2.1. The MAE_ToBI grammar

MAE_ToBI uses four tone paradigms. Addressing them from early to late, there is an optional initial boundary tone of the intonational phrase (IP), five pitch accents to be used for accented syllables, two final boundary tones of the intermediate phrase (ip), and two final boundary tones of the IP. These are listed in (1). In addition, optional downstep applies to any H-tone other than H% (notated !H), provided another H-tone precedes in the IP. In (2), five phonetic implementation conventions applicable to (1) are listed.

Convention (2c) has a special position. A phonetic implementation rule will not categorically assimilate a tone to another tone, but rather raise or lower a tone’s target such that its identity is detectable in the signal. However, (2c) leaves no trace of L% and thus effectively turns the phonetic implementation into a mechanism for deleting tones. Ignoring this point, we can calculate the number of two-accent IP-contours by multiplying 2 initial boundary conditions (optional %H) by 5 (prenuclear pitch accents) by 5 (nuclear pitch accents) by 2 (phrase tones) by 2 (IP-tones) = 200 contours. To these, we should add the downstepped contours. If there is no initial %H, 64 contours will have a H in both pitch accents (4 × 4 × 2 × 2), and an additional 16 will have a single pitch accent with H followed by H- (1 × 4 × 2 × 2). When %H is used, only 1 × 1 × 1 × 2 = 2 will not have a following H tone. This puts the total number of downstepped contours at 80 + 98 = 178, making for a total of 378 two-accent contours.

2.2 An off-ramp alternative

Pierrehumbert’s (1980) decision to analyze a rising-falling accent-lending contour as a L+H* pitch accent followed by an extraneous L-tone was referred to as an ‘on-ramp analysis’ in Gussenhoven (2004: 127). An ‘off-ramp’ analysis will assume a H*+L pitch accent preceded by an extraneous L-tone. A crucial difference between the MAE_ToBI on-ramp analysis and an off-ramp analysis lies in the number of targets that are needed after the nuclear pitch accent. After a pitch peak, two further targets may occur in English, a low target followed by a high target at the IP-end; while after a low valley, there can follow a mid target and high target at the IP-end. To represent these post-peak and post-valley targets, MAE_ToBI provides T- and T%. Most contours, however, have only a single such target. Table 1 lists the eight MAE_ToBI contours with single-tone H* and L* pitch accents in the first eight rows. It shows two post-nuclear targets for contours 2 and 5, the other six having a single overt target after T* (contours 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8). If we simply leave out tones with abstract targets, we produce the representations in column 3.

Table 1

Representations of nuclear contours in MAE_ToBI (column 1) with graphic phonetic implementations, after Pierrehumbert 1980(column 2). Column 3 repeats the representations without tones that have no overt target. Column 4 gives representations in an off-ramp analysis without phrase tones and with optional IP-boundary tones.

	MAE_ToBI		MAE_ToBI (overt tones only)	Off-ramp alternative
1	H* H- H%		H* H%	H* H%
2	H* L- H%		H* L-H%	H*L H%
3	H* H- L%		H*	H*
4	H* L- L%		H* L%	H*L L%
5	L* H- H%		L* H-H%	L*H H%
6	L* L- H%		L* H%	L* H%
7	L* H- L%		L* H-	L*H
8	L* L- L%		L*	L*
9				H*L
10				H* L%
11				L* L%
12	L*+H L- L%		L*+H L%	L*H L%

Still concentrating on contours 1 to 8, column 5 presents the off-ramp analysis, in which the MAE_ToBI ip-boundary tones have been absorbed as trailing tones in the pitch accent, except for contour 4, which has a trailing L in column 5, but no corresponding L- in column 4.

These off-ramp versions amount to a system with four pitch accents (H*, H*L, L*, L*H) and an IP-optional boundary tone. Spelling out the 12 representations by combining these four pitch accents with the three boundary conditions H%, L%, and Ø (no tone) yields four further contours. The representation H*L L% for contour 4 contrasts with contour 9, the ‘half-completed fall’, and contour 10, the ‘High Level-Slump’, and 12, the delayed fall, to which we turn in Section 4.4. A discussion of contour 11 appears in Section 3.2.

