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e. g. I \/think his face is fa'miliar (the divided variant)

The falling-rising tone, as its name suggests, consists of a fall in
pitch followed by a rise. If the nucleus is the last syllable of the

intonation group the fall and rise both take place on one syllable –
the nuclear syllable. Otherwise the rise occurs in the remainder of

the tone unit, cf.:

Do you agree with him? – \/Yes.
What can I do to mend matters? – You could ap\/ologize ,to her.

The final level tone is always more prominent than the others,
e.g. I'm afraid I can't manage it. – In \view of 'all the >

circumstances | \why not 'try a \gain?
In subordinate structures this tone may be replaced by a rising-

type tone.
In non-subordinate structures this tone has a particular range of

meaning (boredom, sarcasm, etc.) which is very similar in force to

other nuclear semantic functions.

Low-Level tone is very characteristic of reading poetry. Though
occasionally heard in reading Mid-Level tone is particularly

common in spontaneous speech functionally replacing the rising
tone. That is why it should be by no means ignored in teaching.

There are two more nuclear tones in English: Rise-Fall and
Rise-Fall-Rise. But adding refinement to speech they are not

absolutely essential tones for the foreign learner to acquire; Rise-

Fall can always be replaced by High Fall and Rise-Fall-Rise by
Fall-Rise without making nonsense of the utterance in the way in

which a foreign or other unsuitable intonation does.

14.1 The Intonation Group

An intonation group may be a whole sentence or a part of it.

In either case it may consist of a single word or a number of

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