter their messages word by word, across a
temporal dimension, articulating and uttering syllable after syllable, forming strings of words. A
string of words which are related to one another by certain positional rules is a syntagm. To put it
simply, a syntagmatic relationship is that which is established by a word and the words which can
follow it. This is why some authors refer to it as a ‘horizontal’ relationship. For instance, the
determiner the automatically determines the grammatical categories which can follow; we may say:
the queen,
the lovely queen,
the queen of Spain,
the lovely queen of Spain,
the queen you saw in People magazine, etc.
but the to be, the for, the have, the slowly, are clearly ungrammatical combinations which we cannot
use to form a syntactic subject or object.
If a speaker opens her mouth and utters: “The day …..”, and stops short of completing her utterance,
listeners cannot guess the semantic content of what is to come, but they certainly expect certain
linguistic items according to the grammar of the language.
Let’s consider which grammatical categories might follow “the day”
The day …..
Now let’s suppose the speaker has the pronoun they in mind, so she utters:
The day they ….
What words could come after they while forming a grammatical structure? How much can the
listener predict? As we know that they is a subjective pronoun, we expect it to be followed by a
limited number of grammatical categories: a lexical verb, an auxiliary verb, an adverb. If the
speaker selects finally , we may expect this word to be followed by a verb; if the verb chosen is
decide, we expect a to-infinitive, or a prepositional phrase on +object, since it’s also possible that
the utterance may continue “they decide on something/ doing something…”, and so on.
The day they finally

The day they finally decide
The day they finally decide to
Again, our knowledge of the grammar of the language allows us to restrict the number of possible
grammatical categories that may come after a certain word, so after to we expect an infinitive; after
a transitive verb, we expect an object, and so on.
The day they finally decide to repair

The day they finally decide to repair these
The day they finally decide to repair these streets…
At each point in the utterance, the language system offers a model, or paradigm, of possible
combinations of words, i.e. possible word(s) that may follow a certain word in a grammatical
utterance. Brazil (op. cit. xxx) refers to this model as the GENERAL PARADIGM, and defines it as “the
options available to the speaker [which are] licensed by the rules of the language.”
If a speaker interrupts her message, or is interrupted, her hearers won’t be able to predict what exactly she
was going to say next; the general paradigm only offers a limited set of possibilities as regards the part of
speech or syntactic constituent which can follow a given word. This is connected with the concept of old
information and narrow focus (Cruttenden, 2007, ch. 4). I shall enlarge on this later on in this article.
There is a further paradigm available at each point in the utterance. This time, the choice must be
not only grammatical, but must reflect the speaker’s idea. Notice the number of ways in which the
original phrase may be continued:
The day promises ….

The day isn’t….
The day when …
The day they
The day was …
The day slowly…
etc
We shall say, following Brazil,, that all the items which can follow ‘the day’ are in a paradigmatic
relationship; a vertical model from which the speaker chooses the item referring to the cognitive
entity or idea in her mind, which correlates with a meaning or sense (from a semantic point of
view)
The act of sense selection within a context of situation: paradigmatic relationships afforded by
existential paradigms.
Whereas the general paradigm offers us a limited set of grammatical categories to choose from, the
very situation we’re in, the cognitive structures which represent real or imagined objects, people
and events, all combine to restrict the number of possibilities actually available at a given moment.
If I’m playing poker, and my interlocutor knows I got a queen, and asks me what queen I’ve got in my
hand (and I tell the truth), s/he may predict that my answer will be one of the following: hearts,
diamonds, spades or clubs. In real life, and in the context of a poker game, the set of possibilities is
made up of four members, and in order to identify which of the four queens I got, I’ll have to choose
one of those four items that constitute the suit set.
The set of options available for selection in the general paradigm is then narrowed down by the
options available in the ‘vertical’ set, known as the existential paradigm It is called existential
because it is determined by the situation the participants are in, or the activity they are engaged in,
or the actual words they have used at a given point in an interaction.
Context of poker game:
General paradigm for the slot after “the queen of __________ “ : a noun
Existential paradigm: The four suits, so not all nouns will be included in this
existential paradigm. The set is narrowed down to the following four options:
hearts, diamonds, spades or clubs.
After the act of sense selection: making the cognitive physical.
How does the speaker signal to the listener that she’s chosen queen from the set of four suits? By
making it prominent. But prominence is a perceptual construct. It is not a property inherent to
words. There is nothing in the meaning or composition of the word that tells us whether that word
will be prominent or not in discourse. As a matter of fact, prominence can be said to be a cognitive
entity we construct from a percept. We perceive that, for some reason or other, one word is much
more prominent than the others when in the example under issue, the player with the card replies “I
got the queen of HEARTS.” To que question “Which queen did you get?”
It is interesting to compare this line of thought with the view of prominence afforded by grammar
based models (Kingdon, 1958). Both queen and hearts are lexical items, and therefore predicted to
be prominent in the light of such models. However, the reply under consideration, “The queen of
HEARTS.” clearly shows that in spoken discourse, prominence may be something quite different
from what it is claimed to be if the only criteria adopted is the distinction lexical words versus
function words.
There is the added complication that the term prominence has often been used interchangeably with
the terms ‘accent’ and ‘stress’ (Brinton, L. & D. Brinton, 20105 ). A further issue to be considered is
the fact that, if prominence is used to refer to a perceptual effect, it would be a misdemeanour to
claim that a speaker ‘uses’ prominence. Speakers speak, and all they can do to convey their views
5
Brinton, L. & D. Brinton, (2010). The linguistic structure of modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins publishing.
of the world orally is articulate sounds in well-formed syllables blended in connected speech. In
order to render a word (or more precisely, a syllable) more prominent than others to the listener’s
ears, the speaker employs a number of articulatory resources, mainly pitch height, pitch movement
and stress, such that the perceptual result is that of prominence. The speaker then, signals his/her
choice of item by accenting it.
Accenting means making an item prominent, and this in turn is the signal that tells the listener that
the speaker has chosen that item from a closed set of other items that could have been chosen, but
were not, because the speaker wishes to signify that item and not any other that potentially could
have been a good candidate.
Let us go back to Bazil’s example. In

B: The QUEEN of HEARTS.
In B’s response, QUEEN and HEARTS are the only two items which need highlighting, or need to be
made prominent, in order to let the listener identify exactly what card the speaker got.
Why is it necessary to make both words prominent? Because both are necessary for the correct
identification of the card the speaker has in mind. It may be assumed that the speaker has no way of
predicting the two variables which can in themselves identify the card in question. If the speakers
fails to accent them, they will not be prominent for the listener.
Why isn’t it necessary to make the determiner the and the preposition of prominent? Because they
can be retrieved by the listener from their own knowledge of the English language. In other words,
the listener can guess, or ‘fill in the gaps’ with the right words. More on this will be explained later
on.
From a grammatical approach, it could be said that determiners and prepositions are unaccented by
default, since they are function words. However, this approach does not take the context into
account. From a cognitive standpoint, prominence, or the lack of it, is not an inherent property of
language, but something that a speaker does to language and something which a listener perceives
in speech.
Hence my proposal to characterise the act of sense selection from a paradigm as a cognitive
process, i.e. a mental operation which occurs in the speaker’s mind before the act of uttering each
IP. Let’s examine the act of sense-selection in the context under discussion, i.e. the poker game;
this time in more detail.
As stated above, any card in the poker pack can be identified using two features:
a) Number: from Ace (1) to the King (the 13th card): there are 13 different options.
b) Suit: there are 4 possible options: spades, hearts, diamonds or clubs.
In the context of poker cards and games, the number of options available does not depend on the
language you speak, but on the constitution of the pack of cards itself. This set of available options,
made of 4 suits and 12 numbers for each suit, totalling 4x13= 52 combinations, constitute what Brazil
calls the EXISTENTIAL PARADIGM.
Let us go back to the exchange presented at the beginning.

B: The QUEEN of HEARTS. What did YOU get?
A: The ACE of CLUBS.
C: And I got the FOUR of SPADES.
A asks: What did you get?
B has a certain card in mind (pre-linguistic planning stage; non verbal). At a verbal stage, B
communicates this idea by replying: The ___________ of _______________ .
That is, B has to choose items from two different paradigms:
The | select 1 out of 13 numbers | of | select 1 out of 4 suits|

i.e.
Ace
2
3 spades
. diamonds
. hearts
The . of clubs
Queen
King
For the first slot in the syntagm, there are 13 items available to choose from: the ace/ two/
three/…./queen/king. For the second slot, the paradigm provides only 4 options: spades, hearts,
diamonds or clubs.
Let’s suppose that Speaker B wants to communicate that she got the following card:
What the speaker has in mind is the concept, or the cognitive structure which in language is
referred to by the syntagm ‘queen of hearts’. In order to convey a reflection of this cognitive
structure (in more traditional terms, her message) she has to choose the two lexical items that
together will identify the card. So she chooses ‘queen’ from the paradigm of 13 numbers and ‘hearts’
from the paradigm of suits.
B: …. QUEEN …… HEARTS. This is the semantic content. Speaker B needs two senses, or meanings, to
represent the card she’s got in mind.
What about the other items that enter into the syntagmatic relationship ‘the queen of hearts’?
The listener (A) can retrieve the missing words (the, of) because she knows the grammar of the
language. She knows which words can come before and after certain words. She knows how words
collocate with one another. The set of options she chooses from in order to fill in the gaps belong in
the GENERAL PARADIGM.
More on how the general paradigm and existential paradigm interact to restrict the number of
options available to the speaker.
If you had to fill in the blanks in the following:
I’m going ___ have ___cup ___ coffee.
You would know that the only words that can fit the respective slots are to, a, of.
We cannot say ‘I’m going for have the cup from coffee’ or ’I going a have an cup the coffee’, etc.
We may say then that, in this case, the general paradigm offers us only one option for each blank. In
other words, there’s only one member in the set. When we use the only candidate available, we’re
not really choosing. It’s like politics: countries that have a one-party system only have polls because
they want to make you believe that you’re choosing, but actually, they have already chosen for you.
It’s like dancing with the only lad/girl available. Not much of a choice there.
In the GENERAL PARADIGM, the paradigm offered by the rules of the language, the language system
chooses for you in terms of which grammatical category or categories may follow a certain item
(noun, adverb, infinitive, and so on) or syntactic function(s) (clause, phrase, adverbial, and so on).
The general paradigm offers one choice for the following example: a verb (or verb form).
The lights _____________ off.
What will the existential paradigm offer? Whether the event is in the present, in the past or in the
future; or whether there is a change of stated involved; or an agent is present.
The lights were off.

The lights are off.
The lights went off.
The lights were turned off.
What determines whether the past or the present is suitable? The existential paradigm, which in
turn is given by the context. If you’re talking about something that once happened, you’ll obviously
have only the past tense at your disposal.
In some other cases, the existential paradigm provides a set of what we would normally call
function words, although the following example makes it clear that prepositions are not in fact
devoid of semantic content.
A: Where did you find the cat?
B: It was ………………. the table.

behind
beside
near next to
in front of
opposite
On
Under
Underneath
Beneath
Set of options available to the speaker, given by the GENERAL paradigm: preposition. If we assume
that only one word can fit in the slot, the general paradigm does not license items such as verbs,
adverbs nor conjunctions.
Set of options determined by the EXISTENTIAL paradigm: On, under, beside, next to, near, in front of,
opposite, behind...
Within a given context of situation, such as the one you can see in the picture below, only ONE of
these items will reflect the reality or fact the speaker wants to convey. If she were to describe the
cat in this context of situation, the speaker will have to select under. All the other items are
discarded because their sense does not match the situation the speaker wants to describe.
Now let’s consider B’s second speech act, the question ‘ What did YOU get?’
Speaker B is aware that A asked what card she’d got, so when B asks, the items what, card, did and
get are not made prominent. From an articulatory and an acoustic point of view, A can perceive this
as these items have not been accented. This is the way in which speaker B lets listener A know that
B assumes that what, did, get are predictable items. Predictable, of course, by virtue of their just
having been mentioned. These items can be retrieved from the context of interaction. In this case,
what the speaker assumes coincides with reality, but as we shall see later on, sometimes speakers
make assumptions as to what items are retrievable or predictable by their hearers without any
identifiable grounds. This, in turn, explains why a function word is accented: you is set in opposition
to all the other members of the set ‘subjective pronouns’ (I, he, she, they, we…). This type of
accentuation is known as contrastive accentuation and contrastive focus.
In more general terms, we may state that, depending on the context of situation, only one of the
items will be chosen by the speaker from the existential paradigm to reflect the idea she intends to
convey. When this happens, when we are making a choice out of other possible options, we say that
we’re making an act of sense selection. We may also say that the item is sense- selective. Sense
here means ‘meaning’.
Now let’s consider the following exchange:
A: Which queen did you get?

B: I got the queen of [ HEARTS ]
Where the square brackets [ ] show the scope of focus, i.e. the scope of new information, items
which need accenting since they cannot be predicted by the listener, according to the speaker’s
assumptions.
Notice that in the reply, although queen is a lexical item, it does not receive an accent from speaker
B. The lack of accentuation is the signal that the speaker sends to the listener to tell him/her that
the unaccented item is predictable by the listener. The lack of accentuation also signals that the
speaker has not chosen the word queen from a set of other alternatives, because at that point in the
syntagm, the context of interaction has left only one member in the set. When a set contains only
one member, the mention of the item does not constitute a choice, and as a consequence, this
member can be predicted by the listener before it is uttered. More than that, if the sole member of
the set available was not uttered at all, the reply would still convey the same message:
A: Which queen did you get?

B: I got the _____ of HEARTS.
Or simply
B: HEARTS.
How predictability of an item determines (scope of) focus (and the other way around)
I mentioned before that Cruttenden’s (op. cit.) concept of old information and his treatment of focus
can be related with my view that sense-selection is a cognitive process.
If scope of focus refers to the items which are new, unpredictable for the listener, it is clear that if
there is any predictable material within the intonation phrase, this material will not require
accentuation, as the speaker will not wish the listener to process old, predictable information as if it
were new.
In the example above, B’s answer, I got the queen of [ HEARTS ], shows that the speaker has chosen
not to accent (or to deaccent) two lexical items: got and queen. The domain of focus is on HEARTS.
The rest of the items have been left outside the scope of focus. Hence the label ‘narrow focus’ often
used to describe cases such as this one. We now know the factors that produce such an outcome.
What is important at this point is to acknowledge that the point(s) of focal interest, or the scope
covered by the new, unpredictable information, the ‘scope or domain of focus’ are all cognitive
processes. If sense selection is cognitive in nature, the choice of one or more new, unpredictable
items to mark off the information which we want to place at the foreground in the listener’s mind
constitutes a cognitive process. It is clear by now that predictability, or the degree to which a
listener may predict what word will come next, cannot be any other than a cognitive process
anchored in a given situation, and not a property of the word itself.
Another example will serve to illustrate my view.
Anne: Hi, Jane. How’s things?

Jane: Fine. We had a _______ ________ (2 slots, 2 potential acts of sense selection)
Can Anne guess, at this point, what item Jane has selected in her mind? Definitely not, and Jane
knows this, so if her choice is unpredictable for Anne, she will have to accent the next item. For
example:
Anne: Hi, Jane. How’s things?