3.1 Contours ending in mid pitch

Pierrehumbert (1980, p. 88) discussed the contrast between mid-ending (3) (cf. Pierrehumbert’s Figure 6.4) and (4), noting that her analysis had a single representation for them. She argues that contour (4) is a ‘chanted’ version of (3) and that chanted speech is an orthogonal variable not requiring a separate tonal representation. MAE_ToBI notates them as H* !H- L%. Against this view, Hayes and Lahiri (1991) showed that the English vocative chant requires a representation which accounts for the neutralization of vowel quantity contrast in IP-final syllables, causing Je-en! and Ja-ane! to be prosodically identical. Moreover, !H- crucially requires a syllabic association to a post-accentual stressed syllable, since its phonetic alignment is with -nath- in (3) rather than with either the preceding or following unstressed syllable (Ladd, 1978; Liberman, 1975). Example (3) could be a tentative suggestion (Crystal, 1969, p. 147; Gibbon, 1976, p. 135; Gussenhoven, 1983, p. 40; Uldall, 1961) or be used to chide someone. These effects are quite different from that of (4). That is, the contrast between (3) and (4) represents a genuine case of underanalysis in MAE_ToBI.

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The off-ramp analysis provides H*L Ø, contour 9, for (3), which contrasts with the rapid final fall, contour (4). By assuming that trailing L has mid-low pitch, while L% is pronounced at fully low pitch, the two L-tones in contour 4 acquire overt tonal targets. Also, the mid-low ending of (3) is explained by the pronunciation of trailing L at a point near the IP-boundary.

Vocative chants require an additional pitch accent, notated H*+H in Gussenhoven (2004, ch. 15). It is given in Table 2, as H*H, where also the falling-rising vocative chant (Gussenhoven, 1983, p. 41, with reference to Pierrehumbert, 1980) and the low falling vocative chant (Gussenhoven, 2004, p. 315) are included, and accounted for by the addition of H% and L%, respectively. After the extension of the off-ramp grammar with this H*H pitch accent, contour 13 takes care of (4). In addition, we generate representations for two further vocative chants.

Table 2

Representation of the vocative chant in MAE_ToBI (column 2) with graphic phonetic implementations after Pierrehumbert (1980) and representations for the mid-falling, falling-rising, and low vocative chants in the off-ramp analysis.

	MAE_ToBI		MAE_ToBI (overt tones only)	Off-ramp alternative
13	H* !H- L%		H* !H-	H*H
14				H*H H%
15				H*H L%

There is in fact a third mid-ending contour, for which MAE_ToBI would equally have to use H* !H-L%. Contour 10 is part of class of contours ending in a fall to mid after a high stretch beginning after the accented syllable. We will return to these contours in Section 4.4.

3.2 Scathing intonation

The second case of a missed contrast concerns contour 8, L* L- L%, the ‘scathing’ contour, as it was called by Alex Monaghan in a now defunct Linguist List message. It is an echo-statement, typically used as a repetition of a listener’s earlier utterance, used to express disparagement and disbelief. Gussenhoven (2004, p. 301) claimed that there are two ‘scathing intonations’. One remains level from the low-pitch accented syllable onwards, which has the force of Here we go again!, a ‘routine’ meaning identified by Ladd (1978), shown in panel (a) of Figure 2.³ The other contour descends somewhat within a low register. It may express a stronger degree of mockery, as in panel (b), but has other uses too, as in Pierrehumbert (1980, Figure 4.19), where it is used on damn after H* on God in God damn it! The off-ramp analysis transcribes these as L* Ø and L* L%, respectively.

