Monday 4 July 2016

Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Tonicity

Martin (1992: 532):
A number of the key realisations for involved and uninvolved contact are surveyed below.

Table 7.12. Tenor — Aspects of the realisation of contact
Contact
proliferation
contraction
[phonology foregrounded]
involved
uninvolved
phonology
Pre-tonic delicacybasic tone

marked tonalityunmarked tonality

marked tonicity
unmarked tonicity

varied rhythmconstant rhythm

fluenthesitant

reduction processesfull syllables

native accentstandard accent

range of accentssingle accent

acronymfull form



Blogger Comments:

The claim here is that:
  • the phonological feature of 'marked tonicity' construes the tenor feature of 'involved' contact (a lot of previous contact between interlocutors), whereas
  • the phonological feature of 'unmarked tonicity' construes the tenor feature of 'uninvolved' contact (less previous contact between interlocutors).
Unmarked tonicity is when tonic prominence falls on the last element of clause structure containing a lexical item (or of group structure in cases where the tone group realises less than a clause).  Any other tonic placement is marked (Halliday 1967: 22-3).

Martin's claim can be falsified by a concrete example.  For the clause Victor Meldrew was played by Richard Wilson:
  • tonic prominence within Victor Meldrew is claimed to construe the tenor feature of 'involved' contact (a lot of previous contact between interlocutors), whereas
  • tonic prominence within Richard Wilson is claimed to construe the tenor feature of 'uninvolved' contact (less previous contact between interlocutors).
For the record, the differences between the two variants actually include:
  • agency: middle vs effective, and
  • direction of coding: decoding vs encoding.
middle clause decoding a Token:

Victor Meldrew
was played
by Richard Wilson
Identifier/Value
Process: relational
Identified/Token
New

Given

effective clause encoding a Value:

Victor Meldrew
was played
by Richard Wilson
Identified/Value
Process: relational
Identifier/Token
Given

New