Jane: Fine. We had a WONderful _____________
Most probably, the accent on wonderful will be the first one in the IP; i.e. it will be the onset. Anne,
her listener, will realise that Jane has chosen the sense wonderful from among a list of other
possible adjectives, such as great, incredible, unforgettable, etc. It’ is highly unlikely, Anne knows,
that Jane would have chosen senses such as horrible, terrible, awful, etc. because she’s just said
that things are fine (unless she intends to create a comic, ironic effect). In other words, at this point
the conjunction of general and existential paradigm precludes the choice of certain senses.
Perceptually speaking, Anne (listener) will know that wonderful constitutes an act of sense
selection on Jane (speaker)’s part because the syllable won- will be set at a pitch higher or lower
than that in the previous syllable and it will be longer and louder. The combination of all these
factors is what we call accent6. That is to say, there will be a step-up in pitch which announces to
the listener that the following item is accented, since it has been chosen from a set of several
options.
As the grammar of speech is sequential, while wonderful is being said, Anne, the listener, may have
an idea of what follows, but is also aware that there is more than one option. A wonderful what? A
wonderful day? Weekend? Trip? Stay? Experience? Visitor? Birthday party? Meal?
The large number of possible responses shows the set of options available to the speaker for the
second slot in the example above contains more than one member and therefore, Anne, the listener,
is in no position to predict which of these putative alternatives will fill the slot until Jane utters her
choice. Jane will give an accent to this item, and if it happens to be the last item which cannot be
predicted by Anne, Jane will also assign a tone to it, thus making it the nucleus.
We º had a WOND er ful ex PER i ence.
Deaccentuation and narrow focus: tricks for the determination of nucleus placement and focus.
The procedure described in the previous section may be used as a test of sorts to ascertain whether
an accent has been assigned properly. In order to decide whether the nucleus falls on a particular
item within an IP, the student should decide whether the item at issue is predictable for the listener.
If the item were to be removed, would a putative listener be able to guess the item the speaker is
just about to utter? If the item is predictable, then it is what Cruttenden calls old information, and as
such, it does not need accenting. If the item cannot be predicted, it constitutes new1 information, and
because the speaker will select one item from a set of at least two members, s/he will allocate an
accent to that item, to convey to the listener that that is his/her choice of sense, and that s/he thinks
the listener cannot predict it.
Anne: Hi, Jane. How’s things? How was your trip?

Jane: Fine. We had a [ WONDERFUL] experience.= we had a wonderful one
The example above shows that Jane takes the item trip as an existential synonym of experience.
The way she communicates this to her listener is by treating experience as old information in her IP.
If for some reason Jane conceptualised experience as something very different from a trip, she
might have said . We had a [ WONDerfuL EXPERIENCE], thus widening the scope of focus. But in the
context of two friends that meet after the absence of one of them, we might surmise that trip and
experience are almost equivalent in this context. In this case, the number of options in the paradigm
is reduced to only one member for the last slot. When this happens, the speaker does not make an
6
Accent= Pitch (height or change) + stress (loudness)+ duration (length)
act of selection, and experience being the only possible option, the speaker assumes that the
listener can retrieve or predict the item in that slot. Again, items which can be retrieved, predicted
by the listener, are not accented by the speaker.
Here’s another example:
A: Look! There goes Peter.

B: I’ve NEVer LIKED the bastard= I’ve never liked him.
The fact that the IP with ‘him’ conveys the same message as I’ve never liked the bastard shows that
the bastard is old information, i.e. presented as if it were the only member available, and therefore,
predictable.
The following example demonstrates that had and eat are existential synonyms in this context of
interaction, and therefore, had in B’s response does not need accenting. The fact that had can be
omitted from the response without changing the meaning of B’s response is proof that had is old
information.
A: So what did you eat for lunch?

B: We had [ FISH and CHIPS ] = fish and chips
To conclude, a practical test which can be carried out in order to decide whether an item or a string
of items constitutes old information, consists in omitting this part of the IP, and examining whether
the message conveyed remains the same. If the omission does not alter meaning, the focus is
narrow, and the omitted item(s) will not be accented, which means that the item will be neither an
onset nor a nucleus.
****************
Remember these formulations:
1. In choosing an item, the speaker makes an act of sense selection.
2. An item is sense-selective when it cannot be predicted by the listener (or at least, the
speaker thinks that this is the case).
3. A sense-selective item is, by definition, prominent (=accented; the item will contain either
the onset syllable, the nuclear syllable, or a tertiary prominence)
4. A non-selective item does not realize an act of sense selection, as it can be predicted by
the listener. Therefore, non-selective items are non-prominent (unaccented).
5. Accenting is the result of the speaker’s act of sense selection from a set of possible
alternatives. Alternatively, accenting may be conceptualised as the act of giving
prominence to an item which has just been selected, an item which would otherwise not
be predictable by the listener.
6. Accented word: unpredictable; act of sense selection involved;
7. Unaccented word: predictable by the listener; no act of sense selection is involved, so no

prominence given to the item.
Summary: if a set of possible options contains only one member, there is no speaker choice. The item
is not sense selective or does not realise an act of sense selection.
If a set of possible options offers more than one option, the speaker will have to make a choice and select one
item from all the other members of the set. The item chosen shows that the speaker is choosing that sense, that
meaning, as opposed to all the other possible meanings he could have chosen. He has made an act of sense
selection or the item is sense selective.
What is the relationship between sense selection, prosodic features and prominence?
SENSE SELECTION: a mental operation
Acts of selection are mental events. How does the speaker convey his/her choice of items to the listener? By
highlighting certain items, that is, by making the chosen items auditorily prominent. The speaker uses the
prosodic features we discussed above to make something mental (a cognitive entity) into something physical
(sound waves) that can be heard by a listener. That’s how the speaker communicates to the listener her acts of
selection.
Prominence: perceptual
How does the speaker highlight words? Articulatory gestures: effort (stress); rate of vocal fold vibration;
changes in rate (F0) prosodic features
QUEEN is the first prominent syllable: the syllable where some significant change in pitch HEIGHT occurs (a
step up; NOT A pitch movement). This is the ONSET SYLLABLE.
HEARTS is the last prominent syllable. It is the INITIATOR of PITCH DIRECTION CHANGE or PITCH MOVEMENT.
Food for thought: your turn!
Relationship with the concept of “Old Information” by A. Cruttenden
The concept of selectivity, paradigmatic relationships, context of situation, of interaction, etc. are used by
Brazil. In this course we’re going to establish correspondences between approaches and authors. It is important
that you learn to recognise which author is responsible for a give term or account. It is crucial that you abstract
generalities from particular cases (deduction) so that you can make connections between different concepts and
approaches.
For example: We saw before the term OI (old information) used and defined by Cruttenden. How does the
definition of Cruttenden’s OI mesh with Brazil’s sense-selection?
References
Brazil, D. (1997). The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cruttenden, A. (2007) Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kingdon, R. (1958) The groundwork of English intonation. London: Longmans.
O’Connor, J.D. & Arnold, G.F. (1972). Intonation of Colloquial English. London: Longman
Wells, J.C. (2006) English intonation: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Practice: sense selection and unpredictability
A- How many members can the existential paradigm (the vertical set) have in the following sentences?
Take them without assuming a context of situation, i.e. without considering the existential paradigm.
Give examples of possible items. The first one is done for you.
1. You ought to be __________________ of yourself. (ashamed, proud,..)
2. Where are you? I’m _________ the kitchen.
3. A: Mummy, can I go ____________________ with Jimmy this morning?

M: Sure, but don’t forget to wear your goggles or your eyes will get red.
4. (At a travel agency) Customer: Good morning. Could you tell me how much the city tours ______,
please?
5. (At the restaurant)
6. Customer to Waiter: I’d like to have fish. What do you recommend?
Waiter: The sole _______________________________, sir.
B- How does the discoursal approach to prominence account for the prominences in the following
exchanges? Read the examples aloud and compare the two answers.
1. A: What heart did you get?
B: The QUEEN of hearts.
2. A: So you got a queen.

B: Yes, a queen of HEARTS.
C- Decide how many possible options are available in the following existential paradigms. Which ones
constitute binary sets?
1. Marital status: single….
2. Gender:
3. Stages in life (childhood, ….
4. Alarm clock status
5. Music volume
6. Car (working condition)
7. Status of answer to exercise in an exam:
Predictability of items: decide if the missing item is predictable (and therefore, it needs to be made prominent)
We’re going to drive to Oxford, and then to Cambridge.

Why drive to _____________ ?
Decide how many different endings the following beginnings may have.
Example:
She told me what had happened, but I couldn’t …………………………………..
hear
pay attention to her
imagine such a horrible thing
figure out why he had done it
believe it
get close enough to hear properly
dance?
Pick my nose?
Smile?
I put my mobile…………..
In my handbag
On the table
In my pocket
In the microwave?
On the floor?
On? Up?

More on tonicity and nucleus placement
LLI Rule or Rule of broad focus: where does the nucleus fall?
IPs in BF can be thought of as answers to the question “what’s happened?” or as

IPs said out of the blue, without any previous context of interaction (for instance, when we
begin a conversation).
My dog likes cookies.

I need to go to the bank. I’ve got no cash on me.
The rule of broad focus (henceforth, BF) determines that when all the material in the IP is
brought into focus, the Nucleus falls on the last content word, often referred to as the LAST
LEXICAL ITEM (LLI) in the IP. We shall call this the LLIR (LLI rule).
My dog likes cookies.

I need to go to the bank. I’ve got no cash on me.
Narrow focus or NF: part of the information in the IP is said to be out of focus because it is
old. This means that it has been mentioned before, explicitly or implicitly, or that both speaker
and hearer have visual access to the referent of the information, i.e. the referent is physically
present.
A: (Showing book to friend). This is an INTERESTING book. You should read it.
It is important to bear in mind that in IPs which are in NF, the nucleus falls on the LLI in
focus. The part which is out of focus (OF) is old information, and can be omitted, but the
message will still be clear.
Example:
A: Had Martin had a few drinks last night? B: [A lot of] drinks.
In the second IP (the answer), only ‘a lot’ in in focus. The IP is in NF. ‘drinks’ has become
verbatim old information and is therefore outside the scope of focus. Evidence of this is given
by the fact that if the old information is omitted, the message does not change in meaning:
A: Had Martin had a few drinks last night? B: A lot.
Notice that OI may occur anywhere within the IP, and not only in final position, as in the
following example, where there is VOI before and after the new1 item:
A: Did Caroline buy a new dress yesterday? B: She bought [several ] dresses. = B: Several.
B2: I [hear] she bought [several] dresses
= B2: hear several.
As can be seen in the example above, focus is not tied to a specific location within the IP, and it
may even be ‘split’ into two or more parts, as in ‘I hear she bought several dresses’.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nucleus or Tonic. Awareness activity: predicting nucleus placement .

Double underline the last prominent word in each of the answers. Then, decide if there are any
LLIs that are old, and mark the domain of focus using square brackets [ ]
A: Did the Robinsons lose anything in the burglary? B: They lost everything in the burglary.
A: I hear Laura’s inherited a little money. B: She’s inherited a great deal of money.
A: Jim’s been out with quite a few of the girls in the B: Oh, he’s been out with all the girls in the village.
village, hasn’t he?
A: Have the Smiths spent any of that money they B: Oh, they’ve spent all the money they won.
won?
A: Does anyone know about you and Pete yet? B: Oh, everyone knows.
NUCLEUS/TONIC: From an auditory or perceptual point of view, the NUCLEUS

OR NUCLEAR SYLLABLE is the most prominent syllable in the IP. It is
characterised by initiating pitch change or pitch movement, plus stress (loudness)
and increased duration.
Practice: predict the location of the nucleus in the following passages. Then, listen
to the audio track and see if you were right. The first ones are done for you,
assuming the discourse begins in medias res, i.e. not out of the blue. What context
can you imagine for each speaker’s move?
Audio Track C13- These extracts are divided into IPs, each containing one prominent
word. Listen to the extracts as many times as you need and place a \ mark before the
stressed syllable in the prominent word in each IP. This syllable is called “Tonic” or
“nuclear syllable”.
1 // most of the time/ we advertise jobs/ in national newspapers/ and on our website//
occasionally however / we might approach someone / to see if they're interested//
someone we might really want//
2 // when we ran out of money/ we worked for a bit/ and then got a train/ somewhere
else/ and eventually we ended up/ in a little village/ in the Andes/ way up high//
Now read the extracts aloud, making sure you do not introduce silent pauses within each
IP. Then, read aloud again, this time linking the end of an IP with the beginning of the
next one. Yes, you may pause to breathe in from time to time!
Instructions: ditto above but audio track is C14.
1 should the government pay 11 for health care or do you think it's the individual's
responsibility to save money for when they need treatment my personal view is that we
should pay for our own treatment
2 I'm impressed with your cooking Annie that was very nice I particularly liked how
you did the rice I'd really like the recipe sometime if you could write it down for me
Hypernyms, hyponyms, old information and narrow focus.
In this section, I’m going to explain why paraphrasing a referring expression triggers
the narrowing down of the scope of focus. I will first provide a summary of the topic of
hypernyms and hyponyms, and then I will show the effects on focus and nucleus
placement when an entity is referred to via a hypernym. You can find more details and
examples in Wells, Section 3.7, Synonyms. Be careful, though as Wells uses the term
‘given’ whereas in this course, we use the term ‘old’, in line with Cruttenden (2007, see
Bibliography). In order to understand the relationships between hypernyms and
hyponyms, and semantic features, look for these topics in Hurford & Heasley,
Semantics. (see Bibliography).
Semantic features
Semantic features are theoretical units of meaning-holding components which are used
for representing word meaning. These features play a vital role in determining the kind
of lexical relation which exists between words in a language.
The semantic features of a word can be notated using a binary feature notation. A
semantic property is specified in square brackets and a plus or minus sign indicates the
existence or non-existence of that property.
Examples:
The word cat is the result of a bundle of features which all together define what the
referent in the real world is:
[+animate],
[+domesticated],
[+feline]
However, if we change one of the features, we may get a different meaning or word
sense:
tiger is dog is wolf is

[+animate], [+animate], [+animate],
[−domesticated], [+domesticated], [−domesticated]
[+feline] [−feline] [−feline]
49
Synonymy: hypernyms and hyponyms
The category animal includes a large number of terms. Animal is the hypernym or superordinate
term (also referred to as ‘umbrella’ term) while each individual type of animal is a hyponym of
animal.
‘Animal ‘is a hypernym of ‘cat, tiger, dog, wolf, platypus, horse, coral, snake, beetle…
‘Cat’ is a hyponym of ‘animal’; ‘tiger’ is a hyponym of ‘animal’, etc.
ANIMAL
(hypernym)
CAT DOG HORSE PLATYPUS CORAL ETC.