Figure 2

Two ‘scathing’ contours, a low level contour on It’s your MOTHers fault again (panel a, male GBE speaker) and the low falling contour on WHO broke the dish! (panel b, speaker CG). From Gussenhoven (2004). This audio content is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav2a and http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav2b

3.3 H+!H*, but no H+L*

The third case of a missed contrast was pointed out to me by Bruce Hayes with reference to Pierrehumbert (1980) (personal communication, July 1991) and concerns the contrast between downstepped !H* and L* after a preceding high syllable. MAE_ToBI provides H+!H* to cover the first case, but since there is no H+L*, it cannot describe the second.⁴ Grice (1995) independently treated this distinction, exemplified by her with (5) and (6), pointing out that these contours required the adoption of a generally applicable leading H, which is prefixed to either L* or H*. In (5), the accented syllable -ma- is fully low-pitched, due to L*, while that in (6) is mid-pitched, as for a downstepped !H*. Illustrative contours are presented in Figure 3. Possibly, the slowly rising pitch towards H% in the contour in panel (a) serves an enhancement of L*. The contrast was included in the analysis of German by Grice, Baumann, and Benzmüller (2005).

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Figure 3

A L* target (panel a, female GBE speaker) and a downstepped !H* target (panel b, female Mid-Western MAE speaker) with leading H’s on tomatoes in The tomatoes haven’t arrived yet. The contour in panel (a) is an echo question, that in panel (b) can be used as a statement. This audio content is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav3a and http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav3b.

Following Grice (1995), the off-ramp analysis assumes a prefix H, here notated in italic font to separate it from the base pitch accent (HH*L, HL*, etc.). Strikingly, H* is invariably downstepped after the pre-accentual peak (Grice, 1995, p. 202). The generalization that arises from the pronunciation of this pitch accent and of the vocative chant (Section 3.1) is that within pitch accents downstep is obligatory. Under an assumption of ‘P(itch) A(ccent)-internal downstep’ (Gussenhoven, 2004, p. 301), the inclusion of H* and its leading H in the same pitch accent renders the downstep inevitable, quite as in the case of H*H, the vocative chant. When trigger H and target H* are not contained within a pitch accent, downstep is optional, but while any H-tone can be the trigger, only H* can be downstepped. Against the background of these generalizations in the off-ramp analysis, the postulation of downstep of the phrasal tone in the chanted call in MAE_ToBI now looks arbitrary, since in other contexts no contrastive downstep on H- is in evidence. For instance, there has been no demonstration that H* L- H% (high-low-high) is categorically distinct from H* !H- H% (high-mid-high).

3.4 Virtual vs. real leading H

My fourth case has not been discussed before, as far as I am aware. To describe high level pitch between a high and a downstepped high pitch accent, ToBI uses a prenuclear H* which is followed by H+!H*, where the high stretch between the pitch accents is described as an interpolation between H* and leading H. An example of this contour (cf. ’t Hart, Collier, & Cohen’s [1990] ‘flat hat’) is shown in Figure 4, panel (a). The general descending profile is a common, though not a necessary feature of this contour. The MAE_ToBI analysis implies that there is no transcription available for the same contour with an upstepped high pitch on the syllable before the second accented syllable, as in the contour in panel (b). This contrast seems quite categorical, with a distinct note of liveliness in contour (b) which is absent in contour (a).

Figure 4

A descending ‘flat hat’ contour without (panel a) and a ‘flat hat’ contour with a raised peak on the syllable before the second accented syllable (panel b). Male Canadian English speaker. This audio content is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav4a and http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav4b.

To account for the difference between the contours in Figure 4, we must assume that the pronunciation of the target of prenuclear H* continues until just before the first tone in the nuclear pitch accent. In fact, contours 3 and 8 already made it clear that tonal targets are continued rightwards if there is no further tonal target in the IP: without any following tones, a string-final H* is realized as high level pitch until end of the IP, while string-final L* in the same position produces low level pitch. Similarly, a trailing tone is continued when string-final, as in contours 7 and 13. This ‘continuation’ of tones appears to apply generally to any English morpheme-final tone. In addition to the situation before a toneless boundary, there are three inter-morphemic stretches in which this continuation occurs:

1. from a boundary tone to a pitch accent;

2. between pitch accents;

3. from a pitch accent to a boundary tone.

