UNIT 1

Coulthard, M (1985)​ “An introduction to Discourse Analysis”

Brazil´s Model of Discourse Intonation

Brazil´s model suggests that there are four sets of options associated with the tone unit, each
of which adds a different kind of information:

● Prominence

OM
● Tones ​(pitch movement) ● Termination ​(pitch height on the
● Key ​(pitch height on the onset) onset tonic)
= first prominent syllable
Accent​: for Brazil, accent means the attribute which invariably distinguishes the marked from the

.C
unmarked syllables. Eg: ​‘cur ​tain, con ’​tain, ​re ‘​la ​tion.

Prominence​: name given to a property that is not inherit but only associated to a word by virtue of
DD
its function as part of a tone unit. It is a linguistic choice available to the speaker independent both of
the grammatical structure and of word-accent.

Now it is possible to define the scope of a tonic segment, it begins with the first prominent
syllable, the onset, and it ends with the last prominent syllable, the tonic which has the additional
LA

feature of tone (pitch movement)

It is entirely up to the speaker to choose whether to make a word prominent respecting the
general and existential paradigms.
FI

Existential paradigm​: set of possibilities that a speaker can regard in a given situation. Limited to the
situation.

General paradigm​:​ set of possibilities inherit to the language system. Limited to the language


The speaker´s answer can be limited by these paradigms, eg:

1. A: which card did you play? 3. A: which heart did you played?
B: //the ‘​queen ​of ‘​hearts// B: //the ‘​queen ​of hearts//
2. A: which queen did you play?
B: //the queen of ​‘hearts //

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

In answers 1 and 3 the general paradigm of thousands of nouns has been reduced to only thirteen
(number of playable cards) by the existential paradigm.

In answer 2, when the word “queen” occurs in the question the general paradigm has been reduced to
only four (hearts, clovers, spades and diamonds) because those are the only answers available in the
existential paradigm of the game.

Tone​: ​usage of tonesBrazil sees speakers as having a basic choice between a falling tone and a
falling-rising tone.

OM
Common ground (shared information):

฀ Fall-rise tone (refer)​: its basic function is to mark the experiential content of the tone unit,
the matter, as part of the shared, already negotiated, common ground, occupied by the
participants in an interaction.

.C
฀ Falling tone (proclaim)​: marks the matter as new.
฀ Rise tone: Brazil traits it as a marked version of the fall-rise tone. The references to common
ground can be either vividly present background, or a matter considered to be present has
DD
need of reactivation.
฀ Rise-fall tone: according to Brazil, the usage of this tones implies that the speaker is adding
information both to the common ground and to his own knowledge, in other words the
information is double new. In the context it could mean “I also didn’t know” “I am surprised,
LA

disappointed, delighted” and so on.

Social meaning:
FI

฀ Fall-rise: ​convergence, solidarity, agreement.

฀ Fall: ​divergence, separateness, disagreement.

Role-relationship:


฀ Dominant speaker, that is to say, the person who has more freedom in making linguistic
choices, this person makes choices in the fall-rise, rise and rise-fall tones.
฀ Passive speaker​, mostly falling tones.

Questions:

฀ Finding out: we use a falling tone when we want somebody to tell us something that we don’t
know.
฀ Making sure/echo questions: fall-rise and rising tones. (in echo questions the prominent
syllables stay the same but the tone of the tonic syllable changes)

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

 Tone unit:

Minimal unit of intonation: ​only one prominent syllable; the onset and the tonic fall on the same
syllable

Extended tone unit: more than one prominent syllable; the onset falls on the first prominent syllable
and the tonic on the last one, there may be other prominent syllables in between.

Key:

OM
❖ Refers to the pitch height that we produce on the onset;
❖ Pitch level is relative to each speaker;
❖ Each pitch height has different communicative value.

The key is realized in the first prominent syllable of a tone unit or segment.

.C
Each speaker has a different voice, different fundamental frequencies (pitch of a voice)

According to Brazil we can identify three different pitch levels: high [ ], mid, low ( )
DD
● High key [ ] = contrastive meaning ● Low key ( ) = equative meaning
● Mid key (unmarked) = additive
meaning
Example:
LA

// She gambled // and [lost] // (she was expected to win)

// She gambled // and lost // (she did both)

FI

// She gambled // and (lost) // (gambling is associated to losing)

in ​minimal​ tone units, key and termination are realized on the same syllable:

/ yes /


Onset

Tonic

Mid key / mid termination (MK/MT)

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

In ​extended tone units, key is realized on the onset and termination is realized on the tonic; key is
realized on the onset but its meaning affects the whole tone unit.

/ ‘yes she [ did ] /

Onset Tonic

MK HT

Pitch concord:

OM
key and termination

Termination: as well as choosing a pitch movement, the speaker chooses to begin, in the case of
falling tones, or end, in the case of rising tones, with high, mid or low pitch. This choice is labelled as
termination.