(hyponym) (hyponym) (hyponym) (hyponym) (hyponym)
Notice that in Greek, the prefix hypo- means ‘below’ and the prefix hyper- means ‘above’. For
example, some people suffer from hypotension, because their blood pressure is below the normal
range; those who suffer from hypertension have a blood pressure which is higher than the normal,
healthy blood pressure range. Hence, the terms HYPERnym (superordinate) and HYPOnym
(subordinate): they both point to a hierarchy in the semantic feature category range.
A hypernym has fewer semantic features than a hyponym. In other words, the sense (or
meaning) of the hypernym is always broader, more general, than the meaning of the
hyponym, which is more specific.
Consider how the presence of a larger number of semantic features results in a more specific
meaning or sense of a word:
Dog: + animal, +mammal, -beak, -lives in water …
Platypus:
+ animal, + furry, +tail
+cuadruped
-mammal,
+beak,
+lives in water….
50
Each hyponym may be the hypernym of a number of several hyponyms, as seen in this graph:
Dog is a hyponym of animal, but a hypernym of the breed terrier. Likewise, there are several
subtypes of terrier dogs: terrier is a hypernym of Jack Russel terrier, Airedale terrier, Irish terrier,
etc., and each of these terrier subtypes is a hyponym to terrier. The graph below shows only four of
several hyponyms of terrier and some of their semantic features.
Terrier
Jack Russell
Irish
Long-haired Airedale
+animal
+dog
+terrier +animal
+white +dog
+short hair +terrier
+short legs -English
etc +animal +animal origin
+dog +dog +long(er) hair
+terrier +terrier -white
+long(er) hair +English - short legs
+short legs origin -heavy
etc +long(er) hair weight
-white -pet friendly
- short legs etc
+heavy
weight
+pet friendly
etc
51
Since hyponyms are more specific than their hypernyms (because they contain more semantic
features in their sense), when these two types of items are used in context, the tendency will be for
the hypernym, the more general term, to be accented if it is mentioned after the mention of the
hyponym.
A: Isn’t that terrier cute?

B: Oh I LOVE dogs.
The semantic features of ‘dog’ are contained in the sense of ‘terrier’, so when speaker A uses the
word terrier, she employs all the semantic features contained in dog. By the time speaker B uses the
term ‘dog’, all its semantic features have already been put into play, so they do not constitute new
features.
The reverse situation changes the focus. When a more specific word, a hyponym, is introduced in
the interaction after the hypernym has been used, not all the features in the hyponym are old. Some
of them, which differentiate ‘terrier’ from ‘dog’, will be new features. Therefore, when the
hypernym is the first mention, the hyponym receives the nucleus:
C: Are you a dog person or a cat person?
D: I like TERRIERS.
Notice that the sense terrier may be implicit, so it becomes IOI:

E: Isn’t Cookie a good girl! (Cookie is your pit bull dog)
F: Oh I LOVE pitties!
Cases of POI may be analysed as hyponymy-hypernymy relationships. You can make a word
become a virtual synonym, particularly a hyponym, of any other word, as long as there is a suitable
context. This means the words become existential synonyms by virtue of the context.
G: I saw Tony at the night club last Saturday.
H: I can’t STAND the idiot.
The journey was fraught with problems. A tyre burst, there was no signal, and nobody turned up to
help. When we eventually did get a tow, OTHER problems cropped up.
52
Diálogos en español para reconocimiento de foco y núcleo
– Te compré un libro.
– ¡Me encantan los libros! ¿Por qué se te ocurrió comprarme un libro?
– Fui a la librería. Vi tantos libros que sabía te gustarían, que me dije “Le tengo que comprar un libro”.
– Voy al correo.
– Tengo una carta para el correo. ¿Me despacharías esta carta?
– ¿Cómo mando la carta, simple o certificada?
– Me interesa que llegue, la carta, entonces mandala certificada.
– No encuentro el diario por ningún lado.

– El diario está en la mesita, donde siempre está.
– Alguien lo sacó de la mesita.
– ¡Ah! Yo vi a Martín leyendo el diario esta mañana. Seguramente él lo llevó.
– Estoy buscando trabajo.

– No sabía que buscabas trabajo. Sabía que no te gustaba el trabajo que tenías.
– No es que no me gustase el trabajo que tenía. Es que no era demasiado interesante, por eso lo dejé.
– ¿Te gustaría trabajar con adultos?
– Nunca trabajé con adultos. Siempre trabajé con niños y adolescentes. ¿Es más difícil enseñar a adultos?
– No, no es más difícil. Tal vez deberías usar otro material.
53
Tonicity: Exceptions to the LLI Rule. ELLIRs. Awareness activity
o As we’ve seen before, some words are semantically empty because they refer to
something or someone that has already been mentioned. They are old information (OI)
Examples:
-Gail talked to me about Oscar as if I knew him well, although I 've never MET her brother. ( 'her
brother' is paraphrastic old information= Oscar)  her brother is POI
-He's always asking my advice on what flowers to plant, even though I don't know anything aBOUT
gardening. ( 'gardening' paraphrase of = what flowers to plant)  gardening is IOI
A: There's a meeting tonight at Carl's.

B : Hadn't I a l ready TOLD you about that ? ( 'that' refers to the meeting; we won’t call it OI
because it isn’t a LI; it’s a function word)
I thought Hiroshi lived in the north of Tokyo, but in fact he lives on the OTHer side of the city. (the
city is POI; 'the north of Tokyo' implies 'one [the north] side of the city' this is POI or IOI
A : Can you translate this for me?

B : But you KNOW I don't speak French. (asking for a translation implies that the speaker thinks I
speak French) I don’t speak French is IOI
Nouns of wide denotation: thing, place, person, depending on context.
But: How are THINGS? (= How’s life?  things not of wide denotation but concrete denotation, as it denotes
‘your life’)
Well I don’t like him as a PERSON, but professionally, he’s very good.
(Teacher to class): Today I’m going to show you a special PLACE. You have to guess what or where it is.
Track C33
A: I’ve got some apple juice. Do you want some? B: No, I can’t STAND the stuff.
Jack seems to spend all his time in his bedroom. Never LEAVES the place.
My car’s always breaking down. I HATE the thing.
Before we could use the laboratory, we had to learn about safety and all THAT sort of stuff.
The book ‘s about corruption in sport – taking bribes, placing illegal bets and all THIS sort of thing.
When we were in Rome we were taken to museums, art galleries and THOSE sorts of places.
But sometimes the LLI is semantically rich but non-nuclear. In all the cases below, the IPs are in
broad focus; however, the nucleus does not fall on the stressed syllable of the LLI. We call these
‘exceptions’ to the rule of BF, or ELLIRs for short.
54
1. Who left the TAP running ? running is the LLI but it does not receive the nucleus. Why?
2. I must get my HAIR cut.
3. She says she can't come out. She's got a n ESsay to write.
'running', 'cut', 'to write', and 'to do' are predictable meanings in these contexts
4. I ' ll see you in about an hour. First, I've got some SHOPping to do.
5. A: When does the eclipse start ? B: About an HOUR from now.
6. A: Where does Karen live ? B: A couple of MILES from here.
'now' and 'here' are the usual points of reference in contexts like this
7. I'm not going out in THIS weather.

8. Why don't we meet at YOUR house ?
'weather' and 'house' are obvious: we could just say ' . . . in THIS' and ' . . . at YOURS'
or they may be empty because their meaning is obvious in the particular context in which they
occur:
9. A: Look ! There's a MOUSE in the corner of the room.

10. B: Careful ! You're spilling your SOUP all over the table.
Awareness activity: Read aloud the sentences above, first with

the nucleus as marked, and then placing the nucleus on the LLI.
What’s the difference in meaning? What contexts of interaction
do you project with either choice?
55
Common exceptions to the last lexical item rule, or
ELLIRs: Exceptions to the Last Lexical Item Rule
Recap: the BROAD FOCUS RULE is also kown as the LLI Rule, because in BF, the Nuc tends to
fall on the LLI.
In some special cases- though quite common in everyday English- an IP may be in BF but the Nuc
is found not on the LLI but earlier in the string of words contained in the IP. These are, then,
exceptions to the rule of the last lexical item (ELLIRs)
In the following IPs in BF, the Nucleus does not fall on the LLI. They fall on the noun phrase acting
as subject of the sentence.
NB: Underlining shows Focus. DO: direct object; Rel Cl: Relative clause
Usu: usually; NB: (lat) note bene (note); Cf.: (lat) confere (compare)
1- EVENT SENTENCES: the theta role of the NP in the syntactic subject is that of theme
understood as an entity that undergoes A CHANGE OF STATE. (Perticone’s explanation)
Traditional ‘accounts’ of this (to us) unusual accentuation are grammar-based (Wells, Ortiz Lira).
However, grammar /syntax does not determine prosody; the speaker does. Anyway, because they’re
easy to grasp, these pseudo accounts listed below, with examples. Remember that underlining
signals focus, and event utterances are always in BF.
1-a) Inanimate subject+ intransitive verb denoting (dis) appearance or (mis)fortune.
 An AEROPLANE crashed. (something bad’s happened to the plane)

 Watch out! That CHIMNEY is falling down. (the chimney is suffering a change of
position/state)
 My CAR broke down (my car has suffered a change of state or condition)
 (What happened in the afternoon?) A WIND got up.(the weather has changed from a non-
wind condition to a windy condition)
 We were having a PICNIC / when a THUNDERSTORM struck. (ditto)
Note: The CHICKEN’S burning. but Something’s BURNING. The use of the indefinite pronoun
makes the Nucleus fall on the verb.
1-b) Human subject+ intransitive verb denoting appearance or disappearance.
The PRISONER escaped. Your MOTHER telephoned.

(What HAPPENED while I was out?) The MILKMAN called.
(What’s all the FUSS about?) A CRIMINAL’s escaped.

The KETTLE’s boiling. Your SHOELACES are undone.
Your PONYTAIL is undone. Your BUTTON’s come off.

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Notice that this intonation pattern is not possible if the subject is a pronoun. A pronoun is a
grammatical item and at the same time it indicates that the Subj. is no longer part of the focus. The
Nucleus falls on the last lexical item in the predicate.
It CRASHED. NF It ’s falling OFF. NF
Notice also that if the predicate is modified by a highly informative adverb, the Nucleus falls on the
verb:
The prisoner narrowly ESCAPED.
A very common intonation pattern will involve two IPs and hence two nuclei:
The \ PRISONER / narrowly E\SCAPED. (But only if a FALLING tone is used in the first IP)
The \DOG’s / unfortunately E\SCAPED.
Notice that in Spanish, the nucleus also falls on the NP / subject to the verb:
Vino tu maMÁ. Llamó tu herMAna. Llegó el TAXi.

Hierve el AGua! La PAvaaaaa!!
Ya está la CEna!
Se te desató la coLIta. Se te cayó un boTÓN. Señora, se le abrió la
carTEra!
Se escapó un CHOrro!
Se largó la LLUvia /tormenta. Hubo un terreMOto/ torNAdo. Se derrumbó un
ediFIcio. Se levantó VIENto. Chocó un aVIÓN.
Se me rompió la NOTEbook.
SE CAYÓ EL WIFI!!!
In all these cases, the Subject to the verb has the semantic role of Theme,
understood as an entity which suffers a change of state, condition, or location
(normally from the normal state to the unexpected, or undesired state). Therefore,
THIS WILL BE OUR PREFERRED ACCOUNT OF THIS CASE OF TONICITY.
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2- “Explanation” sentences: when giving the reason why with a sentence with the structure:
noun + adjective (usually with verb ‘be’)
(Why didn’t you buy it?) (Because)

The PRICE was too high. (Because o f its high PRICE)
Why did you decide to redecorate you flat?

The PAINT was peeling off (the walls)
Why did you trim your skirt? It was lovely long as it was.
Yes, but the HEM was getting frayed.
3- AFFECTED THEME : N+ PREDICTABLE TO- INFINITIVE TRANSITIVE VERB

(collocations with predictable verb): we want to direct the hearer’s attention to the
AFFECTED THEME OR THE EFFECTED THEME which is the theta-role of the subject in
this type of sentence.
I have a CONFESSION to make. (I make a confession)
I’m sorry I can’t come to your party, but I’ve got A PHONE call to make, a DINNER to make, and
a BABY to attend to.
(I make a phone call, make dinner and attend to the baby).
Notice: (Teacher) I have some PAPERS to correct.
(Student) I have some papers to CORRECT.
(Student) I have some PAPERS to hand in.
NB that in the so-called “event sentences” AND ALSO in combinations of N+V (items 1 and 3 on
this list), the noun phrase that receives the nuclear accent has the theta role of affected theme. The
main idea is that something has happened to the theme, or that the theme has undergone some type
of change of state. For instance, in sentences with verbs denoting appearance, like ‘Your
MOTHEr’s just arrived’ or ‘The TAXI’s waiting’, the theme was not present before, and after a
certain moment, the theme has become present; we might say that going from the state of ‘absent’
to ‘present’ is a change of state.
Hullo, dear! Your mother-in-

LAW’s just arrived!! Open the
bloody door. I know you’re
there!
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Likewise, if a car breaks down, the car (theme) can be said to have undergone a change of state: it
worked before, but now it doesn’t. In ‘The KETTLE’S boiling’, the ‘kettle’ (=water) goes from
liquid to gas; in ‘Your SHOElaces are undone’, the shoelaces were done before, but now they
aren’t.
Nucleus placement in these sentences, therefore, can be said more

related to semantics than to grammar or syntax.
4- Final adverbials of time and place (FCSATs and FCSAPs) : when they have a context-
setting function, they are non nuclear.
I went to LONDON on Thursday. On Thursday: FCSAT (Final Context Setting Adverbial of

Time)
I saw JOHN yesterday. Yesterday: FCSAT
Notice that, in the last example, the verb is in the past tense. The AAT is almost redundant. Who I
saw is more important than when I saw him.
-Did you see MARY yesterday?
-NO, / but I saw her last WEEK. (No, last week.)
 Adverbials of time and place can be context- setting (CS) or time-focusing (TF).
FCSATs and FCSAPs (Final Context Setting Adverbials of Time and Place, respectively) are non-
nuclear and not accented.
Time focusing or place focusing adverbials are nuclear or accented.
I’d better GO now. FCSAT
She’s been pretty NICE lately. FCSAT
What time did you get UP this morning? FCSAT
They haven’t ARRIVED yet. They don’t MANUFACTURE this any more.
WAIT a minute! Hold ON a minute.
He was in ENGLAND / for almost three DAYS. FTFA

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The bus leaves at four o’ CLOCK / on SUNDAY. FTFA
They’ll be married (for) six YEARS. FTFA
Usually, when there is a number in the adverb of time, the adverb is TF. However, it may not be
so, as can be seen in the following examples:
Example 1
- I’d like an appointment on SATURDAY, / March 1ST.

