The intonation contour of a list

We all know when someone is listing something in a speech, but what is it about the intonation that tells us a list is happening? I had always thought there was a particular intonation contour associated with lists. Some researchers of intonation have argued this as well, suggesting there are particular intonation contours for particular lists:

They are likely to have one of the following patterns, depending on whether they are complete or incomplete:
Complete
(i) ́ ́ ́ `
(ii) ` ` ́ `
(iii) ` ` ` `
(i) there are hundreds of RÚSSian // CÚBan // and East German [SPÈCialists] and adVÌSors //
(ii) the horses were NÈIGHing; the oxen were BÈLlowing; the cows were LÓWing; and the pigs were GRÙNTing (Schubiger 1958: 72)
(iii) and they're about to die // M ̄Utilated // and B ̄URNED // and HÙRT [...]

Incomplete
(iv) ́ ́ ́ ́ ́
(v) ` ` ` ` ` (Schubiger 1958: 72f.)
(iv) if you ask people to speak about their LÁWyers // or their WÁSHer repairman // or their CÁR mechanic
(v) it's like FL ̄Uoride // it's like [C ̄APital] PÙnNishment // it's ̄ONE"
(Couper-Kuhlen 1986: 150)

A complete list is one that includes all members of a relevant category, and an incomplete list is one that does not. If you are making a list and you find yourself starting it with "for example" or ending it with "and so on," it is an incomplete list.

Margaret Selting argues that:

...it is not so much the particular intonation contour that is constitutive of lists, but a variety of similar contours plus the repetition of the chosen contour for at least some or even all of the list items. (Selting, 2003: 51).

In other words, list prosody isn’t a particular contour, but involves repeating a contour over and over again. You can have more than one contour so long as it is repeated for some of the items in the list.

In the following examples, you'll hear two lists with different intonation contours.

For example, here is an example from Jhett, where a rising intonation contour is used. Notice that before he starts listing the items, he was already ending his sentences with a rising intonation (list in bold):

• “Your favorite Gamecube game is Shadow the hedgehog?↑ Do you know how many good gamecube games there are?↑
  You could have said, Wind Waker↑, Metroid Prime↑, Super Smash Bros Melee↑, but your favorite is the one where Shadow the Hedgehog has a gun↑? I mean what is wrong↑ with you↓, I don't even...”

This is similar to the intonation contour (iv), where every list member has a high tone. In this example, we can hear that it's not just that there is a high tone, but that each list member ends with a rising intonation, unlike the example that Couper-Kuhlen gave for (iv).

In contrast, in this video from Bill Wurtz (at 4:38), we hear a falling intonation contour at the end of each list item:

• “People started to study European science from books they bought from the Dutch↓. We’re talking geography↓, skeletons↓, physics↓, chemistry↓, astronomy↓, and maybe even electricity↓.”

This one is similar to both complete (iii) and incomplete (v), since every member has a falling contour. It's not clear to me whether the list is complete or incomplete (there could possibly be more subjects that were studied?).

Though each intonation contour is different, it’s clear from the intonation alone that items are being listed. The choice of intonation contour appears to be reflected by the context of the wider sentence. In the first one, the speaker is confused and taken aback by the addressee’s favorite video game, and is embedding the list in the context of an accusatory question. In the second one, the speaker is making a non-emotional declarative sentence about what Japanese people at the time were studying, and the sentence ends in a falling contour.

Sofia Vergara Teaches Intonation with Ritz Crackers

I've been harassed by this ad where Sofia Vergara tells me to try "cheesy crispy ritz cheese crispers" for several weeks now. But what catches my attention is not the product, but the way she says the line.

"Try cheesy crispy, Ritz, cheese crispers"

This intonation pattern doesn't sound native to me - and that's not surprising, because Sofia Vergara is not a native English speaker. But I wondered what about it made it sound 'non-native.' Intonation is famously slippery to describe.

Perhaps a comparison will make it clear. Here's another version of the ad, spoken by what sounds like a native English speaker. (I get the impression that the speaker is Black and may also speak AAVE, but that's not relevant for the tagline.)

"Try cheesy, crispy, Ritz cheese crispers"

Listening to the Sofia Vergara clip again, we can notice some differences. The native English speaker (abbreviated NE for short) has a peak on 'crispy' that immediately slides down, then a downstep on 'ritz cheese', and another on 'crispers.'

"Try cheesy, ↑crispy, Ritz cheese ↴crispers."

Meanwhile, Sofia Vergara doesn't do this downstepping. She actually continues increasing in pitch until 'crispers', then drops on the unstressed syllable '-pers'.

"Try ↑cheesy, ↑crispy, Ritz cheese ↗crispers↘."

To my ear, the effect is as if she's emphasizing the 'crispers', whereas the NE speaker gives the impression of emphasizing the 'crispy.'

I don't know enough about intonation to put forward an explanation for why Sofia Vergara's intonation differs in the way that it does. She's Colombian, so it may be interference from Colombian Spanish. It may be some other 'error' in acquiring intonation. Or maybe she thought she should emphasize the 'crispers.'

Intonation is only part of why she doesn't sound 'native-like' in this clip. That's one part of prosody, which is a term for aspects of sound that apply to syllables or phrases instead of individual phones. Her timing is also different from the NE. The 'cheesy crispy' part is slow and emphasized in the NE clip, while she almost sounds like she's rushing through it.

I find intonation interesting because it's so under-studied. Intonation is one of the parts of speech that non-linguists seemed very attuned to, but for a long time it received relatively little scholarly attention. Thankfully there's more and more work being done on intonation, including intonation from a sociolinguistic point of view. Intonation-related stuff seems especially underrepresented in what we may call 'popular linguistics,' and I'd like to take steps to remedy that.

Part of the problem is the system of transcription for intonation. If you think IPA is hard to use for non-linguists, get ready for ToBI, the way to transcribe prosody. If you've ever seen something like this, you've seen ToBI. (Courtesy CMU's ToBI page, an excellent resource on ToBI!)

EXAMPLE <<jam1>>: Will you have marmalade, or jam?
                                L*      H-    L* H-H%
                                

Once you get a hang of the system, you can kind of predict what the intonation will sound like. The stars, dashes, and percentage signs are probably the hardest to explain quickly. Thankfully, it's often standard to include a spectogram of the pitch changing, which adds a useful visual.

If I make more posts on intonation, I may try a hybrid system of using arrows (relatively straightforward for non-linguists even if it's too imprecise for linguistics), ToBI, and the spectograph.