Stylized intonation

STYLIZED INTONATION D. Robert Ladd, jr. Cornell University The English intonation often referred to as a calling contour—a stepping-down sequence of two level tones—is not inherently associated with calling, but rather conveys the implication that an utterance is in some way stereotyped or stylized. Vivid and quite precise nuances in specific usages can be accounted for by the abstract meaning 'stylized'. This meaning is not restricted to the stepping-down contour, but is a more general phenomenon : at least three contours ending in level pitch are 'stylized' modifications of 'plain' contours ending in rising or falling pitch. The relationship of stylized contours to plain contours provides some evidence for preferring British-style 'nuclear tones' to whole-sentence 'tunes' as units of analysis. More importantly, it clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of any approach to English intonation which treats contours as sequences of significant pitch levels.* 1.1.At least as far back as Pike 1945, and from time to time since then, students of intonation have observed a contour that is generally considered a special 'calling' or 'vocative' intonation. This is best exemplified by the call that a parent uses to summon a child home: (l) John—Din— ny— ner— Pike (71-2) describes this as a spoken chant, and says that 'its meaning is of a call, often with warning by or to children.' It is 'Type G of four 'call contours' discussed by Abe 1962. An exchange of articles in Le maître phonétique (Fox 1969, Crystal 1969a, Fox 1970, Lewis 1970) takes for granted its use as a special calling tone, and concentrates on questions of phonological analysis. Liberman 1975 and Leben 1976 have named it the 'vocative chant', and Liberman considers it one variety of his 'warning/calling tune'. And Gibbon 1976, the most complete discussion of the subject to date, treats this contour in a section (274-87) entitled simply 'Calls'. 1.2.The characteristic formal feature of this contour appears to be the stepping down from one fairly steady level pitch to another, though there is less unanimity among investigators about formal characteristics than about the contour's function as a calling intonation. Thus, for Liberman and Leben, the low pitch that may precede the stepping-down tones, as in ( 2 ) ander — Alex is an integral part of the contour; but they concede that it is optional. Fox 1969, however, working in the British 'nuclear tone' framework, concentrates on the stepping-down part, not on anything that may precede it, and calls this the 'stepThanks for comments and encouragement go to Dwight Bolinger, John Bowers, Duncan Gardiner, James Noblitt, Robert Stockwell, and Linda Waugh. The use to which I have put their comments is ofcourse my own responsibility. 517 518LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) down tone'.1 A major question of the structure of intonation contours is involved in the difference between the two outlooks, which we might call the 'tune/tone controversy', and we will return to this briefly at the beginning of §3 (cf. also fn. 7, below). In §2, we will consider only the two stepping-down pitches to be relevant. The interval between these pitches is often, as both Liberman and Gibbon observe, about a minor third; but Liberman's implication (125 ff.) that this interval has profound significance seems unwarranted. As I write this, a student out on the quadrangle is calling her dog (3) Morgan — with the two tones only a major second apart. Crystal (1969a: 36) and Gibbon (274) both note that the interval is by no means fixed. Finally, we may note that there is often considerable lengthening of the chanted syllables; but I do not believe this to be diagnostic, and my opinion seems to be shared by Pike and Crystal.2 What exactly constitutes the 'chanting' nature of this contour is thus not clear; Gibbon refers to an unpublished paper of his which subsumes the special acoustic qualities under the term 'chroma'. But the general characteristics are plain enough, and the reader should have no trouble interpreting the examples in this paper. The extent to which this is possible is, I think, evidence that what we are discussing is a...