TFA
- I’m SORRY, sir. / We’re FULL on March 1st, / but I have an opening on March 3RD.
NF OF TFA
Example 2
AGNES! / I haven’t seen you in AGES. / Where ‘ve you been LIVING for the past six months?
Vocative TFA CSA
Although there is a number in the adverbial, it is OF. ‘Six months’ refers to ‘in ages’.
5- Vocatives in final position are non-nuclear . Both speaker and hearer know who is being
addressed.
Let’s GO, Peter.
6- Reporting clauses are non nuclear.
‘Come IN’, she invited us.
7-Adjectival Wh- objects: involve wh- questions where an adjectival wh- word functions as a
premodifier to the noun, and the Noun phrase is the direct object to the verb. The nucleus
falls on the object noun following the adjective. The verb is usually predictable in the context.
Deep structure: You took [DO: NP which course] Head: course PM: which  hence ‘adjectival’
Surface structure: Which COURSE did you take?
Whose ADVICE will you accept?
How many BOOKS did you read?

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The Nucleus does not fall on the DO when this is a wh- pronoun or when the verb has further
complementation.
What did you DO?
Which course did you find more INTERESTING?
8- Causative constructions: Have/ get+ noun+ predictable verb
He got his HAIR cut. (One usually has one’s hair cut or done; ‘cut’ is predictable in the context.)
He didn’t get the CAR washed. (A car is usually washed, among other predictable things.)
I have a POINT to make. (‘make’ collocates with ‘point’, so it is a predictable verb here).
Cf.: He got his hair CURLED/DYED. These verbs are semantically richer than ‘cut’, so we can
highlight them.
I have a point to EMPHASIZE.  see 3)
According to Cruttenden, the last sentence is capable of taking the Nucleus on the noun, but if
emphasize is not predictable in the given context, it can take the Nucleus.
9- Noun followed by a predictable phrase final relative clause.
I like the REPORT (that ) he gave.
But when the noun has further complementation, the Nucleus falls on the end of the Rel Cl:
I like the report (that ) he nailed on my front DOOR.
10- THERE+ BE+ NOUN+ CLAUSE/ VERB / CONTEXT-SETTING ADVERBIAL.
Waiter! There’s a FLY in my soup. In my soup: FCSAP

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An algorithm for the determination of onset and nucleus placement.

Prof. Lic. Andrea M. Perticone ©. 2016-19
The starting point for the determination of which lexical item/s (if any) need/s to be accented is the
so-called “rule of Broad Focus (henceforth, BF), also known as “Last lexical item rule” (LLIR).
This rule states that in a string of new1 information (i.e., unpredictable items, sense-selective
items), the nucleus or tonic falls on the last lexical item in the IP.
A number of issues should be considered before proceeding any further:

a. The term ‘lexical item’ refers to items (words) which have semantic load. These words are
sometimes referred to as ‘content’ words. The word ‘content’ shows that words which only
serve a functional, grammatical function, are considered ‘empty’ or devoid of meaning.
b. I shall use the term new1, with the subindex 1, to refer to the level of tonicity; for the choice
of tone, I will use the term ‘new2’. My aim is to show that the term ‘new’ is polysemic in
the literature: it’s used to refer to two entirely different concepts, one pertaining to the
distribution of accents in the IP, and the other one to the speaker’s illocutionary act in
choosing a given tone. The use of exactly the same word to refer to two different things is
responsible for much confusion in some learners, particularly the wrong nucleus shifting to
the left on the also wrong assumption that almost everything in the IP is recoverable. More
on this, later on.
The determination of the LLI as the nucleus (and tone) bearing lexical item is valid then when every
single LI in the IP is new1. The speaker signals that s/he thinks these items will be new1 to the
listener by accenting them.
Being new1 means being accented because the speaker considers that the listener cannot guess nor
retrieve nor recover the LI from previous knowledge nor from the context. In other words, being
new1 is equal to being unpredictable by the listener. To put it roughly, the listener cannot guess
what the next item will be before the speaker opens his/ her mouth to say it.
Being unpredictable means that before the LI is uttered, the listener is not expected to be able to
predict what the next word will be. Unpredictability follows when the next word could be any from
a list of several options. I shall also use the term coined by Brazil (1994), ‘sense-selective’, to refer
to such items. Sense selectivity occurs when a speaker chooses one item from a set of several
possible items that could fill the next slot in his or her discourse.
Each of these terms, accented, prominent, new1, unpredictable, unrecoverable, unretrievable,

sense- selective, refer to different aspects of an lexical item (henceforth, LI).
‘Accented’ refers to what the speakers does, articulatorily; prominent refers to the listeners
perception of some syllables as standing out from others; the other terms have a discoursal basis,
since they take into account the context within which the IP is uttered.
But what if some items in the IP have been mentioned before, either explicitly or implicitly?
The existence of such items in an IP causes the IP to be in Narrow Focus (henceforth, NF).
I shall follow Cruttenden (2007) in his use of the term ‘old information’ (henceforth, OI) to refer
to such items.
Whether an LI will be accented or not will depend on a binary choice: either the item is new1, and
therefore, accented, or it’s old, and therefore unaccented.
Cruttenden distinguishes four types of OI: verbatim, paraphrastic, physical evidence, and implied
by context.
For each category, I shall use the following acronyms: VOI, POI, PE, IOI.
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As I said before, in order to decide whether an item should be accented or not, we should decide if
that item is unpredictable or not. If we were to put a blank space in our discourse, and we omitted
an item, could the listener retrieve the missing item? Can the listener guess or recover somehow the
word we have omitted? This is the key question to ask yourself when deciding where the accents
‘go’.
A useful, methodical way of deciding which items should be accented, and which ones shouldn’t, is
to use the following algorithm every time you’re confronted with the decision on which LI should
carry the nucleus/tonic and whether there should be any other accents (particularly, an onset) in the
IP.
Start from the BF Rule. Look at the IP you have to analyse. If all the items are new1, the first
lexical item will have an onset accent, the LLI will bear the nuclear accent, and any other Lis in
between will also be new1, and therefore prominent.
An algorithm which gives better results is the following:
Look at your IP and decide, reading from right to left, if any of the items can be considered OI.
First, consider, the LLI. Then, consider the penultimate item. Then, the antepenultimate. And so on
and so forth. More precisely, if any item/s fit any of the four categories of IO, then you can be sure
those items should not be accented. The nucleus will fall on the next LI, going from the last one
(right) to the one before (left).
If you follow this procedure every time you have to analyse tonicity in an IP, you’ll eventually
automatise it and you’ll do it very quickly. It’s important to develop this orderly way of ascertaining
where the nucleus falls as a systematic procedure, rather than jump from item to item, at random.
Once you’ve established where the tonic should fall, you should check if there’s a candidate for the
onset accent. In BF, this’ll be the first LLI, but bear in mind that in NF, the first and other items
may be OI.
Below is a flowchart showing my algorithm for the determination of nucleus and onset placement,
and the type of focus. The  symbol means ‘exists’. The three dots  mean ‘then’.
 OI in the IP? No  IP is in BF  Nuc on LLI in the IP; O on first LI

(Can the items
be considered
as as VOI, POI, Yes  IP is in NF  Nuc on the LLI in focus ; Onset on the first
IOI or PE?) LI in focus
The full flowchart below includes the case of Exceptions to the LLI Rule (ELLIRs)
Is the IP one NO  Nuc on LLI in

No  IP is in of the the IP; O on first LI
BF ELLIRs?
Yes  use exception
 OI in the IP?
(Can any of the
lexical items be Yes  IP is in NF  Nuc on the LLI in focus ; Onset on the first LI in focus
considered as
VOI, POI, IOI
or PE?)
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Tonicity and ELLIRS: Non –nuclear or non-tonic expressions
Some words tend to reject the nucleus, or in other words, tend to be deaccented. These expressions usually
occur in sentence-final position, and are separated from the main clause by a comma. However, in the
traditional (grammatical-attitudinal approach), they’re considered to be included in the same IP as the main
clause, so they shouldn’t be chunked. In final position (unmarked), they don’t tend to receive their own IP,
and therefore, do not receive a nucleus.
Very important: This is just a list. It does not include an exam-type justification of why these expressions
reject the nucleus in final position. This is discussed in class.
Note: the underlining shows Focus. All the following IPs are in BF.
1- Cohesion markers
 a) Additive cohesion markers: really, in fact, as a matter of fact.
INTERESTING, really. EASY, in fact/ as a matter of fact.
 b) Inferential cohesion markers: of course, then.
At an interview, you have to wear a SUIT, of course.
Wear a SUIT, then.
 c) Concessive cohesion markers: if possible.
Bring it TOMORROW, if possible.
 d) Reinforcing cohesion markers: of course, if necessary.
He managed to answer all the QUESTIONS, of course.

Ask the ASSISTANT, if necessary.
 e) Contrastive cohesion markers: instead, for a change.
Let’s go to the MOUNTAINS instead/ for a change.
2- Hearer- Appeal markers:
 a) Softeners: I mean, you know, thanks, please.
` NO, thanks. `YES, please.

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 b) Vocatives in final position.
 c) Tags, when not chunked. It’s \cold, isn’t it.
3- Textual markers:
 4-a) Reporting clauses: she said /told us/ etc.
 4-b) Comment clauses: I think, I believe. He’s not IN, I believe.
4- Approximative markers:
He’s going to be away for a DAY or two.
Is it your BIRTHDAY or something?

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Tonicity: ELLIRS- practice exercises. From Dickerson.

Note: ELLIRs : exceptions to LLI rule (or broad focus rule)
A. 1) Read the following exchanges and identify the nuclei:
1. (At the restaurant)

Customer: Waiter! There’s a fly in my soup!
Waiter: I’m terribly sorry, sir. Perhaps you’d like a beetle in it?
2. A: I’m off to the garage now. I must have a new exhaust-pipe fitted.
B: OK. Don’t forget to get the battery charged and the tyres pumped up.
3. (A young man has given his girlfriend a rather gaudy outfit)

G: It’s horrible. Why did you buy it?
B: The price was right.
A.2 ) What sentence patterns can you find which do not follow the rule of Broad Focus?
Why don’t the nuclei fall on the last lexical item?
B) Mark the nuclei and onsets in the following exchanges and account for your choices. Then categorise
the exceptions to the rule of Broad Focus:
1. (Parent and grandparent are talking about the recent activities of the older children. They have just
discussed what Alice did earlier).
Grandparent: What did Will do this morning?
Parent: He got his hair cut, and his beard trimmed, too.
G: And what did Ernest do?
P: He was lazy. He didn’t get the car washed or the oil changed, either.
2. A: Did Sarah have the operation?

B: No. Her heart’s too weak.
3. (A slaps B on the arm)

B: “Ouch!”
A: “Sorry. There was a mosquito on your arm.”
4. A tourist and his friend are walking down a street.

5. Tourist: “I’ve got to have some traveller’s cheques cashed.” (to a passer-by) “Excuse me, is there a
bank near here?”
6. (One parent is asking about each child’s activities.)

P: Did you get the clothes folded?
B: Yes, and I got the porch swept, too.
P: Did you get your papers graded?
C: No, and I didn’t get lunch fixed, either.
A: So what have you been doing?
C: I’ve been trying to get my report finished.
7. A So did you enjoy yourself at the disco?

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B Not really. The music was too loud.
8. A: What are you looking at? Anything wrong?

B: There’s a stain on your shirt.
A: Oh.
9. A: I’m going to the laundry. I need to get these trousers pressed.
10. (Two residents of the same apartment building are talking.)

A: It sounds like there was some excitement last night.
B: Haven’t you heard? There was a tornado in the area.
11. B Let’s go by car.

A We can’t use the car. The battery’s flat.
B Well get it charged, then.
12. A student bursts into the classroom and yells out: “Everyone get out of here! There’s a bomb in the
school!”
13. A I hear you’re not going on holiday next summer.

B I can’t. I’ve got to have a wretched chimney knocked down and rebuilt.
A That’ll cost a fortune!
B I know.
14. (At Scrooge’s office)

Scrooge: Morning, Mr. Scratchit. Have you had those letters posted?
Scratchit: Yes, sir. And I’ve already got the heating started. My feet are cold.
15. (Two friends gossiping on the phone)

A: Have you seen Alice lately? She’s had her ears pierced and her back tattooed.
B: Oh.

Dialogues for transcription. Mark onset and nucleus. From Dickerson.
1. A conflict arose over the autonomy of the southern states. Then the Civil War broke out.
2. At ten o clock, the guests arrived. Then Andrew stormed in.
3. A dispute ensued. Finally, after a long negotiation, a solution emerged.
4. C Why are you so late? You missed the first part.

D I know. Our car broke down.
C Did you get some help?
D Yes. A neighbour saw us and gave us a lift.
5. E What did you do last weekend?

F I went to Oxford by car.
E Why did you go to Oxford? Cambridge is the place to go.
F Yes but my son is in Oxford.
6. (Job interviewer with applicant)
I How much schooling have you had?

A Seventeen years- no, eighteen. That’s high school, college, and two years of graduate school.
I Did you do high school in three years or four years?
A In three years. So the total should be seventeen, not eighteen.
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7. (Manager with assistant)
A Excuse me. You have a call on extension forty-seven.

M Thank you...(lifts receiver) Did you say forty-seven or fifty-seven?
A I said forty-seven.
M I guess the caller hung up. No one’s on line forty-seven.
8. A I thought you’d gone with John.
B No, it must have been Sue who went. What did they leave for?
A John had some business to attend to.
B This morning he mentioned his check had arrived. Maybe they’ve gone to cash it.
A Is there a bank in the neighbourhood?
B There’s one opposite.
More dialogues for transcription (Dickerson)

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ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in Causative have/get

69
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in Noun+ short, predictable Rel Cl
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in Existential constructions

70
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in structures with Wh-Adjectival+Direct Object
ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in ‘Explanation’ Sentences (explanatory function)

71
Contrastive Focus: nucleus on function words. Practice.
Track B21
Definition of the term ‘CONTRAST’: an opposition between two items belonging to the same set or
system; or an opposition between one item against all the other members of the same category and
all the others available from the same category.
FUNCTION WORDS are usually made prominent when a CONTRAST is expressed or implied:
A: I ' l l leave it on the table, shall I? B: No, put it UNder the table.
A : That looks pretty easy. B: Well , YOU do it then !
Track B22
It is rarely prominent except at the end of a number of fixed phrases with this and that:
You know I was buying a new car? Well , THIS is IT. (= this is the one)
A: People a re only interested in money these days . B : THIS is IT. ( = I agree)
THIS is IT, then. ( = it's time to do something I don't want to - leave, part, etc.)
I just signed my name , and THAT was IT. ( = nothing more had to be done)
A: Here's your pocket money. B: Is THAT IT ? (= is that all there is ? )
A : Just swim across. B: THAT'S just IT. ( = that's the problem) I can't swim.
Track B23
Some is often accented (strong form) when -

• it means 'some people'
SOME consider him to be the best golfer in the world.
• it means a large number or amount

I didn 't see her again for SOME YEARS .
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• it means a particular person or thing, without saying exactly which

There must be SOME time we're all free for a meeting.
Any is often prominent (and pronounced /' eni) when it means 'it's not important which'
ANY of the camera shops in town will sell them.
• it is used for emphasis after a negative verb

Haven't you done ANY of your homework yet?
Somebody, anybody, etc. are often prominent when they are the subject of a sentence:
A: Apparently, there were no witnesses. B: But SOMEbody must have seen it.
Notice that here, ‘somebody’ refers to a particular person. It doesn not function as a noun of general
reference.
Track B24
The is accented ( strong form) when we say that something is the best, most
important, etc. of its kind:
You should go to the Maldives. It's THE place to see coral .
Track B25
The auxiliary verbs be, have and d o and the modal verbs are often prominent –
• in negative forms I CAN'T wait.

