Hi, people!
I am sorry I had bad connection problems for two days.
Graciela Moyano writes:
I am very interested in reading further about your views on the use of the
high rise. I believe there is a mid to high rising tone which speakers use
when they echo or repeat to check if they understood the message correctly.
From an attitudinal point of view it sounds casual (O'Connor and Arnold, The
Intonation of Colloquial English) in British English.
Yes, this is quite true, and this high rise may be very high indeed. [LC]
Duncan Markham comments that:
This cannot be generalised to all accents that show a high rising terminal.
Australian English is well known for using it as a phrase-final tune which
does NOT serve as a pragmatic continuity signal. It is also the case that
the tone can quite definitely be high-rising, rather than low-to-mid in
Australian English.
Well, what I can say is that this (to me false) impression derives from the old way of trying to treat intonation with only the falling and rising patterns. But when we listen (and listen again) to real recordings, the difference with an interrogative intoneme in rather clearcut. [LC]
Regards
Luciano Canepari
Phonetics and Phonology
University of Venice
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