{{Short description|Change in pitch at the end of an utterance}} The term '''boundary tone''' refers to a rise or fall in pitch that occurs in speech at the end of a sentence or other utterance, or, if a sentence is divided into two or more [[Prosodic unit|intonational phrases]], at the end of each intonational phrase. It can also refer to a low or high intonational tone at the beginning of an utterance or intonational phrase.

The term was first introduced in a [[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]] thesis on English [[Intonation (linguistics)|intonation]] by [[Mark Liberman]] in 1975 but without being developed further.<ref>Liberman (1975), p. 286.</ref> It was taken up again in 1980 in another PhD thesis on English intonation by [[Janet Pierrehumbert]].<ref>Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 26.</ref> In Pierrehumbert's model, which later developed into the [[ToBI]] system of intonational transcription, every [[Prosodic unit|intonational phrase]] is marked as ending in a boundary tone, written either H% when the speaker's voice rises up or remains high, or L% when it falls or remains low.

In modern intonational studies the term 'boundary tone' replaces the notion of 'terminal junctures' (falling #, rising //, and level /) used in earlier American studies of intonation.<ref>Cruttenden (1986), pp. 45f.</ref>

==Examples of boundary tones== Pierrehumbert gives the example of the sentence ''This is my sister Mary''. This can be pronounced in two ways, either as a single intonational phrase with a single high pitch on the first syllable of ''Mary'' (L L L L L H L), or as two intonational phrases with a high pitch both on ''sister'' and on ''Mary'' (L L L H L H L). If it is pronounced the second way, the words ''sister'' and ''Mary'' both have a falling intonation, and each one is transcribed by Pierrehumbert as H* L<sup>−</sup> L%.<ref>Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 266.</ref> Here the asterisk (*) indicates a '''[[Pitch accent (intonation)|pitch accent]]''', the hyphen (<sup>−</sup>) indicates a '''phrase accent''', which fills the interval between the last pitch accent and the final boundary tone, and the percent symbol (%) indicates the boundary tone itself.<ref>Port, R. [https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/306/tobi.summary.html ToBI Intonation Transcription Summary].</ref>

[[File:Pitch_track_of_'Anna_came_with_Manny'_(2).jpg|thumb|right|Pitch track illustrating the H% boundary tone, from Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 266.]] In another example, in response to the question, "What about Anna? Who did she come with?", a speaker may reply ''Anna came with Manny''. Again there are two possible pronunciations: the speaker can either say this as a single intonational phrase with a single high pitch on ''Manny'' (L L L L H L), or as two intonational phrases with one high pitch on the first syllable of ''Anna'' and another on the first syllable of ''Manny'' (H L L L H L). If the sentence is pronounced in the second way, because the word ''Anna'' is the topic of the sentence and does not give new information, it will have a slight rise in pitch on the second syllable (see the illustration). In this case it is transcribed by Pierrehumbert as H* L<sup>−</sup> H%.<ref>Pierrehumbert (1980), pp. 47, 266, 315.</ref>

A boundary tone can also begin a sentence or intonational phrase. For example, the phrase ''Another orange'' would usually be pronounced with a low pitch on the first syllable. However, it can sometimes be pronounced with a high pitch on the vowel ''A-''. Pierrehumbert marks this high pitch also with H%.<ref>Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 258.</ref> (A low boundary tone at the beginning of an utterance is usually not marked by Pierrehumbert.)

==Boundary tones in other languages== Because of its simplicity compared with previous attempts at transcribing English intonation, Pierrehumbert's model has been influential<ref>Cruttenden (1986), p. 67f.</ref> and has been successfully adapted to several other languages, for example [[Persian language|Persian]],<ref>Sadat-Tehrani (2007).</ref> [[German language|German]],<ref>Grice et al (2005)</ref> and [[Dutch language|Dutch]].<ref name=Guss>Gussenhoven (2010).</ref> Some analyses use a larger number of boundary tones than L% and H%; for example for Dutch, [[Carlos Gussenhoven|Gussenhoven]] uses L%, H%, and % (no boundary tone) at the end of an utterance, and %L, %H, and %HL at the beginning;<ref name=Guss/> while for [[Italian language|Italian]] Frota and Prieto posit six boundary tones, written L%, H%, LH%, HL%, L!H%, and H!H% (where !H represents a [[downstep]]ped high tone, i.e. one slightly lower in pitch than the previous one).<ref>Frota & Prieto (2015), p. 412.</ref>