• for contrast in polarity I SHOULD have left earlier.
• in contradictions A: You HAVEn't ironed your shirt. B: I HAVE ironed it.
• in time contrasts It WAS in the cupboard, but it ISn't there now.
Do, did and does are often made prominent for emphasis with the present and past simple:
I DO like this cheese.

(= it’s not that I don’t like it) Denying the opposite member of the system (in this case the polarity)
We DID warn you. (=it’s not the case that we didn’t warn you) ditto
Track B26 I
In a piece of new information or a question made up only of function words, the last function
word is often made prominent:
There was nothing I could DO.
A : I 've just finished a really good book . B : What was it aBOUT ?
Exercises: MARK TONIC & ONSET
Track B27
Think about the words in bold in these dialogues and underline them if they are likely to be prominent. Then
listen and check your answers.
1 A: Do you know of any good restaurants in Brockhurst?

B: Well, I haven't been for some years, but there used to be some very good ones.
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The Oyster was the place to eat seafood.

A: Mmm. I do like seafood.
B: But I'm sure any of the restaurants there will be good.
2 A: Try turning the tap off.

B: I have tried turning it, but it's stuck.
A: Did you ask anyone for help ?
B: No. Look, why don't you try?
A: Okay. Hmmm. There must be some way of doing it.
B: I did tell you it was stuck.
A: There. It just needed some strength! Anyone could have done it.
Track B28
1 A: There you are. All finished. B: Is that it?

2 A: You can't sit there, it's Kate's place. B: Oh, is it?
3 A: Are we there yet? B: Yes, this is it.
4 A: Have you finished ? B: Yes, that's it.
S A: Which coat is yours ? B: That's it.
6 A: Your train's arriving. B: This is it, then.
7 A: Do you like my painting? B: What is it?
8 A: Come on, get up now. B: I can't. That's just it.
I can't stand the stuff: Non- prominence on final nouns of general reference
and approximatives
 When we refer to something already mentioned, we can use the stuff (for uncountable nouns),
the place(s) and the thing(s) (for countable nouns) . Very often, some criticism is intended:
Mark ONSET and TONIC in the numbered sentences.
1) A: I've got some apple juice. Do you want some ? B: No, I can't stand the stuff.
2) Jack seems to spend all his time in his bedroom. Never leaves the place.
3) My car's always breaking down. I hate the thing.
 We can use these words with sort of to show that we have just given examples of a larger group of
things. Often we use (all) this, that, these, those, before sort of:
4) Before we could use the laboratory, we had to learn a bout safety and all that sort of stuff.
5) The book 's about corruption in sport - taking bribes, placing illegal bets and all this sort of thing.
6) When we were in Rome we were taken to museums, art galleries and those sorts of places.
 We can use and stuff, and things and and places in a similar way to refer in a general way to
things and places without giving any further detail:
7) I bought some cheese and stuff.
8) We went through Berlin, Bonn and places .
The phrase and that is used to mean that other things were involved, without specifying more
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precisely what:
9) A: Where's Kate ? B: She's gone upstairs to do her hair and that.
 APPROXIMATIVE MARKERS: or something/anything (etc.)

We use or something/anything (etc.) to make what we have just said more vague or indirect:
10) Didn't she use to be a vet or something ?

11) He went off with Ken or somebody.
12)Isn't there any chocolate in the fridge or anywhere ?
13) Let me know if you want any help or anything.
In a similar way we can use or something/anything (etc.) like that:
14) A: Linda seems very lonely.

B: Doesn't she ever go out with friends or anything like that ?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuclei on function words: mark ONSET and NUCLEUS (FROM DICKERSON)
1a (A is opening a present)
B: What is it?
1b (A is reading an article)
B: What is it about?
1c (B went to a party in the company of someone)

A: Who was with you?
2a (A is looking at a tool B is holding) A: What’s it for?
(Mother is mending B’s shirt) C: If she can, she will.
2b (A: That must have been Jenny ringing)

B: That’s not what it was.
2c (Outside the theatre, talking about the actors) How were they?
(A is talking about the Niagara Falls)

B: I’ve never been there. How was it? What was it like?
75
76
Tonicity: highlighting polarity.

77
78
79
80
Nuclei on Time-focusing adverbials (TFAs)

81
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Prominence in reflexive and emphatic pronouns:
Just help yourSELF ; Throw it to ME:
Track C40
When a reflexive pronoun follows a verb or preposition and refers to the subject, it is usually non-
prominent) :
She LOCKED herself OUT.

As he ran, he TIMED himself.
You should LOOK AFTer yourself.
MAKE yourself at HOME.
LET me introDUCE myself.
He FELL and HURT himself.
However, reflexive pronouns like this can be made

prominent for contrast. Compare:
I stupidly left my wallet at home. I was really anNOYED with myself.

but: A: I bet you were angry with your sister.
B: In fact, I was MAINly annoyed with mySELF.
Track 41
When we use emphatic pronouns myself, yourself, etc ,they are usually prominent. For example –
• after a noun or pronoun to emphasise it:

I'm flying to Rome, but the AIRport itSELF is miles from the city.
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Many successful business people didn't go to college. I mySELF left school at 16 .
• at the end of aclause toemphasise the subject:

I'm arranging the office party, but I won't be there mySELF.
They drew the posters themSELVES.
• to emphasise that someone did or will do something alone or without help:

I made it mySELF.
Did you paint it yourSELF ?
She went all by herSELF.
We had the beach all to ourSELVES.
However, pronouns like this can be made non-prominent if we want to highlight a contrast somewhere else
in the sentence. Compare:
I'm really thirsty. I could drink the whole BOTtle mySELF.
but: A: You look thirsty. Would you like a glass of this juice ?
B: Actually, I could drink the whole BOTtle myself.
Track C43 Exercises: Mark onset and tonic
1 She was killing herself laughing.

2 We had to do all the cooking ourselves.
3 They blame themselves for it.
4 He didn't know what to do with himself.
5 Take care of yourself.
6 He made it all himself.
7 I'm going to get myself a bike.
8 They made fools of themselves.
9 I picked them myself.
10 Speak for yourself.
11 I just burned myself.
12 Take one for yourself, too.
Track C44 EXAMPLE: He works for himself.
1 What did you do to yourself?

2 I fell asleep on the train and found myself in Cardiff.
3 The city centre itself is quite interesting.
4 She went for a walk by herself.
5 He's got himself a new car.
6 Have a good time. Enjoy yourselves.
7 Do they bake the bread themselves ?
8 I'm keeping myself warm.
9 I grew all the vegetables myself.
10 She tried to defend herself.
Track C45
A: I've made you a cake.

B: Is that it?
A: Yes, help yourself.
B: Er, you have some first.
A: But I didn't make it for me.
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B: I can't eat it all myself. Marco would like it. Why not give some to him ?
A: But I made it for you. You don't like it, do you ?
B: Well, it's not the cake itself. It's the icing . . .
A: And I was feeling so pleased with myself.
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Accentuation of compound nouns
Single stressed or double stressed?
boiling point civil war claim form defining moment dental floss
distance learning greenhouse hot potato house-hunting ice rink
lipstick loudspeaker orange juice pay phone rubber band
search party shop assistant dish towel town hall
Now use the words above to answer the questions below.
What is . . .
1 a system that records phone messages for you ? A VOICEmail.

2 a sheet of thick paper for drying your hands ?
3 battles between different groups of people living in the same country?
4 a building made of glass used for growing plants ?
5 a level area of ice for people to skate on?
6 a way of studying where you mainly study at home ?
7 a piece of equipment that sound comes out of?
8 a problem that no-one wants to deal with ?
9 a legal document that you use to try to get compensation from an organisation ?
10 the activity of looking for a house to live in?
11 a building where the local government usually meets ?
12 a public telephone that you have to put money in to use ?
1 3 a point at which a situation clearly starts to change ?
14 a drink made from crushed oranges ?
15 a coloured substance that women put on their lips ?
16 the temperature at which liquid becomes a gas ?
1 7 a group of people who look for someone who is missing?
1 8 someone who serves customers in a shop ?
19 thread used for cleaning between the teeth ?
20 a ring of rubber for holding things together?
85
Compound noun or adjective+ noun?: Decide and place onset and tonic.
1 chemical formula
5 coffee shop
2 bank account
6 best man
3 American football
7 mobile phone
4 artificial intelligence
8 flight attendant
9 sofa bed
10 magnetic field
11 tea strainer
12 space station
Double stressed or single stressed? What is the rule?
Apple pie chicken soup orange cake side door back entrance
Revolving door dish washer woman doctor tell-tale
Food poisoning time consumingheart-shaped moth- eaten
Sliding door smoking girl sell by date downpour
Take off take your shoes off shutdown lift-off
Stage manager personnel manager White House white house

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More on tonicity
Some issues of special interest in this subject. The following topics are for student research.
Nucleus in Fixed expressions:
e.g. that’s it. Put my neck on the line. No love lost between us. All hell broke loose.
Deaccentuation of adverbs of proper functioning: I don’t FEEL well. I can’t SEE properly.
The cases of “so” and “one”: I think so and I think so. Which one and Which one?
Lexical focussing: even, all, really, already.
Two uses of ‘’again’’.
The case of hypernyms and hyponyms (see Wells).

87
The third intonation system: tone and its metafunctions.
1. Recap the different functions served by intonation (all 3 systems; see Wells and Tench).
2. Learn the following important concepts you’ll need for the understanding of the discoursal meaning
of tones:
All languages are considered to be shaped and organised in relation to three functions, or metafunctions.
1. Ideational
2. interpersonal
3. textual
Ideational: language concerned with building and maintaining a theory of experience. It includes the
experiential function and the logical function.
Experiential: the grammatical choices that enable speakers to make meanings about the world around us
and inside us.
Logical function as those systems “which set up logical–semantic relationships between one clausal unit
and another”[8] The systems which come under the logical function are TAXIS and LOGICO-SEMANTIC
RELATIONS. When two clauses are combined, a speaker chooses whether to give both clauses equal status,
or to make one dependent on the other. In addition, a speaker choose some meaning relation in the
process of joining or binding clauses together. Halliday argues that the meanings we make in such
processes are most closely related to the experiential function. For this reason, he puts the experiential
and logical functions together into the ideational function.[9]
The interpersonal function refers to the grammatical choices that enable speakers to enact their complex and
diverse interpersonal relations. This tenet of systemic functional linguistics is based on the claim that a
speaker not only talks about something, but is always talking to and with others.
The grammatical systems that relate to the interpersonal function include Mood, Modality, and Polarity.[
Textual function. The term encompasses all of the grammatical systems responsible for managing the flow
of discourse. These systems “create coherent text – text that coheres within itself and with the context of
situation”. They are both structural (involving choices relating to the ordering of elements in the clause), and
non-structural (involving choices that create cohesive ties between units that have no structural bond). The
relevant grammatical systems include Theme, Given and New, as well as the systems of cohesion, such as
Reference, Substitution, and Ellipsis.
An Outline of Brazil’s Discoursal Approach to Intonation: Introduction to the

forms of intonation .
Source: PALE, teacher’s book. (see bibliography in syllabus)
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Proclaiming and referring tones: the influence of phonetic form on perception

89
90
91
Abstract meanings of intonation

92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
A summary of the attitudinal approach (O’Connor & Arnold, 1972) and its
shortcomings.
Source: Tench (1996)
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
Brazil’s Discoursal Approach to Intonation: proclaiming and referring tones

with a transactional function.
Assigning proclaiming and referring tones
Adapted from Prof. Zabala. Original source: Hewings, M.

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Proclaiming and referring tones in Question- Answer Exchanges
Assign tone only to B’s response (i.e. in statements)
A: Where on earth did you find that?

B: I came across it in an antique shop. A: The hall was packed, wasn’t it?
B: I hate it when it’s so crowded.
A: What time shall we leave?
B: We could go now, as you’re ready. A: I could move that easily.
B: Well why don’t you try, if you think you’re
A: What time did David come back? so strong.
B: At about three I heard him come in.
A: When did they tell you it would get here?
A: I’m not sure his plan’d work very well. B: By yesterday, they said it’d be delivered.
B: I thought his suggestion was ridiculous.
A and B have agreed to meet. But they haven’t decided what to do. Whatever A suggests, B has already
done or is going to do it soon. Assign tones to both participant’s moves.
A: Let’s go to the theatre.

B: I’m going to the theatre on Saturday.
A: Let’s go to the sports centre, then.
B: I’m going to the sports centre tomorrow.
A: Would you like to see a film?
B: I’m going to the cinema this evening.
A: Shall we visit Janet? She keeps inviting us.
B: I’m going to visit Janet next Monday.
A: We could try the new Italian restaurant.

B: I went there last Saturday.
A: Why don’t we drive to the coast?
B: We drove to the coast on Thursday.
A: Well, let’s just stay in and listen to some music.
B: We stayed in last night. That’s what we always
do in the end.
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Assign tones to signal the information status in B’s responses.
1. A: When are you going to New York

B: I’m flying at ten o’clock.
2. A: When did you first meet Tony

B: I’ve known him for years.
3. A: How long have you been able to speak French

B: I’ve been learning French for six years
4. A: When did you last see Mike

B: Tuesday was the day
5. A: Do I turn it on with this switch

B: Press the red one not the black one.
6. A: Have you seen the papers I brought home

B: Your papers are on the table in the kitchen
C68
1 a: Do you want some tea?
B: A glass of water is what I’d really like.
2 a: I see your neighbours keep goats.
B: The awful smell is what I object to.
3 a: What's for breakfast?
B: Coffee and toast is what I usually have
4 a: What are you having for your birthday?
B: What I’m hoping for is a new computer.
5 a: My train to work was late yet again.
B: What you should do is write and complain.
6 a: All the plants in my garden are dying.
B: What we want is some rain.
7 a: What did you get from the butcher's?
B: These sausages were all they’d left
8 a: What's the view like from your bedroom window?
B: All I can see is a block of flats.
C69
1 A: How is Dan getting on in Sydney?
B: (his brother - went to Australia)
2 A: You looked uncomfortable during the meeting.
B: (my back - aching)
3 A: I suppose the Liberals will raise taxes now they are in government.
B: (the Democrats - won the election)
Use of referring tone to express reservation (implicational fall-rise)

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D3
We commonly use a fall-rising tone when we want to indicate our reservation about something.
For example, we may not completely agree with something, or we know that what we are saying is only partly
correct (restriction), or we may not be sure that what we are saying will be accepted:
A: do you like her paintings?

B: \yes ( I do)
=
B: v yes. ( but I’m not sure, or I like some of them)

=
A: is it an interesting town?
B: the old parts are. ( other parts aren't)
=
A: you lost again, I hear.

B: I did my best. ( you obviously expected more)
=
A: are you going to the conference next week?