MAE_ToBI presents the continuation of tonal targets as an anomaly, applicable only to the phrase tone, i.e., the equivalent of context (iii). The most widely discussed case here is that of L- between H* and H%, which forms a ‘floodplain’, in the terminology of Lickley et al. (2005), but the same is true for mid-level stretches in the MAE_ToBI L* H- H% contour. From the off-ramp perspective, these anomalies disappear as part of the generalization that unspecified inter-morphemic stretches are filled with the tone on the left. Thus, prenuclear H* in (7) continues its pronunciation from -ron- onwards, until preparations need to be made for the pronunciation of the downstepped target of !H*. To account for this continued pronunciation, Gussenhoven (2000) introduced the concept of double alignment. Alignment with other phonological constituents quite generally determines the location of tonal targets (cf. McCarthy & Prince, 1993). It is expressed as a coincidence of the edges of two constituents, such as when a prefix is said to align its left edge with the left edge of the word it attaches to. Thus, an initial boundary tone aligns its left edge with the left edge of the IP, a final boundary tone aligns its right edge with the right edge of the IP, a leading H aligns its right edge with the left edge of the following T*, and an associated tone aligns with an edge of the accented syllable rime (cf. Pierrehumbert, 1993). Unspecified space between targets is covered by an interpolation between them in MAE_ToBI, following Pierrehumbert (1980). Double alignment means that the left-hand target additionally acquires a right-hand target, since the tone is both left-aligned and right-aligned, the latter being shown as empty bullets (van de Ven & Gussenhoven, 2011). In (8), leading H now defines a contour distinct from (7), one with raised pitch on the syllable immediately before the nuclear accent. A contour like (8) is reported for Now you’re CURving to the RIGHT in Figure 1 in Shattuck-Hufnagel et al. (2004), where I interpret the mid target on CUR- to be a realization of H* and the to be the location of leading H. In their small corpus, 39% of two-peak contours had an intervening peak on an unstressed syllable, many of which are likely to be further examples.

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3.5 Prefix L* and L*+H

Contour 12 in Table 1 raises two issues in the intonational phonology of English, corresponding to two contour classes which have a low-pitched accented syllable followed by a rising-falling contour, viz. ‘delayed’ contours and contours ending in a ‘slump’. The MAE_ToBI representation belongs to the first class. It was characterized as having ‘scoop’ by Vanderslice & Pierson (1967) with reference to Hawaiian English. For American English, Vanderslice (1972, p. 1053) notes that scoop, which corresponds to Ladd’s ‘scooped’ or ‘delayed peak’ contours (Ladd, 1980, 2008) and my own [Delay] (Gussenhoven, 1983), ‘delays the upward pitch obtrusion associated with an accented syllable’. Semantically, it has been characterized as having an intensifying (O’Connor & Arnold, 1973, p. 78; Tench, 1996, p. 126, among others) or dominating effect (Brazil, 1985, p. 129), or as expressing that the speaker is impressed (Wells, 2006, pp. 218, 221). These scooped or delayed contours can be captured by a prefix L*-tone, to be inserted to the left of H* (Gussenhoven, 2004, p. 307). Prefixal L*, notated in italic font, associates with the accented syllable, dislodging following H*, whose asterisk is now left out. It may combine with prefix-H. Following our discussion of Obligatory PA-internal downstep, the presence of leading H in the pitch accent implies downstep on the F₀ peak due to underlying H*, located on market in (9). That is, no contrast between a downstepped and non-downstepped second peak in (9) is expected (Gussenhoven, 2004, p. 321). In (9), there is low pitch on To, high pitch on the, late rising pitch on mar-, and falling pitch on -ket.

