Period intonation

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Period intonation
Author(s):	Marina N. Cantarutti (University of York, UK) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1688-0896)
To cite:	Cantarutti, Marina N. (2023). Period intonation. In Alexandra Gubina & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: []

Period intonation has been used to refer to a speaker’s production of falling intonation that hearably reaches a low point in their vocal range, and which may in some cases be associated to indexing unit completion (but see below). The label conflates two different aspects: that of representation in transcription (the “period”, in Jeffersonian and GAT-2 conventions), and the actual phonological phenomena represented, normally for English a final falling-to-low intonational movement, or low pitch at the end of a unit. The terms “period intonation” and “falling intonation” have been used interchangeably in the literature (Hepburn & Bolden 2012: 62; but see below).

Therefore, the period represents the low pitch point at the end of the unit, which is determined as “low” either in comparison to the surrounding context, or relative to the speaker’s own pitch range. This is captured in some of the definitions in the literature: Szczepek-Reed (2004) defines this fall-to-low as “a pitch movement which falls to a pitch which is clearly lower than any preceding Hz values within the immediately previous phonetic context” (pg. 101). Couper-Kuhlen (1996) considers that period intonation applies when “the voice drops to a low point in the speaker’s voice range at the end of a contour” (pg. 390). In his report on fall-to-low pitch movement and turn-completion, Walker (2017) operationalizes fall-to-low as bearing two conditions: “a) there must be a fall in pitch from the maximum pitch of the last accented syllable before the point of possible turn-completion, and b) the fall must end within the bottom 10% of the speaker’s normal speaking range” (pg. 7).

The following example from the CallFriend corpus (Canavan & Zipperlen 1996) illustrates what “period intonation” as generally defined in the CA/IL literature sounds like, accompanied with a visualization of acoustic information (waveform, spectrogram, and fundamental frequency, or f0, trace). Two versions of CA/IL transcription are offered for comparison: Jeffersonian (Jefferson 2004) and GAT-2 (Selting, et al. 2011).

Jeffersonian

So: that’s the thi:ng.                                      

GAT-2 Fine

so: thAts the `THING.                                      

Figure 1: Waveform, spectrogram, and f0 trace of [CallFriend_4708_l59]

The f0 trace above shows a falling contour initiated in “thing” that reaches a low pitch height at the end of the unit. The direction of the contour on the one hand (“falling”), and its final pitch height reached (“low”) on the other, are two related aspects of the realization of the contour which are represented independently. While not all falling movements may reach a low point, as in fall-to-mid contours (which GAT-2 represents with a semi-colon instead), not all falling movements may bear simple falling trajectories, and thus the period may also indicate the final pitch level reached when the main intonation contour is a rise-fall tone (Selting, et al. 2011).

Even though CA/IL work generally states that punctuation marks “indicate intonation, not grammatical function” (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2017: 607), and thus period intonation does not necessarily index an action as an assertion (Hepburn & Bolden 2012; Schegloff n.d.) there are still a number of conflicting considerations around what is known as “period intonation” that have been addressed in the literature.

Firstly, some studies have equated “period intonation” as fall-to-low pitch movement with “finality” or “completion”. Hepburn & Bolden (2017: 41) explain that the falling intonation contour that the period or full stop indicates “comes at the end of a turn constructional unit and marking its possible completion”, and likewise, Chevalier and Clift (2008: 1248) in their appendix specify that the “full stop indicates terminal intonation”. However, it has been found that fall-to-low contours are not the only option at the end of turns, nor do they necessarily should mark finality. Work by Szczepek-Reed (2004) has examined turns oriented to as complete by co-participants and found in them a range of turn-final pitch movements, including fall-to-low, rise-to-high, but also level intonation, stylized intonation (“musical intervals”) and rise-to-mid contours as well as pitch step-ups. Walker (2017) argues that there is more to the prosodic design of turn-projection than pitch in the indexing of turn-finality, and that this not restricted to fall-to-low pitch, which he has found also frequently followed by same-speaker turn continuation. Other studies have likewise not found a simple relationship between this final fall-to-low pitch movement and possible turn-completion (Local & Kelly 1986; Local & Walker 2005, among others). In a similar vein, Walker (2014a) warns of the problems of conflating form and function and suggests that the form “fall-to-low pitch movement” is one of several possible markers of turn-finality, and one which can also contribute to other actions in interaction.

Additional Related Entries:

• Comma intonation
• Question intonation
• Try-marking
• Intonation contour

Cited References:

Canavan, A., & Zipperlen, G. (1996). CALLFRIEND American English-Non-Southern Dialect. Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia, 10(1).

Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1996). Intonation and clause combining in discourse. Pragmatics, 6(3), 389–426.

Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Selting, M. (2017). Interactional Linguistics: Studying Language in Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press.

Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2017). Transcribing for Social Research. Sage.

Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2012). The Conversation Analytic Approach to Transcription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 57–76). Wiley-Blackwell.

Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–31). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Local, J., & Walker, G. (2005). Mind the gap: further resources in the production of multi-unit, multi-action turns. York Papers in Linguistics, 3, 133–143.

Local, J., & Kelly, J. (1986). Projection and “silences”: Notes on phonetic and conversational structure. Human Studies, 9(2-3), 185–204.

Schegloff, E. (n.d.). Transcription Module Retrieved July 19, 2021.

Selting, M., Auer, P., Barth-Weingarten, D., Bergmann, J., Bergmann, P., Birkner, K., Couper-Kuhlen, E., Deppermann, A., Gilles, P., Günthner, S., Hartung, M., Kern, F., Mertzlufft, C., Meyer, C., Morek, M., Oberzaucher, F., Peters, J., Quasthoff, U., Schütte, W., Stukenbrock, A., Uhmann, S. (2011). A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT 2. Gesprächsforschung: Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 12, 1–51

Szczepek Reed, B. (2004). Turn-final intonation in English. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & C. E. Ford (Eds.), Sound Patterns in Interaction: Cross-linguistic Studies from Conversation. John Benjamins.

Walker, G. (2017). Pitch and the Projection of More Talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(2), 206–225.

Walker, T. (2014a). Form ≠ Function: The Independence of Prosody and Action. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 47(1), 1–16.

Additional References:

Barth-Weingarten, D. (2016). Intonation Units Revisited: Cesuras in talk-in-interaction. John Benjamins.

Ford, C. E., Fox, B. A., & Thompson, S. A. (1996). Practices in the construction of turns: The “TCU” revisited. Pragmatics, 6(3), 427–454.

Ford, C. E., Fox, B. A., & Thompson, S. A. (2002). The Language of Turn and Sequence. Oxford University Press.

Selting, M. (1996). On the interplay of syntax and prosody in the constitution of turn-constructional units and turns in conversation. Pragmatics, 6, 371–388.

Szczepek Reed, B. (2010). Units of interaction: “Intonation phrases” or “turn constructional phrases”? In: Delais-Roussarie (Ed.), Conference Proceedings: Interface Discourse and Prosody. (pp. 351–363). University of Chicago.

Walker, G. (2018). Close proximity of turn-continuation to possible turn-completion in conversation. Speech Communication, 99, 231–241.

Walker, T. (2014b). The Independence of Phonetic Form and Interactional Accomplishments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 47(1), 23–27.