==Internal boundary tones== A rising boundary tone can often be heard internally in a sentence in some languages, for example, to mark a topic,<ref>Myers (1996), p. 34.</ref> to mark off items in a list, or following the [[Dependent clause|subordinate clause]] in a sentence such as "If you like it, please buy it".<ref>Kanerva, Jonni M. (1990). ''Focus and Phrasing in Chichewa Phonology''. New York, Garland, p. 147.</ref> (See further: [[Chichewa tones#Boundary tones]].)

==Question boundary tones== Boundary tones are also used to mark questions in many languages. For example, in Chichewa, a [[yes–no question]] may be indicated either by a rising tone on the final syllable, or by a high-low falling tone (e.g. ''mwalandirâ?'' "have you received it?").<ref>Myers (1996), p. 35; Hullquist, C.G. (1988), ''Simply Chichewa'', p. 145.</ref> In [[Luganda]], a related language spoken in [[Uganda]], on the contrary, a yes–no question is indicated by a ''low'' tone on the final syllable (e.g. ''ssóméró'' 'it is a school' vs. ''ssóméro'' 'is it a school?').<ref>Kamoga, F.K. & Stevick, E.W. (1968), ''Luganda Basic Course'', p. 242.</ref> (See [[Chichewa tones]] and [[Luganda tones]].)

A corpus-based study of yes–no questions in American English found that the great majority of them (approximately 90%) ended in a high boundary tone (H%), most frequently (80%) using a "low-rise" final contour transcribed L*H-H%. The next most common contour is H*H-H%, which is described as "high-rise". A typical low-rise question transcribed in the study is ''And do you still work for a veterinarian?'', with the syllable ''ve-'' marked as L* followed by a smooth rise to a high pitch at the end.<ref>Hedberg et al (2014), p. 10.</ref> Less commonly a yes–no question will end in a "high-fall", for example, ''Is it treatable?'', in which the word ''treatable'' is marked H*L-L%.<ref>Hedberg et al, p. 13.</ref>

==See also== * [[Intonation (linguistics)]] * [[ToBI]]

==References== {{reflist|30em}}

==Bibliography== *Cruttenden, Alan (1986). ''Intonation''. Cambridge University Press. *Frota, Sónia; & Pilar Prieto (Eds.) (2015), ''Intonation in Romance''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Grice, Martine; Stefan Baumann and Ralf Benzmüller (2005) [http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/publikationen/softcopies/Grice%3A19xx%3AGIA.pdf "German Intonation in Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology"]. Sun-Ah Jun ''Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing''. Oxford University Press, pp.&nbsp;55–83. *Gussenhoven, Carlos (2010). [http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249633.001.0001/acprof-9780199249633-chapter-5 "Transcription of Dutch Intonation"] in Sun-Ah Jun ''Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing''. Oxford Scholarship Online, chapter 5. {{doi|10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249633.001.0001}}. *Hedberg, Nancy, Juan M. Sosa, Emrah Görgülü (2014) [https://www.sfu.ca/~hedberg/Hedberg_Sosa_Gorgulu_2014.pdf "The Meaning of Intonation in Yes-No Questions in American English: A Corpus Study"]. Published in ''Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory'', 13,2. [https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2014-0020 DOI] *Liberman, Mark Y. (1975) [http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/theses/liberman75.pdf "The Intonational System of English"] Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. *Myers, Scott (1996). "Boundary tones and the phonetic implementation of tone in Chichewa", ''Studies in African Linguistics'' 25, 29–60. *Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (1980) [https://web.archive.org/web/20151213155827/http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jbp/publications/Pierrehumbert_PhD.pdf "The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation"] Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. *Port, R. [https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/306/tobi.summary.html ToBI Intonation Transcription Summary], Indiana University Introduction to Phonetics course. *Sadat-Tehrani, Nima, (2007). [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.667&rep=rep1&type=pdf "The Intonational Grammar of Persian"]. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Manitoba.

[[Category:Tone (linguistics)]] [[Category:Prosody (linguistics)]]