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The question arises then whether the existence of the simplex pitch accent L*H in the off-ramp analysis by the side of a prefix-L* attaching to H* represents a case of overanalysis, i.e., whether L*H is equivalent to L*H. There are two arguments for considering them to be contrasting representations. In L*H, H has the status of a dislodged H*-tone, which retains the properties of H*. This means, first, that it is not treated as the last tone of a pitch accent, which would require it to align with the next pitch accent, like H in monomorphemic L*H, but rather will continue its pronunciation until the next pitch accent, creating high level pitch. Second, downstep targets H*-tones, predicting that L*-prefixed H-tones (i.e., underlying H*-tones), but not trailing H-tones, can be contrastively downstepped. So while L*H has a counterpart L*!H, there should be no L*!H. Example (10) illustrates a prenuclear L*!H, in which the H-tone creates mid level pitch, before two occurrences of L*!HL. This contour is predicted to contrast with a non-downstepped version. In contradistinction to (10), contour (11) has two occurrences of L*H in prenuclear position, predicting that the pitch between back and boy is a slow rise, and also that the pitch on -sty of nasty is not contrastively mid or high.

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An empirical argument may be based on meaning. An eye-tracking study in fact suggested that L*HL is associated with newness, just like H*L, while L*H is associated with givenness (Chen et al., 2007). Yet, the above claims evidently require more empirical research before it can be decided whether the off-ramp analysis is here running into a case of overanalysis or whether we here have another case of underanalysis in MAE_ToBI.

The second class of rise-fall contours end in a ‘slump’, a truncated type of final fall, which is characteristic of Northern British English contours, variants of which are surveyed in Cruttenden (1997, ch. 5). Nolan and Grabe (1997) pointed out that Pierrehumbert’s convention of using H- L% to mean mid pitch (MAE_ToBI’s !H-L%, see convention (2c)) makes it impossible to use H- L% to describe the slump. This type of contour, to be sure, has not been included in descriptions of MAE, and MAE_ToBI cannot be criticized for failing to provide a representation for the Rise-Level-Slump of Northern Irish English on which Nolan and Grabe (1997) base their case. Indeed, Mayo et al. (1997) abandon clause (2c) so as to use H-L% for the ‘slump’ in Glaswegian English. Yet, it may be argued that a phonology of a complex intonation system like that for English may generate contours that do not occur in all varieties. As noted by Pierrehumbert (2000, p. 27), ‘nothing like the full set generated by [MAE_ToBI] has ever been documented’. A large proportion of a grammar’s legitimate contours may never be encountered in anyone’s lifetime, any more than will be the majority of morphosyntactic structures generated by some simple mini-grammar of English. Such non-occurrence may well be interpreted as absence from the grammar, provided it takes the form of a stochastic algorithm (Dainora, 2006). Either way, varieties are likely to differ in the frequency with which certain structures are used for certain pragmatic functions (Grabe & Post, 2004; Ritchart & Arvaniti, 2014), while there will also be cases of absolute non-use (see also Cole & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2016). Wells (2006, p. 245 fn 8), for instance, notes that the second edition of O’Connor and Arnold (1973) was the first British English course book that awarded the Fall-rise (H*L H%) full treatment as a neutral polar question contour. Earlier, it had not been reported for questions in GBE, and in MAE it is apparently (still?) not used in that function. Or again, I have found it hard to elicit H* H% contours from GBE speakers, who tend to produce L*H H% instead, and the speaker of the contour in Figure 3, panel (b), associated it with GBE, while having no problem producing it. Be this as it may, the off-ramp analysis readily provides representations for slumped contours by providing L% after pitch accents like H* and L*H, as shown in (12a), which contrasts with (12b) of the standard languages. The off-ramp analysis offers contour 10 in Table 1 for a high-beginning equivalent of (12a), a contour which has not been reported even for northern British English. Arguably, therefore, we are here dealing with a systematic case of overgeneration. However, there is a difference between this case and the cases of overanalysis in MAE_ToBI to be discussed in Section 4. The MAE_ToBI cases concern putative contrasts that one would not expect to turn up in any variety of English, while contour 10 in Table 1, being clearly distinct from other contours, might.

