| While a great deal is known about intonation and the use of pitch or of fundamental frequency in utterances without context, very little is known about the use of pitch in continuous casual speech. This study addressed a part of this problem, the use of raised pitch in conversational discourse. Three aspects of pitch use were investigated: the relation of pitch to syntactic boundaries, the relation of pitch to type of information conveyed, and the relation of pitch to some interactive functions occurring in different discourse modes. Several hypotheses about the use of Fo in conversational discourse which bore on these aspects were tested. The study used as data Fo values derived from conversations, which were segmented into pitch groups defined by common declination lines. A method was devised to represent the Fo of a period of speech by a single value, comparable to that of other periods of speech. Conclusions included the following.; Raised fundamental frequency serves to demarcate syntactic boundaries. Ninety-seven per cent of declination group beginnings and 89 per cent of clause beginnings coincided with syntactic group beginnings. Phonetic cohesion has some tendency to accompany syntactic cohesion, in that the second clause of clause combinations tended to be phonetically subordinate.; Type of information being conveyed is marked by pitch level. The highest pitched and most likely to be stressed information occurs with interactive utterances, making sure the listener understands the speaker, has things correct, and follows the discourse, rather than on conceptual information.; Discourse modes of narrating and conversing can be differentiated by mean pitch, which is influenced by several interactive functions which are accompanied by raised pitch. But even without the presence of these functions, the pitch of conversing mode remains higher than that of narrating mode. |