.C
There is a tendency to concord the ​termination ​choice of the final tone unit and the ​initial key
of the next one. In other words, the speaker predicts or asks for a particular key choice from the next
DD
speaker with his/her termination choice and therefore a particular meaning.

By terminating a sentence with mid termination the speaker is looking for an agreement; by
using a high termination the speaker is looking for a “yes not no”/”no not yes” to confirm a fact in
doubt; by choosing a low termination the second speaker does not prevent the first from making a
LA

follow-up move, but doesn’t constrain he or she to do so. The low termination marks the end of the
exchange. By using high termination the speaker allows for or constrains response.

Form and Function

FI

We can see the significance of termination choice, the repetition with low termination is heard
as closing and the one with high termination is heard as questioning. Termination choice , not tone,
which carries the eliciting function.


Pitch sequence

The particular significance of low termination is that is does not place any constraints on a
succeeding utterance, and it is useful to regard all the tone units occurring between two successive low
terminations as a phonological units which is called ​“pitch sequence”​. It is often closely associated
with topic, speakers appear to use a drop to low termination to signal that a particular mini-topic is
ended. The next pitch sequence may begin in mid or high key; a mid key choice indicates that what
follows is additively related, or topically linked, with what has just ended.

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

 On other occasions, the next pitch sequence begins in a high key and the contrastive meaning
serves to mark the beginning of a completely new topic.

Indeed, once one recognises them the pitch phenomena appear to be much more important
than the lexical items in making boundaries. In other words, the low termination/high key pitch
sequence boundary, here occurring between words appear to carry the transaction boundary signal.

Dalton, C. and B, Seidholfer (1994) ​“Pronunciation”

OM
The nature of intonation
When we communicate using sounds, we clearly do a good deal more than simply string
together to make up words. The messages we convey depend just as much as on how we say

.C
something as on what we actually say.
Suprasegmentals ​are characteristics which extend over entire utterances, whether they are
long texts or just one word.
DD
For the study of intonation, the prosodic feature of ​pitch ( perceptual label for high/low),
loudness and length are particularly important because they work together in giving certain syllables
prominence over other.
Intonation is often defined as speech melody, consisting of different ​Tones​. What melody and
LA

intonation have in common is that in both the tones depend on the pitch of the voice. Intonation often
has upward or downward moves within the tone.
The choices for pitch movement are limited: we can make our voice go up, go down, remain
FI

on the same level, or any combination of these. However, there are expressions which are normally
used as fixed formulae, with a set intonation.


Tone units
We need to understand and be able to describe the recurring pattern of tone units. For most
people, speech consists of units of one or more syllable, which somehow “belong together”.
The criterion for pitch movement is prominence. We can observe that in certain utterances
like “It’s me john” the words “me” and “John” are more prominent because of their communicative
value,than “it’s”. We can also notice that “me” and “John” are syllables with a falling tone. There is a
tendency for the tonic syllable to be placed toward the end of clauses and sentences because of the
way information is normally distributed in them. The division into tone units and the pitch movement
on the tonic syllable fulfil an important communicative function.

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

 All of the basic tones which correspond to the possibilities we just mentioned :

● Fall ( Proclaiming)
● Rise (Referring plus)
● Rise-fall (Proclaiming plus)
● Fall-rise (Referring)

OM
Functions of Intonation
We have established that intonation is used by speakers to convey information through choices of
significant pitch variation. We can list 6 functions:
1. Emotional: ​expressions of attitudinal meaning such as excitement, surprise, reserve.
2. Grammatical: ​marking of grammatical contrast, such as chunking into clauses and sentences,

.C
or contrast between questions and statements.
3. Information structure: ​marking of the distinction between what is already known and what
DD
is new.
4. Textual: marking of the structure of larger stretches of discourse, such as the distinctive
melodic shape which different paragraphs are given in news-reading.
5. Psychological: organization of discourse into units thats are more easily perceived and
LA

memorized, for example, the tendency to divide telephone numbers into rhythmical chunk.
6. Indexical: markers of personal identity, and of a group memberships; for example, members
of certain occupations have a distinctive way of speaking.
FI

The nature of Discourse

Hymes maintains that it is possible to describe every speech event with reference to a range of
factors, which includes: ​setting (time and space), ​participants (addresser and addressee), ​topic


(content), ​channel ​(spoken or written) and ​purpose​. These components interrelate in complex ways in
particular speech events. In a extract from a speech event, in addition to the information we get from
the text written down in ordinary, orthographic form, the transcription also offers us indications of
prosodic features, such as tone unit, boundaries, pitch movement, and pauses. Prosody mediates
between the actual linguistic form and the context.
The way we manage verbal exchanges is indeed very complex, with a great deal of fast
processing and fine tuning going on all the time. These are some of the factors which we juggle
whenever we engage in a conversation:

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

 - Prominence:​ how to make salient the important points we make.
- Topic managements:​ how to signal and recognize where one topic ends and another begins.
- Information status: how to mark what we assume to be shared knowledge as opposed to
something new.
- Turn-taking: ​When to speak, and when to be silent, how (not) to yield the floor to somebody
else.
- Social meanings and roles: how to position ourselves vis-a-vis our interlocutors in terms of
status, dominance/authority, politeness, solidarity/separateness.

