Compound rises and "uptalk" in spoken English dialogues

Abstract

"Uptalk" or the use of rising and high pitch at the end of statements is common in interactive discourse in Australian English. The distribution and discourse functions of complex and compound rising tunes were examined in a corpus of Australian English map task dialogues. Each utterance was analysed in terms of Dialogue acts (classified using DAMSL) and intonational tune. It was found that most terminal high rises were in fact part of split or compound fall-rises, and are not the same as yes/no question rises in English. There was also a strong correspondence between pitch range of the terminal elements and discourse function. For example, forward-looking communicative acts (e.g. those that..