In response to Luciano Canepari's email

With regard to the high rises in NZ English at least, I would disagree strongly with the suggestion below that what we have been describing as high rising terminals (HRTs)(using both acoustic and auditory analysis of "good recorded examples") are in fact rises from low pitch to mid. There are such low-to-mid rises in NZE, but they are qualitatively different from the high rises and are used in different contexts. The high rises in our data typically start high (as judged with reference to the speaker's normal pitch range over large samples of speech from conversations) and go higher, often very dramatically and, in NZE, often starting their rising movement very late in the piece (i.e. they do not match descriptions found of these as rises that start on the nucleus and climb from there through the rest of the accent unit). These HRTs are typically (but not exclusively) associated with the positive politeness function of establishing that the interlocutors are on common ground (sometimes referred to as a "checking" function, though this term does not do justice to the uses to which they are put), whereas the low-to-mid (and low-to-high) rises are more typically associated with genuine question functions, and frequently start rising much earlier (ie. the rise is more closely aligned to the nucleus with which it is associated than is the case for the HRT). (For those who want to see more evidence, and check some pitch tracks of these things, Janet Fletcher, Esther Grabe and I discuss the NZE data along with careful analyses of Australian and some British English varieties in a chapter in Sun-Ah Jun's forthcoming OUP book based on the intonation workshop at the 1999 ICPhS)

I also disagree with the suggestion that the high rises can be summarily                 dismissed as not being part of the linguistic system.  Not only is there the unresolved (and possibly unresolvable) thorny issue of what constitutes "linguistic" and what kinds of meaning are within a linguistic system (lexical, utterance type, attitudinal, paralinguistic - what gets in and what doesn't?), but it is also clear to anyone who has worked on more than one variety of a language that what is not "linguistic" in one variety may well turn out to be "linguistic" in another(taking "linguistic" here in a narrow sense that includes at least lexical and functional distinctions). And if HRTs are widespread realisations of statements amongst a subgroup of speakers in one variety, and contrast with a form of question intonation for those speakers, then they constitute a linguistically significant tune. 

But I like the idea of a "high rinsing tone" - something to bear in mind should I ever I want to fix my hair colour!



Paul Warren
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand

-----Original Message-----
From:   Canepari Luciano [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Fri 9/26/2003 5:46 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Cc:	
Subject:        Re: The High Rising Tone
About this subjec, I think we should seriously reconsider the whole subject
of the so called "high rinsing tone", in the light of a more realistic
approach to intonation. As a matter of fact, three pitch bands are
necessary in order to actually descrive intonation, and four intonemes (or
pitch movements at the end of utterances, besides four preintonemes used on
the rhythm groups at the beginning of the utterances).

In this way (and especially by listening to good recorded examples) one
would realize that these "high rises" (also found in Australia, New
Zealand, and in the USA, i.e. in California, besides Great Britain, i.e.
the North of England) are actually "low rises" (from low to mid pitch).

Another observation is that they are not part of the "linguistic intonation
system", but are something added to that (paralinguistically, or
"paraphonically as I prefer to call it). As a matter of fact, they are a
pragmatic device used in order not to be interrupted while speaking.
Besised, they also reveal the speaker's attitudes, i.e. as not being too
invasive, but deferential, or friendly. Sometimes, they reveal that the
speaker is hesitant or perplex, as well.

Luciano Canepari
(Phonetics and Phonology)
University of Venice