B: well, I was planning to go. (=but I’ve got too much work).
Joe and Olivia are going on holiday in the morning , but Joe is excited and can't sleep. Do you think
Joe's questions are likely to have a rising tone or a falling tone?
C74
J: Are you awake ?

0: Mmm.
J: I wonder what time it is?
0: Er, four o'clock.
J: When did you book the taxi for?
0: Eight.
J: Which terminal does the plane leave from?
0: Don't know.
J: You don't know?
0: No.
J: Doesn't Philip work at the airport?
0: No, Adam.
J: Are you sure?
0: Yes.
J: What time is it again?
0: Four.
J: Would you mind if I put the radio on?
0: No.
J: When's the taxi coming?
0: Zzzzz.
C79
Assign tones in the following exchanges
A: I thought Madrid played brilliantly. B: Weren't they amazing?

1 A: I've just got a job in Alaska. B: Are you serious?
2 A: I don't think any of these jackets will fit. B: How about this one?
3 A: You didn't tell your parents what you're going to do, did you? B: Certainly not. Do you think I'm stupid?
4 A: Great weather we're having. B: Isn't it fantastic?
5 A: So did you lend Barry your motorbike? B: Barry! Are you out of your mind?
6 A: Where do you want me to go? B: Can you stand over there?
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7 A: What do you think of my new skirt? B: You can't go out dressed like that. Have you no shame?
8 A: Roz's exam results were good, weren't they? B: Didn't she do well?
9 A: The match is on TV tonight. B: Who cares?
10 A: David looks awful. B: Do you mind? That's my brother you're talking about.
The interactional function of tones.
PRACTICE: Go back on all the exercises above and account for the interactional meanings of tones and the
contexts they project. (see projection in Brazil’s CVIE).
SUMMARY so far
Some relationships between the speaker’s choice of tone and assumption of the state of convergence.
Transactional function of tones
 Speaker choice: referring tone. The assumption of common ground when the speaker believes the
information contained in the IP is shared by him/herself and the listener.
 Speaker choice: proclaiming tone. The assumption of no common ground; the speaker believes the
information is new to the listener. The speaker proclaims the information in the IP, performs an act of
telling, because s/he thinks the listener doesn’t know the information.
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Interactional function of tones
 Speaker choice: proclaiming tone. The assumption of no common ground: when the speaker treats
material which is not new to the listener (or the speaker thinks this is the case) as if it were new.
Divergence.
 Speaker choice: referring tone: The assumption of common ground: when material which is judged by
the speaker as new, i.e. not present in the area of convergence, but the speaker still treats this material
as if it were shared. Convergence.
Marking the status of information in an IP: in all cases, the choice is between a proclaiming tone (either p
or p+) for new2 information (i.e. information that does not belong to the area of convergence), or for a telling
act, and a referring tone (either r or r+) for shared information, or an act of reference to common ground.
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The Intonation of Questions- discoursal approach (Brazil)
TASK 1. Let us refresh the grammatical approach first. For the dialogue below, predict the intonation of the
utterances in bold type according to the grammatical approach (Lee)
Interviewer: So your summer holidays start next week, Catherine. (1)

Catherine: That’s right. I can’t wait.
Int: You must be glad your exams are over!
Cath: Yes, I am. Very glad.
Int: Are you planning to find a beach somewhere/ and relax in the sun? (2)
Cath: No, that’s not my idea of fun. [Oh?] I hate that sort of holiday. [Hm] Partly because I’ve got red hair/
and very pale skin,/ so I can’t stand lying in the sun. [Ah] I just go red. I really don’t like going on beach
holidays.
Int: So where are you going? (3) Have you decided? (4)
Cath; Yes, I’m going to France/ with some friends.
Int: France! That’s nice. Are you going to the mountains? (5)
Cath: Yes, to a place called Chamonix in the French Alps.
Int: Ah, yes.
Cath: There are some nice mountain walks there.
Int: And where are you going to stay? (6)
Cath: Oh, we’re going to take a tent and camp.
Int: So you’re going to do some walking. (7)
Cath: Yes, walking and mountain climbing and we’re also going to rent some mountain bikes and do some
cycling.
Int: What about swimming? (8)
Cath: No, none of us are keen on swimming but we’ll probably do some canoeing down the river. The river
which flows through the valley there is quite fast.
Int: That sounds really fun.
Cath: Well, I certainly think so!
Int: Have a good time!
Cath: Thanks.
TASK 2. Brazil claims that there is no such thing as 'intonation of questions'; there are exchanges. Read the
ones below. What is speaker A doing in each opening move? What is B doing?
Exchange 1:
Opening move Answering move
A: 'I prefer \that one B: Oh. Minimum contribution; -------------------------------
obligatory move ( may be non-
verbal)
Speaker A is TELLING Speaker B is acknowledging receipt
of A's info
Exchange 2:
A: You prefer \that one? B: Yes/ No. Obligatory A: \ Oh. optional
Speaker A is asking (hOW DO YOU Speaker B is answering Speaker A is acknowleding
KNOW?) receipt of B's info
Other ways of asking:
Do you prefer that one?
Which one do you prefer?
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Exchange 3:
A: They’re very expensive. B: Yes. -----------------------------
Speaker A IS NEITHER TELLING B expresses agreement (matching)
NOR ASKING; seeks B's agreement
Exchange 4: classroom exchange

T: Where does tea come from? S: From `China (HK) T: `Good. (HK)
(Teacher is asking; knows answer) Students is answering and initiating T evaluates S's answer;
another asking exchange) matches key
What Brazil wants to show is that it is not the form that determines the communicative value of an utterance,
e.g. You prefer that one has the form of a declarative sentence, but in the context of two friends who are
talking about preferences, e.g. deciding which wallpaper to buy for their flat, the utterance has the value of a
question.
a)
b) TASK 3. Look at the following situation: Husband is sitting on sofa, reading newspaper. Wife enters
room, puts coat on and buttons it up. Husband sees this and says:
(187) H: // you’re GOing OUT //
a) What tone do you think he uses? Why does he make this choice?
b) Now listen to the audio to check your prediction. Were you right?
c) TASK 4. Listen to the following exchange. What tone does speaker B use? Account for his choice from a
discoursal perspective.
d)
e)
(189) A: // i’ve JUST been talking to JOHN //
 B: // you’ve BEEN in the OFfice //
A: // YES //
f)
 Notice that both (187) and (189) are declarative sentences in form (a grammatical label) but they're being
used with a questioning function. The speakers make assumptions about what can be taken as already
negotiated between speaker and hearer, and request the hearer's confirmation. In other words, the speakers
want to check if their assumptions are correct. In Brazil's terms, (187) and (189) are CHECKING questions.
TASK 5. A passenger bound for Sheffield is at the station, looking for his train. What tone is he most likely to
use in the utterance below, and why?
(204) Passenger: // is THIS the SHEFfield train //
Now listen to the audio to check your prediction. Were you right?
TASK 6. Look at the following exchange:
(202)
Patient: I have an appointment for two o’clock.
Receptionist: // are YOU mister RObinson //
a) What tone is the receptionist likely to use? Justify.

120
b) Now listen to the audio to check your prediction. Were you right?
 Notice that (204) and (202) are interrogative sentences in form, but their intonation is the same as that of
(187) and (189). In discoursal terms, all of these are ____________________________ .
TASK 7. Imagine possible contexts of interaction for the following exchanges and account for the tones
according to the discoursal approach.
A. I can’t find my book.

(208) B: // p WHAT’S it CALLED //

(206) B: // r WHAT’S it CALLED //
TASK 8a : Our traveller is still trying to find the Sheffield train. She has asked at several platforms, yet
unsuccessfully. Tired from walking around, she goes to the next platform and asks, rather impatiently:
(204) b) // is THIS the SHEFfield train //
What tone is she likely to use this time? Why?
 As you can see, Wh- questions do not always take a fall, and Yes/No questions do not always take a rise!
Both (208) and (206) are wh- questions in form, but they're being used for different purposes, so they take
different tones. As we have seen above, (206), having an r tone, is a question to CHECK, even though it is a
Wh- in form. A question with p tone, be it Wh- -like (208)- or Yes/No -like (204)- is a question to FIND
OUT: IT EXPECTS NEW INFORMATION. The speaker asks the hearer to tell him/ her that which s/he does not
know and cannot/ does not want to make assumptions about. Notice that in questions, irrespective of their
form, THE P TONE INDICATES THAT THE NEW INFORMATION COMES FROM THE HEARER, NOT FROM THE
SPEAKER.
TASK 7b: Interrogative statements with proclaiming tone can be reformulated as questions to find out, i.e.
wh- questions. Reformulate (204).
Cf. Lee's example(p. 33) A: Could you pass the /salt? (B does not respond) A: Could you pass the \salt?
Cf the example cited by Tench (p. 97) A: Is this your /bag? B: Pardon? A: Is this your \bag?
LET'S RECAP: (fill in the gaps)
Brazil claims that the so-called 'intonation of questions' is not determined by the form (grammar) of the
question. Rather, it has to do with what the speaker knows or does not know; with what he assumes to be
already negotiated between him/her and the hearer.
Brazil divides all questions, irrespective of their grammar, into two main groups:
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a) Those which have referring tone (dominant or non-dominant) are CHECKING questions; the speaker
wants to ________________________;
b) those which take falls are FINDING OUT questions; the speaker is saying 'Please tell me'; s/he expects
______________________;
TASK 9 (AT LAST!): Now use the discoursal approach to account for the intonation of the utterances we
analysed in the dialogue about Catherine's holiday trip.
PRACTICE
1. Mark the tones in the following dialogues.
Dialogue 1
A. Excuse me, is this seat free?

B. Yes, it is.
A: Is it OK if I sit here?
B: Yes, of course.
A: Er...is that your newspaper?
B: Yes.
A: May I borrow it for a minute?
B: Go ahead.
Dialogue 2
Customer: Good morning.

Assistant: Good morning. Can I help you?
C: Yes, I’m looking for a book.
A: What’s the title?
C: Instant English. Have you got it?
A: Yes, we have.
C: How much is it?
A: Let me see... it’s fifteen pounds.
C: May I see it?
A: Of course. Here you are.
2. Rewrite the following questions to find out without changing their communicative value:
//p is it THREE o' CLOCK//

//p are you GOing OUT//
// p are YOU mister ROBinson//
// p are you TIRED//
TASK 5. Listen and compare the following exchanges, in which the second speaker (B/ doctor) echoes the
lexis and grammar of A's/ the patient's utterance. What is the significance of the tone choices in each case?
(191)
A. // i SAW him in OXford street //
 B // you SAW him in OXford street //
A: // p YES //
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(192)
A // p SAW him in OXford street //
 B// you SAW him in OXford street //
A: // p YES //
(193) a
Doctor: // p where do you GET this pain//
Patient: // p in my HEAD//
Doctor: // you GET it in your HEAD//
Patient: // P YES //
(193) b
Doctor: // you GET it in your HEAD//
TASK 8. What do you think is the difference in communicative value between (196) and (195) below?
(196) // r+ DO you prefer THAT one //
(195) // p DO you prefer THAT one //
Can you reformulate (195) as a Wh- question?
Tone in questions and social elicitation
CVIE Brazil (1997)
This is a summary of Brazil’s chapter. The student is advised to read this summary before tackling the reading
of the actual chapter in the book (The CVIE). The audio files have been taken from the book, and their
listening while reading are strongly recommended. The numbers next to the recorded samples are the same
ones found in the book.
1. TONE IN DECLARATIVE MOOD STATEMENTS
Brazil claims that there is no such thing as intonation of questions. He also argues that the traditional view
that questions take a rise and statements take a fall is an oversimplification.
He explains that the p/R distinction, involving questions of common ground and the conversational pursuit of
speaker/ hearer convergence, requires some adjustment if it is to be applied in interrogative contexts.
He starts off by analysing the following exchanges:
Read the following exchanges. What is the direction of the information?
Exchange 1
A: I prefer that one
B: [Oh]
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Exchange 2
A: You prefer that one?
B: Yes
A: [Oh]
Exchange 3
A: They’re very expensive.
B: Yes.
Brazil classifies these exchanges according to the direction of information:
In 1 the information goes from A to B; 1 is then a telling exchange. It is made up of a telling move and a
follow-up move, which may be verbalised or not.
In 2, A is requesting information from B; it is an asking exchange, since the speaker will not be telling the
hearer about the hearer’s own preference. The structure is made up of an asking move, an answering move and
an optional follow-up.
The purpose of exchange 3 is to establish mutuality, to ascertain that hearer and speaker see things eye-to-eye:
it is a matching exchange.
2 is then a tentative suggestion articulated by the speaker and put forward for the hearer to concur if mid
termination is chosen, or adjudicate, if high termination is chosen. The speaker is asking the hearer.
Therefore we may say that the discourse values of 1 and 2 are determined on the basis of who knows what.
Brazil compares the examples 1 and 2 above with the one below:
John prefers that one (?)
The appropriacy or inappropriacy of the question mark will depend on whether it is the speaker or the hearer
who knows about John’s preferences.
(180) //p I prefer THAT one//
(181) // p YOU prefer THAT one//
While (180) is aimed at removing uncertainty on the part of the hearer (the speaker proclaims info), (181) is
aimed at the removal of the speaker’s uncertainty, not the hearer’s.
The world-changing element is not the assertion but the hearer’s yes or no that the assertion seeks to elicit.
The step towards convergence that the speaker initiates is being brought about by the response it pre-empts.
In (182) // p JOHN prefers THAT one// , depending on the context of interaction, the speaker either
- offers to change the hearer’s world view or
- articulates an assumption that the hearer will change his/ her world view.
What happens if the examples above are said with referring tone? (we’ll use the symbol R to examine what r
and r+ tones have in common)
(183) // R i preFER that one// (but I can’t afford it)

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(183) projects a context of interaction in which the content of the tone unit is common ground.
In (184) // R you preFER THAT one// , the speaker is offering a tentative assessment of common ground and
asks the hearer to concur with or adjudicate with respect to its validity: ‘Am I right in taking it as already
established between us that you prefer that one?’ A step towards greater convergence will be achieved only
with the hearer’s production of the response Yes or No. In other words, the speaker supposes a provisional
area of common ground which awaits a proclaimed endorsement.
Look at the following exchange:
Husband is sitting on sofa, reading newspaper. Wife enters room, puts coat on and buttons it up. Husband sees
this and says:
// r you’re GOing OUT //
What tone do you think he uses? Why?
The utterance (187) // r you’re GOing OUT //, if addressed to someone buttoning up his coat, can be
interpreted as a presentation of the apparent intentions of the hearer as if they were negotiated common ground
and a simultaneous request for information. It can be reformulated as “Please confirm that I’m drawing the
right conclusion from your actions”. (187) is a making-sure question.
// p you’re GOing OUT // This utterance projects a context in which the speaker does not know what
interpretation to put on the hearer’s conduct. It is a question to find out, and it can be reformulated as “Is that
it? Or if not, what are you going to do?”
Bearing in mind what we have said so far, read the following exchange. Can you predict the tones?
(189) A: // i’ve JUST been talking to JOHN //