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4.2 L*+H vs. H*

In (15), a source of ambiguity is given which has been widely commented on (Arvaniti, 2016; Gussenhoven, 2004, p. 319; Ladd, 2008, p. 96, fn 3; Pitrelli et al., 1994), in particular for occurrences on the first syllable of the IP, case (15a). In (15), the accolade represents the initial IP boundary.

In cases (15a, b), an unaccented syllable precedes a H*-bearing syllable with leading L. For (15a), the issue is whether the initial unaccented syllables are low enough to warrant the choice of the leading L, in a situation in which low or mid pitch is predicted anyway, given the absence of an initial %H. If the prediction for L+H* is that of a later peak, as suggested by Steedman (1991), the analysis would imply a three-way peak timing contrast: early peak (H*), later peak (L+H*), and very late or delayed peak (L*+H). This is not, however, a claim that has been explicitly made, as far as I know. Steedman (1991, p. 273) consistently uses H* in combination with L-L% and L+H* in combination with L- H%, noting that the H* is somewhat later in the second type of contour than in the first, thus interpreting the difference as allophonic. The examples in the MAE_ToBI manual (Beckman & Ayers, 1994) suggest that for L+H* there is low pitch preceding the peak in addition to a high pitched peak, resulting in a wider rising flank than for plain H*. In panels (a) and (b) of Figure 7, realizations of MariANNa won it are given (from Beckman & Ayers, 1994; creak occurs on [nɪt]). Under this interpretation, the question arises how pronunciations of L* H-H% are to be transcribed that similarly differ in pitch range. The pair of contours in panels (c) and (d) are arguably analyzable as %H L* H-H%, for the narrower range one in panel (c), and as %H L*+H H- H%, for the wider-range pronunciation in panel (d), thus providing a use for the putative contrast in (15a). This approach would however leave yet further pitch range differences unaccounted for, like two heights for the beginning of the fall in H+!H* L-L%. Understandably, no such more general representation of pitch range variation has been included in MAE_ToBI, which views pitch range differences other than downstep as orthogonal to the symbolic transcription (cf. Bolinger, 1951; Ladd, 2008, p. 36, sec. 5.2). The putative contrast in (15a), therefore, is an anomalous feature of the analysis, if the interpretation is in terms of pitch range.

Figure 7

Marianna won it with H* L-L% (panel a) and L+H* L-L% (panel b) (female MAE speaker, from Beckman & Ayers, 1994) and Manianna won it? with neutral (panel c) and wide pitch range (panel d) pronunciations of %H L* H- H%. Female GBE speaker. This audio content is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav7a, http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav7b, http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav7c, and http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav7d

The evaluation of case (15b) depends on the assumptions made for the shape of the interpolation between H*-tones in the contour to the left of the arrow and the realization of the leading L-tone. For the first aspect, Pierrehumbert (1980) argued for a sagging transition, instead of a level interpolation, as would be predicted by double alignment assumed in the off-ramp analysis. The second aspect concerns realization of the leading L of L+H* in the left-hand transcription. If sagging is assumed and the realization of L in L+H* is low-pitched, the prediction is that contour (c) in Figure 8 is a realization of H* L+H*, while contour (b) is the realization of H* H*. The two contours do not, however, appear to represent different intonations, while both are distinct from contour (a).

Figure 8

ToRONto is the capital of onTArio with MAE_ToBI H* … H* and level pitch (top), H* … H* and sagging pitch (middle), and H* … L+H* (bottom), resynthesized versions from a source utterance by a female GBE speaker. This audio content is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav8a, http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav8b, and http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav8c.

