The Communicative Functions of Final Rises in Finnish Intonation

Vol. 62, No. 2-4, 2005

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Original Paper

The Communicative Functions of Final Rises in Finnish Intonation
R. Ogden, S. Routarinne

^aDepartment of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York, UK;
^bUniversity of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland

Phonetica 2005;62:160-175 (DOI: 10.1159/000090096)

Abstract

This paper considers the communicative function of final rises in Finnishconversational talk between pairs of teenage girls. Final rises are fairly common,occurring approximately twice a minute, predominantly on declaratives and in nar-rativesequences. We briefly consider the interplay between voice quality (known tobe a marker of transition relevance) and rising intonation in Finnish. We argue that innarrative sequences, rising terminals manage two main interactional tasks: they pro-videa place for a coparticipant to mark recipiency, and they project more talk by thecurrent speaker. Using a methodology which combines phonetic observation withconversation analysis, we demonstrate participants’ orientation to these functions.

Medline Abstract (ID 16391501)

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