B: // you’ve BEEN in the OFfice //
A: // YES //
Now listen to the tape and check your predictions.
(189) A: // p i’ve JUST been talking to JOHN //

B: // r you’ve BEEN in the OFfice //
A: // p YES //
What would be the implications of B using p tone?
Here, speaker B’s assumption of what may be taken for common ground is based not upon visual evidence but
upon A’s preceding assertion.
B: // p you’ve BEEN in the OFfice // proposes one of the possible places where the hearer may have met John,
with the implication that, for all the speaker knows, it might have been elsewhere. It can be reformulated as “Is
that what you’re telling me?” or “Where did you meet John?”
Both in (187) and in (189) the declarative mood item with referring tone serves to check an inference. In (191),
however, this explanation cannot be applied:
A. // p i SAW him in OXford street //

B. // r you SAW him in OXford street //
A: // p YES //
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When a speaker echoes the lexis and grammar of an utterance, the appropriate paraphrase is not “Am I right in
concluding that...?” but “Am I right in thinking you said/ meant ...?”.
The local effect of an echo like this can be described in terms of surprise: “Have I heard correctly...?” indicates
that what has been heard is somehow contrary to expectations. The speaker is heard as if saying “That’s an
odd place for him to be!” Provided that the mid key is used, the proclaimed version of (191) lacks this element
of expectation.
C. (192) // p you SAW him in OXford street //
(192) could occur during a police enquiry, where the questioner wants to make sure that the witness
remembers accurately. The interrogator is heard as if saying “Think again- was it Oxford Street, or was it
somewhere else? “

(193) Doctor: // p/r+ you GET it in your HEAD//
If the doctor chose referring tone, he’d be heard as questioning his own hearing or understanding of what the
patient has said. He would sound as if he’d never known anyone have this particular kind of pain there before!
With proclaiming tone, the doctor would be heard as asking for greater precision, as recycling the question, by
behaving as though the patient has not yet selected a response and leading to “Yes. Behind my eyes.”
2. YES/ NO QUESTIONS
Brazil claims that within the context of interaction, what matters is who knows what about whose intentions.
Therefore respect of this, there is no difference between a) and b) below:
a) You prefer that one?

b) Do you prefer that one?
The significance of the grammatical form of b) is that it marks the utterance as interrogative even in the
absence of any relevant features of speaker/ hearer understanding, i.e. the interrogative value of b) is given by
the grammar, whereas any putative interrogative value for a) will have to be determined by the context of
interaction.
Therefore if a) and b) are similar, what was said before about declarative mood or moodless utterances may be
applied to utterances where the grammar makes explicit the interrogative function, as in the examples below:
(195) // p DO you prefer THAT one // is a question to find out, equivalent to “I don’t know whether you prefer
that one or not. Please tell me. Which one do you prefer?”
(196) // r+ DO you prefer THAT one // is a question to check an assumption of speaker/ hearer common
ground. It is equivalent to “Am I right in assuming that you prefer that one?”
Proclaimed polar questions are very common in certain kinds of guessing games, such as “Twenty Questions”
(“Animal, Vegetable or Mineral” in the US). At the beginning of a round, participants have no clue as to the
answer so they start by guessing, characteristically with p tone:
(198) // p IS it an ELephant // ... // p IS it an armaDILlo // ... // p or a PORcupine //
As the possibilities are narrowed down, players start to put their questions not as guesses, but as deductions or
hunches, characteristically with r tone. The speaker tentatively projects a context in which the response has
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been negotiated, and asks the quizmaster for confirmation (or denial) of the assumption. The speaker modifies
his/her world view in advance and submits the modification for the hearer’s approval.
(199) A: I wish I could remember his name!

B: // r/p IS it ARthur //
With p tone, speaker B will probably be heard as unhelpfully suggesting a name off the top of his head. With r
tone, Arthur is proposed as being the forgotten name: “I think his name might be Arthur- am I right?”
A traveller looking for his train is likely to ask:
(204) // r is THIS the SHEFfield train //
The traveller makes an assumption that it is and asks the hearer to have it checked. If the question had p tone,
it would sound as if the traveller had no idea what time his train was due to leave.
Yes/ no questions are often asked in circumstances where the asker has some reason for projecting an
assumption that he knows the answer. This may account for the traditional assertion that “yes/ no questions
take a rise”
3. INFORMATION QUESTIONS

B. // p/r WHAT’S it CALLED //
If speaker B does not know the book title, s/he will use p tone. He asks the question to find out. It can be
reformulated as “Tell me the title, so that I shall recognise it if I come across it.”
With referring tone in his utterance, Speaker B is heard as asking not for information but rather whether the
book A is looking for is the one he recently saw in the bathroom or elsewhere. (206) // r WHAT’S it
CALLED // is similar to (207) // r IS it robinson CRUsoe //, and although these questions anticipate different
answers (Robinson Crusoe and Yes), they both check B’s provisional assumption that the lost book is the one
he saw in the bathroom before he goes on to make a suggestions as to where it might be found.
Our traveller might ask:
(212) // r WHERE does THIS train go to please //
The traveller would be checking whether this was the train she wanted to catch. The question is equivalent to
(204)
But if the traveller has asked several times and on different platforms and has been told that it is not the train
she wants, she might ask:
(213) // p and WHERE does THIS train go to // which signals exasperation, as if she was saying “From the
way the system seems to be working, it could be going anywhere!”
Cf Tench A: Is this your /bag? B: Pardon? A: Is this your \bag?
(214) // p IS it an Elephant // is equivalent to // p WHAT IS it //

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Requests for information of the how, where or when kind occur frequently in situations where the information
is so far unnegotiated. This may be the reason why traditionally, wh- questions have been associated with
falling tones. But this tendency is a fact about situations and not a deterministic relationship between question
type and tone selection.
4. Social elicitation
We do not always ask questions to find out information or to have our assumptions confirmed or denied. Many
real-life elicitations seek to establish social relationships. They are sometimes called phatic questions; they are
meant to be friendly so they usually have a referring tone, the tone insinuating togetherness:
// r have you been in Argentina LONG //

// r how LONG are you STAYing //
Compare
// r do you enJOY argentina //

// p do you enJOY argentina // this is not a phatic question. This means “I need to know.” The speaker sounds
interested only in the information per se, not in asking a question to be nice.
(220) // r DID you have a good HOLiday //
As these are social formulae, their answers are conventional (Yes). The speaker behaves as if the answer had
already been negotiated.
// r can you GIVE me a HAND //
Here the speaker is asking for help, so he uses r tone (non dominant) to suggest togetherness. If the action
required is in the benefit of the speaker, the speaker will try not to be dominant.
When there is benefit for the hearer, the speaker can afford to be dominant. In offering help, he can use r+
tone.
// r+ can i HELP you //

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Tone Meanings according to Linguistic Metafunctions: Chart
Transactional Interactional Textual

(ideational – exchange (interpersonal – (textual –
of information) exchange of goods and organization and
services) sequencing of the
message)
p: Fall
p+:
Rise-
Fall
r: Fall-
Rise
r+:
Rise
0:
Level
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The intonation of questions- grammatical approach ( by W.R. Lee)
1. Match the labels with the type of question. There’s one label that doesn’t match any of the categories.
A) Repeat; B) Yes/No; C) Example; D) Checking; E) Tail; F) Rhetorical; G) Wh- ; H) Polite; I) Choice; J)

Echo
TYPE OF
EXAMPLES
QUESTION
1a) Shall we go /home? 1b) Shall we go \home? 2a) Would you pass the /salt? 2b) Would
1
you pass the \salt? 3a) Will you come and \see us? 6) You’re /coming?
7) This is \your book, \isn’t it?
2 8) This is \your book, /isn’t it?
9) This is \your book, /is it?
10a) What’s your /name? 10b) What’s your \name? 11a) What’s going \on? 11b) What’s
3
going /on?
13) Would you like /tea│ or \coffee? 14) Shall we go or \not?
4
15) So you’ve been to the seaside. Did you /swim │or /sunbathe│or go /boating?
5 16) Did you \swim │or \sunbathe│or go \boating?
17a) A: Where’s Tom? B: In the coal-cellar. A: (incredulous) /Where? /Where did you say he
was?
17b) A: Why did they leave early? (B answers but A is inattentive.) A: /Why did you say they
6 left early?
17c) A: Are you /going there? (B answers at length but doesn’t make the point clear.) A: I
don’t understand at all. /Are you going there? Or \aren’t you?
A: When are you going on \holiday? 18) B: When am I going on /holiday?

7
19) A \storm sprang up- and  were we \seasick?
8
2. Choose the most suitable meaning for each of the boxes 1-4. There are two extra meanings.
a) Speaker expects confirmation of a fact in doubt;

b) Speaker sounds more argumentative;
c) Speaker intends to be more polite.
d) Speaker expects hearer's agreement.
e) Speaker makes a comment on something obvious; reply not necessarily expected.
f) Speaker sounds more 'pressing'.
TAIL QUESTIONS examples

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BODY TAIL meaning

POLARITY TONE POLARITY TONE
+ \ - \ 1 This is \your book, \isn’t it?
+ \ - / 2 This is \your book, /isn’t it?
+ / - \ 3 This is /your book, \isn’t it?
+ \ + / 4 This is \your book, /is it?
PRACTICE: For each of the questions below, complete the gaps in the rules.
1. Do you want /apples or ba\nanas?
This is a _________ question. ___________ questions have _____________ tones in the first chunks(s), and a
________ tone in the last chunk.
2. So you've been to London. Did you see St. /Paul's │or Westminster /Abbey│or the / Tower?
In the question above, the speaker is mentioning different _____________, not options, so there is no falling
tone on Tower.
3. A: Is she ‘studying /English?

B: She's studying \Eskimo.
A: / What's she ºstudying?
Speaker A's second question is a _________________. He/she asks this type of question either because B's
answer was very unusual or because A couldn't _____________ . The question takes a rise from the
________________ syllable.
4. A: ‘Where were you last \Wednesday?

B: ‘ Where was I last / Wednesday?
In the example above, speaker B ____________ A's question to gain time to think. This kind of question often
ends with a __________ .
5. A: We ‘crossed the Sa\hara, and ‘was it \hot?
This is not a real question, but a _________________ question. Questions like this one do not expect an
answer, since the answer is obvious. They resemble exclamations. They start with _____________ pitch on
the first stressed syllable and have a _______________ tone on the last one.
Answers to rising tail questions
Expressing \Yes, it \is
‘Yes, it \is. /Yes, it \is.
agreement
Expressing \No, it \isn’t.
‘No, it \isn’t. /No, it \isn’t.
disagreement
\No, it /isn’t
Contradicting \No, it \/ isn’t.
Reading guide on Key and Termination
Brazil (1997) The Communicative Value of Intonation in English.
Key and Termination: Guiding questions
Key
1. What is the difference between a minimal and an extended tone unit?

2. Which are the parts of a tonic segment?
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3. What is the difference between a linguistic and an existential paradigm (revise Prominence in Brazil)?
4. How many members does the existential paradigm have when we use High Key
5. Why should an attitudinal labelling of High Key be avoided?
6. How many elements in the paradigm does Mid Key include?
7. How should we interpret High Key within an open set? (Two possibilities)
8. Which term does Dr. Brazil use, instead of key, when key operates on an extended tone unit?
9. Which key expresses agreement?
10. Which key expresses disagreement?
11. How can you soften disagreement that is made through High Key?
12. How can you compare adjudication and concurrence in the classroom exchange?
13. Find synonyms for adjudication and concurrence.
To sum up
High Key projects
Mid Key projects
Low Key projects
Termination
1. How does termination operate in the tone unit?
2. What does termination project?
3. What is concord?
4. What is concord breaking?
Chapter 6
1. How does Tone operate?

2. How does Key operate?
3. What do High, Mid and Low Key project within the unit?
4. In what way does key operate at utterance boundaries?
5. What do High, Mid and Low Key project anaphorically at utterance boundaries?
6. What do High, Mid and Low Key project cataphorically at utterance boundaries?
Key: practice activities
1. Read the following exchanges and utterances. Decide which of the underlined tone units are likely to be
realised on high key, mid key or low key.
a) (Outside the cinema) We couldn’t get in. There were no tickets left.
b) A: I enjoy horror films. B: I hate them.
c) (On a plane) Please fasten your seatbelts. We’re about to land.
d) The old ladies// wanted to play football.
e) (Two friends talking) A: Sonia’s thinking of buying a Porsche. B: Yes. She’s keen on fast cars.
f) (Two friend are gossiping)

A: He spends all his money on clothes. B: Yes. He always wears something expensive.
g) She went to buy a bicycle// and she came back with a sports car.
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h) (The weatherman on TV): In the mountains, where the temperatures are lower, there could be snow.
i) (Context: The neighbours normally neglect their garden A: Our neighbours// are gardening.
2. Decide which opening, A or B, is more likely to be followed by the transcribed item.
a) (Small talk at a party)
A: I expect you enjoy living in London? B: You don’t mean you actually chose to live in
London?
(HK) Yes. (MK) It’s an exciting place to live.
b) (At the office)
A: Where can I find the manager? B: Where can I find Mr.Robinson?
(MK) You mean Mr. Robins. (MK)He’s over there.
c) (At the veterinary hospital)
A: I can’t think why they don’t have someone on duty.

B: I suppose they have to have someone on duty at this time of day?
(HK) Mary’s on duty, as far as I know.
3. THE CLASSROOM EXCHANGE: What key do you expect to hear in the underlined tone units?
Teacher: So what’s the answer then?

Student: Seven
Teacher: Seven. Yes. Good.
Dialogues for transcription from The New Making Polite Noises
make the right noises/make all the right noises (idiom): If you say that someone makes the right noises or makes all the
right noises, you think that they are showing concern or enthusiasm about something because they feel they ought
to rather than because they really want to.
1. Introductions
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Useful notes on Transcription 1:

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
2. Showing interest.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
3. Asking for information.

134

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
4. Requests for service: showing appreciation.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
5. Asking for things.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
135
6. Invitations: acceptance and refusal.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
7. Offers

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
136
8. Suggestions for joint action.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
9. Asking for permission.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
137
10. Complaints and apologies.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
11. Persuasion and advice.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
138
12. Modesty

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
13. Asking for help

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
139
_______________________________________________________________________________
14. Sympathy and encouragement.