OM
- Degree of involvement:​ how to convey our attitudes, emotions, etc.

Intonation in Discourse
Topic and prominence

.C
Phonetically speaking, content words are usually more prominent than function words, and
this prominence is identified by a combination of loudness,length, and pitch movement. Prominence
DD
interacts very closely with such prosodic features as rhythm as well as lexis, syntax and context.
This is an important difference between word-stress and prominence: word-stress, the
highlighting of the silent syllables in polysyllabic words, in relatively stable.
Prominence is to a large extent a matter of speaker choice: it is an indication as to what the
LA

speaker want to make salient on the ongoing discourse, a reflection of how he o she views the “state
of conversational play”. What the speaker chooses to highlight depends on the context, the situation,
and what has happened in the conversation so far. But how do we signal prominence? There is no
straightforward answer; pitch movement, increased loudness, duration, paralinguistic features such as
FI

facial expression, and voice quality. However, pitch movement is the one most closely bound up with
prominence. The major pitch movement take places, or begins, on the tonic syllable which is by
definition the syllable with the greatest prominence in the tone unit.


Introducing and ending topics

To introduce a new mini-topic the speaker has to jump to high pitch, or high key on the first
syllable of the word “super” in the utterance like “Yes Sussex has super heath country”. There are no
absolute values for low, mid and high key: “High” therefore means compared to the immediately
preceding tone unit. It is interesting to note that the move to high key is also often employed for those
so-called “little words” which we use to mark off the boundaries of topical sequences.

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

 Conversely, low key is often used to mark the ending of a topical segment. To jump to high
key and the drop to lew are realised on the first prominent syllable of the tone unit. Recent research
that these pitch phenomena can be much more important than the lexical criteria for the marking of
topic boundaries.
Rather than looking at key choices in terms of the opening, continuing, or ending of topics,
one could say more generally that relative pitch level can be used to indicate relationships between
successive tone units.
A jump to high key will usually be interpreted as emphatic, contrary to expectations;

OM
continuation on mid key simply ass information; low key carries the meaning “as you would expect”.
The terms used for the meanings added by these keys choices are ​contrastive (high), ​additive (mid)
and ​equiative​ (low).

Floor and turn-taking

.C
Turn-taking is the way in which speakers hold or pass the floor. Competent speakers achieve
efficient turn-taking, with very precise timing, by taking into account many factors simultaneously:
DD
syntactic and lexical signals, eye contact, body position and movement, loudness, and intonation.
Turn-taking mechanisms also work on telephones, however, suggest that vocal paralinguistic factors
such as pitch and loudness are particularly important.
Intonation is one important cue indicating a speaker’s desire to continue his or her turn, or
LA

willingness to give it up. Non-low pitch is normally a sigal for wanting to hold a turn, and low pitch
for yielding it.
Intonational turn-taking cues can overrule syntactic ones. Certain authors (Brown, Currie and
Kenworthy) observed speakers who uttered a complete sentence and might be expected to have
FI

finished their turn, but who used non-low pitch at the end of their utterance to indicate that they
wanted to hold the floor.
It is essential that speakers should use low pitch for these “agreement noises” in order to


signal that they are not bidding for a turn, but that they are listening and taking in what the other
person is saying. ​Key is a matter of conversational cooperation between speakers.
Brazil’s model of the “meaning” of tone works with a limited set of possible choices. Brazil’s
system is of particular interest to us here because it focuses on the communicative value of intonation
in the “state of play” in discourse as it is negotiated moment by moment by the interlocutor.
“Common ground” does not just mean “shared knowledge” or “something already mentioned” but is
intended to encompass what knowledge speakers share about the world, about each other’s
experiences, attitudes and emotions… It may be helpful to think of the speaker seeing his world and
the hearer’s as overlapping.

Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com

 According to Brazil, the major opposition here is between end falling tones and end-rising
tones. Of these the fall and the fall rise are the most frequent.
The negotiation of common ground is central to Brazil’s model, the system captures at the
most the most general level could best be characterized is social terms. Continuing the theme of social
roles and relationships signalled by choices of tone, we can now turn to the meanings conveyed by
tones which diverge from the unmarked distribution of referring and proclaiming tones.
R+ and P+ are regarded as dominant-speaker choices. They tell us about the way role
relationships are perceived by the interlocutors, and indicate which speakers haver, or claim

OM
dominance over the other. Dominance is a technical term used to indicate the amount of control a
speaker has over the development of the discourse. This control concerns decisions as to who speaks
when and what is spoken about.

.C
DD
LA
FI


Este archivo fue descargado de https://filadd.com