The need for a deep valley for the nuclear L+H* after a prenuclear H* was questioned by Ladd and Schepman (2003), who showed that its depth varied with the distance between the H*-tones. While arguing on the basis of the location of the low target that it in fact derives from a L-tone, they point out that there is no contrast between different depths and thus no contrast between contours (b) and (c), and thus no contrast between L+H* and H* under an assumption of sagging. More realistically, targets of leading tones are implemented by gradient realization rules creating undershoot in Grice (1995, pp. 226–228), in the spirit of Chen & Xu’s (2006) weak targets, whose realization has less priority than a target of T*, say. Abandoning the requirement of a low realization of leading L as well as the convention of sagging interpolations would enable MAE_ToBI to correctly describe the difference between contours (b) and (c) on the one hand and contour (a) on the other. Without L+H* (or LH*, as I would have notated it), the off-ramp analysis cannot run into this ambiguity between H* H* and H* L+H*. If the pitch is high level, we have a case of H* H*, while a slow fall is described by H*L H*.

Neither can there be any ambiguity between L+H* and H* in the case of an IP-initial accented syllable in the off-ramp analysis (15c). With only H* available as a transcription (abstracting away from the option of a trailing L and downstep on H*) and with %L and %H as initial boundary tones, there are two ways in which preceding pitch may contrast, mid/low pitched (%L) or high pitched (H%), phonetically realized in the onset and early section of the rime. Compare this with the four transcriptions that are available in MAE_ToBI, H*, L+H*, %H H*, and %H L+H*. If unaccented syllables occur before the pitch accent (15a), we may include a leading H before nuclear T* in the off-ramp analysis and before H* in MAE_ToBI. Four transcriptions are now produced in the off-ramp analysis and six in MAE_ToBI. Off-ramp leading H is pronounced higher than a preceding H, including %H, while following H* is obligatorily downstepped (see Section 3.2). For the first three syllables of The tomatoes, the four off-ramp options are therefore %L H* or low-low-high, %L HH* or low, extra high, downstepped high, %H H* or high, high, high, and %H HH* or high, extra high, and downstepped high. MAE_ToBI’s six patterns have not explicitly been described.

5.1 Boundaries in MAE_ToBI

MAE_ToBI specifies two prosodic boundaries. First, a T- without a following T% indicates the end of an intermediate phrase (ip), while any T-T% combination additionally indicates the end of an intonational phrase (IP).⁶ As observed by Ladd (2008, p. 107), MAE_ToBI would appear to predict boundaries where there are none. As a result of the absence of any falling (H*+L or H+L*) pitch accents, a sharpish accent-lending fall minimally predicts an ip-boundary, since that fall can only be described by H* followed by an ip-boundary tone, L-. The incorrectness of this implication is suggested by a contour type that is not often discussed in the literature on English (but see Cruttenden, 1997, pp. 59, 76; Gussenhoven, 1983, p. 35; Ladd, 2008, p. 107, where his (3) can be interpreted in this way), although it figures prominently in the description of Dutch, which has a similar intonation system to English (Collier & ’t Hart 1980; ’t Hart et al., 1990, p. 116). Panel (a) in Figure 9 gives the F₀ and speech waveform of an English example. It contrasts with the contour in panel (b), which would appear to have an IP-boundary after finance committee (Gussenhoven, 2004, p. 305; see also panels (c) and (d)). Section 4 reports an experiment that was designed to decide whether a medial boundary exists in contour (a).

Figure 9

A sharp pre-nuclear fall on fi- in But the FInance committee needn’t be inVOLVED in this (panel a) and a contour with an IP-boundary after finance committee (panel b). Stylized versions are given in panels (c) and (d). Male GBE speaker. This audio content is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav9a and http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/labphon.30.wav9b

5.2 A perception experiment

Adverbs like honestly and oddly can modify adjectives, predicates, and clauses. Only in the third case are they obligatorily separated from the clause by an intonational boundary. This is illustrated in (16a), which minimally contrasts with (16b), where honestly modifies a predicate.

In order to find evidence for the assumption that the interpretation of sentence-final English adverbs depends on the presence of an intonational boundary before the adverb, more specifically that contour (a) of Figure 9 does not have an internal intonational boundary, a semantic judgement task was used in which native speakers of English identified one of two meanings of string-identical sentences of the kind illustrated in (16) which had been provided with a number of artificial F₀ contours.