_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
STUDY GUIDE: Questions for revision and exam preparation.
Note that the following questions will not necessarily be asked ‘as they are’ in an exam. They are meant to
guide your reading, reflection and comprehension of how intonation works.
Relate these questions to concrete examples so that you practise applying the theory to practice.
Prominence
1. What is prominence? What are prosodic features? Which features render a syllable prominent?
2. How many degrees of prominence are there in English? Provide graphic representations.
140
3. Build a chart indicating the articulatory and auditory effects of those features on the syllable of a
word.
4. What is the physiological signal that renders pitch high or low?
5. What does the quality of a sound depend on?
6. How do we perceive the quantity of a sound?
7. Finch and Ortiz Lira state: “It is incorrect to say that syllables are made prominent by stress alone”.
Provide articulatory and auditory reasons for this claim. Illustrate with an example.
Prominence in the word
8. What is the citation form of a word?
9. Is an accented syllable always prominent? Why?
10. Is a prominent syllable always accented? Why?
11. What is the rule of alternation?
12. Why are there secondary stresses in English?
13. How many unstressed syllables can there be after a primary accent?
14. Classify affixes according to the effect they have on word accent. Provide examples.
15. Which syllables are accented in the following words? Which syllables are prominent in the following
words? examination – telegram – interesting – unhappy - university –
16. Does a native speaker know the difference between accent and prominence? Yes/No. Why?
17. Why is English accent “free”? Is Spanish accent “free”? Why?
18. Is English accent “fixed”? Why?
19. Does the accentual pattern of English words vary? Give reasons.
20. What do you observe about the occurrence of accent in English words (look at the examples under 6
Accentuation of simple words)
21. What is the tendency as to word accent in simple words – nouns, adjectives, verbs?
22. What problems do Spanish speakers face when they have to pronounce polysyllabic words?
23. How do suffixes affect word accent? Provide examples.
24. What activities would you suggest to drill accentuation in polysyllabic words?
25. Formulate three rules about word accent that you think your students should know.
26. What is a compound word? What patterns of accentuation can they have (in general terms)?
27. Mention classes of single-stressed compounds and give examples of each.

141
28. Mention classes of double-stressed compounds and give examples of each.
29. What is stress shift and why does it take place? Provide examples.
30. Describe the two stress tendencies in the English language, and how they stand in relation to each
other. Provide examples of both tendencies.
31. Why is word accent both "fixed" and "free"?
32. Describe and exemplify the factors that make a syllable prominent, according to Gimson/ Ortiz Lira.
33. How many degrees of prominence are there in English? Provide graphic representations.
34. What is the rule of alternation? How does it relate to secondary stresses?
35. Classify affixes according to the effect they have on word accent. Provide examples.
36. What is a compound word? What patterns of accentuation can they have (in general terms)?
37. Mention 4 types of single-accented compounds, explain their accentual pattern and give examples of
each.
38. Mention 4 types of double-accented compounds, explain their accentual pattern and give examples of
each.
39. What is stress shift and why does it take place? Provide examples.
Discourse analysis
40. Relate McCarthy Ch. 1 to Brown and Yule Ch. 2. What are the contributions made by Hymes and
Grice? Build a table showing those contributions.
41. McC. CH. 1, p.6 Signal the differences between British and American Discourse Analysis.
42. McC. CH 1, p.7 Provide an example of correspondence between form and function and another one
of non-correspondence.
43. McC. CH. 1, p.8 What is the discourse analyst interested in?
44. Exemplify how we can do things with language. (Austin: speech acts)
45. McC. CH. 1, p.13-14 What is a framing move and what is a transaction?
46. McC. CH. 1, p. 14 Reading act. 3-1
47. McC. CH. 1, p. 14 How does the term transaction relate to Brown and Yule chapter 1.
48. McC. CH. 1, p. 23-4 What general conclusions can you draw about the characteristics of spoken
discourse?
49. How do Brown and Yule complete the picture of spoken discourse?
Questions on Brown & Yule (see Bibliography)
50. Describe and exemplify the concepts of reference, presupposition, implicature and inference.
51. What is the cooperative principle? Find examples that show how this principle works.
52. What are the features of the context of situation according to Dell Hymes?
Cruttenden, Intonation, Chapter 4
53. What are the grammatical categories which Cruttenden describes as deserving of separate intonation
groups? Provide examples.
54. What is ‘nucleus placement’? Explain and exemplify the concepts of lexical focussing and
grammatical focussing.
142
55. What is the difference between broad focus and narrow focus?
56. What are the exceptions to the rule of broad focus mentioned by Cruttenden?
57. What is ‘old information’? What types of old information does Cruttenden mention?
The structure of spoken discourse. Mc Carthy (see Bibliography)
58. McC. CH. 1, p. 15 What is an exchange?
59. McC. CH. 1, p. 16 How can we identify the different moves?
60. McC. CH. 1, p. 17 Activity 4. Check with key.
61. McC. CH. 1, p. 18 What are the relevant elements of the conversational context?
62. McC. CH. 1, p. 19 How does classroom talk differ from conversations outside the classroom?
63. McC. CH. 1, p. 20 Point out boundaries in everyday talk (pitch and classroom talk)
64. McC. CH. 1, p. 23-24 What general conclusions can you draw about the characteristics of spoken
discourse?
65. How do Brown and Yule complete the picture of spoken discourse?
66. McC. CH. 1, p. 26 Activity on cohesive items. Check with key.
67. McC. CH. 1, p. 27-28 What does interpretation of a text involve?
Word stress
68. McC. CH. 4, p. 94 Prominence and word stress, differences. Explain.
69. Connect this topic with patterns of word accent.
70. McC. CH. 4, p . 96 Activity on word stress. Check with key.
71. McC. CH. 4, p . 100 Activity. Check with key.
72. McC. CH. 4, p . 101 What effect does high/low pitch have in conversation?
73. Intonation – Ch. 6: Design activities
74. McC. CH. 4, p . 106 Grammatical approaches
75. Lee/Roach – Grammatical function of intonation: build charts with examples
76. McC. CH. 4, p . 107 Attitudinal approach.
77. McC. CH. 4, p . 109 What is the effect of narrow/wide pitch range. Point to some uses of the tones.
78. McC. CH. 4, p . 112 Key
79. McC. CH. 4, p . 113 Termination.

143
80. McC. CH. 4, p . 114 Which tones are regarded as basic?
Features of spoken discourse: elements of Conversation analysis. (Yule)
81. McC. CH. 5, p . 120 Activity: adjacency pairs.
82. McC. CH. 5, p . 120 Provide minimal context data to exemplify adjacency pairs where second pair-
part is thanks.
83. McC. CH. 5, p . 123 Provide examples of follow-up moves in natural conversation.
84. McC. CH. 5, p . 123 Design a set of cue cards for students to develop function-chain activities.
85. McC. CH. 5, p . 126 What are interview style patterns useful for?
86. McC. CH. 5, p . 127 Turn taking. How is this performed?
87. McC. CH. 5, p . 127 Back-channelling. Which are the devices?
88. McC. CH. 5, p . 128 How does natural conversation compare with classroom talk? See above.
89. McC. CH. 5, p . 129 What features of turn-taking do you find similar in both English and Spanish?
90. Define prominence according to Brazil and then explain this notion in your own words (CV Chapter
2). Exemplify.
91. According to Brazil, prominence is an act of selection. Explain this idea in your own words and
compare it with the notion of prominence by Gimson. How do the two approaches differ?
92. What is a paradigm? Characterise the general paradigm and the existential paradigm; exemplify (op.
cit.)
93. Define syntagmatic and paradigmatic organisations of language (op. cit.)
The tone unit (O'Connor vs. Brazil)
94. Analyse the components of the tone unit below according to O'Connor & Arnold's attitudinal approach
and relate them to Brazil's discoursal approach.
95. // she's been SEEing that FRIEND of hers //
96. Why doesn't Brazil describe the elements outside the tonic segment in detail?
97. What's the difference between 'tone' and 'tone group'. How many tone groups are there in O'Connor &
Arnold's system?
98. How many tones are there in Brazil's system? Are there any tone groups? If so, how many?
Paul Tench, The Intonation Systems of English, Chapters 1-3
99. In what way are tonality, tonicity and tone ‘systems’?
100. What does Tench mean in saying that intonation is conventional?
101. Define the three systems which operate in intonation. How do the three systems organise
information?
144
102. What are the functions of intonation?
103. Define theme and rheme. What are their syntactic correlates?
104. Explain the concept of neutral tonality. What does Tench refer to when he speaks of ‘functional
equivalence’?
105. Define marked tonality. Provide examples.
106. What are the two kinds of structural deviation which affect tonality? Provide examples.
107. Define checking tags and copy tags. What tones are associated with them?
108. For the following syntactic constituents, describe and exemplify processes of syntactic
disambiguation:
relative clauses
apposition
verb complementation
negative verb domains
report clauses
clause complements
109. Define neutral tonicity and broad focus.
110. Explain and exemplify the notion of neutral tonicity.
111. What is marked tonicity? Identify the different exceptions to the rule of broad focus mentioned by
Tench, and provide examples
The fall (all three approaches)
112. What are the functions of the fall? Describe them from the point of view of the attitudinal approach
and the grammatical approach.
113. Describe the phonetic realisation of the p tone and its functions.
114. The low drop, the high drop and the long jump: compare and contrast.
115. Explain the differences in meaning between the high drop and the low drop.
116. Relate the low drop and the high drop to Brazil's approach.
117. Compare Tench's use of the word "dominance" to Brazil's. How are they different?
The rise (ditto)
118. Characterise the uses of the low rise according to the attitudinal and the grammatical approaches.
119. Characterise the uses of the high rise according to the attitudinal and the grammatical approaches.
120. Characterise the r+ tone and its uses in telling moves and asking moves.
121. Can Tench's notion of "deference" be equalled with Brazil's concept of "dominance"? Why/ Why not?
The fall- rise
122. Describe the uses of the switchback.

123. According to Tench, when does the fall rise have the meaning of contrast? When does it convey the
notion of "implication"?
124. How does Brazil's system account for the notion of implication as conveyed by the r tone?
125. How can the fall rise interact with negative statements? Provide examples.
145
126. How can the fall rise interact with statements containing "any"? Provide examples.
Key and termination
127. Define pitch sequence and pitch concord.

128. Discuss key and its meanings.
129. What is concord breaking?
130. Discuss termination and its meanings.
Intonation of questions
131. Draw a chart showing the possible intonations of the different kinds of questions according to
the grammatical approach.
132. Discuss intonation of tail questions according to the grammatical approach.
133. What is the typical tone used in Yes/ no questions, according to the attitudinal approach?
134. According to the discoursal approach, what factor(s) determine(s) the intonation of questions?
135. Why does Brazil say that there is no such thing as "intonation of questions"? What does
discourse consist of, then?
136. Discuss and provide examples of questions to check and of questions to find out.
137. What is the effect of asking as yes/no question with a falling tone, according to the grammatical
and the attitudinal approaches?
138. What is the value of the r+ tone in Wh- questions? Provide examples.
139. When can a 'Yes/No' question take a p tone?
140. Can a speaker ask a question with referring tone if s/he cannot make any assumptions about
what the answer will be (i.e. if the speaker has no way of inferring the answer)? Justify.
141. You want to ask for a favour, saying Can you do me a favour? What tone should you use?
Why?
142. What tone would you use if you offered help or a service, e.g. in Can I help you? Account for
your choice.
143. What is the communicative value of high termination in a question to find out?
144. What is the communicative value of high termination in a question to check?
Orientation
145. What is the usual speaker orientation in storytelling? Justify.

146. What tones does a storyteller (or someone reading a story aloud) use and for what purposes?
Give examples and explain.
147. What system is available to a speaker who adopts oblique orientation? Explain their meanings.
148. Give at least 7 examples of exploitation of zero tone. Explain why this tone is used in each
case.
149. What are the meanings of high key and low termination in oblique orientation? Justify.

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ISP JVG- Phonetics & Phonology II- Streams B & E

Lecturer: Prof. Lic. Andrea Perticone

Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires Instituto Superior del Profesorado

PROFESORADO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR EN INGLÉS

ASIGNATURA: FONÉTICA Y FONOLOGÍA II

Prof. Lic. Andrea Perticone

ELLIRs: Practice. Tonicity in ‘Explanation’ Sentences (explanatory function) ..................................... 70

ABOUT THIS BOOKLET

Unidad 1: Fonología suprasegmental. Prominencia y grados de acentuación.

Introducción y sensibilización auditiva a los fenómenos prosódicos. Identificación auditiva

1.a Conceptos fundamentales de la teoría de prominencia.

1.b Acentuación léxica. Acentuación en palabras simples: sustantivos, verbos lexicales,

1.d Dos enfoques de la prominencia en unidades de habla. El enfoque tradicional (gramático-

Unidad 2: Prominencia según el enfoque discursivo de la entonación

Características sistémicas. La estructura de la unidad tonal. Segmento proclítico, segmento tónico

1 Ver títulos y datos de las publicaciones en la Sección de Bibliografía obligatoria

Unidad 3: Entonación y sus sistemas. Las tres Ts.

3.a Sistemas. Elementos estructurales. Las funciones de la entonación: organización de la

3.b Tonalidad. Definición de tonalidad. División de la emisión en frases entonativas. Pausas y

Unidad 4: Nociones fundamentales del análisis del discurso, análisis de la conversación y

Elementos de análisis del discurso: El contexto de situación y de interacción según el modelo de

de la interacción: negociación, turnos, reciprocidad, estructura de la información. Teorís de los

Unidad 5: Tono o acento tonal nuclear según enfoques gramatico-actitudinales.

Enfoque gramatico-actitudinal. La forma acústica de los cinco tonos ingleses: descenso,

Unidad 6: Enfoque discursivo de la entonación. Niveles de análisis. Actos de proclama y de

Función transaccional de la entonación. El estatus de la información en el discurso: nueva y dada.

Unidad 7: Clave de altura tonal.

Unidad 8: Dominancia y control de la interacción. Valores interpersonales de los tonos.

Relaciones y estatus de los participantes en la interacción oral. Dominancia: definición. Tonos r+ y

Unidad 9: La entonación de preguntas según el enfoque discursivo.

Pregunta transaccional: finding out questions y checking questions. Establecimiento de área de

Unidad 10: La secuencia tonal y la clave de terminación.

Unidad 11: Orientación en el discurso

o Actividades de aplicación de la teoría

o Cuestionarios en clase y como tarea para el hogar.

La cátedra contará con un aula virtual en www.edmodo.com, que contendrá:

Bradford, B. (1990). Intonation in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, G. (1977). Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman

Sitios y Recursos de Internet para consulta y práctica de percepción auditiva

English Speech Services (Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s page) https://www.englishspeechservices.com/

THE LECTURER WILL:

3. give feedback on your weekly reading, assignments and classroom activities;

6. keep students informed on their performance;

a) done your homework,

b) read the bibliography assigned, and

THE STUDENT WILL:

c) do the homework for each class, using a pronunciation dictionary;

d) do the weekly reading before and after class;

i) Upload weekly class notes to Edmodo (to be arranged with teacher).

You will do the necessary research when this is requested.

CONSIDERATIONS ON ALL ASSIGNMENTS (special & weekly homework)

Practice activities and correction/ discussion of results/answers.

Special assignments, theoretical and practical- group or individual work.

Dictations and transcriptions in phonetic script.

Students’ reading aloud of home assignments and practice material.

A note on the use of our Edmodo group:

List of Acronyms used in this course

Awareness activities: Listening for Tonality

Intonation Phrases (IPs) or tone units

1) Pauses: The Prince of Wales (pause) visited Argentina.

3)Lengthening of a final syllable: On his way to the stationnn...

1 when I woke up I didn't even realise what time it was

Predicting possible IP boundaries

To chunk or not to chunk... And where to chunk

Booklet Phonetics 2 E&B - 2021 With Table of Contents

Booklet Phonetics 2 E&B - 2021 With Table of Contents