# Boundary tone

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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 [intonational phrases](/source/Prosodic_unit), 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 [PhD](/source/Doctor_of_Philosophy) thesis on English [intonation](/source/Intonation_(linguistics)) by [Mark Liberman](/source/Mark_Liberman) in 1975 but without being developed further.[1] It was taken up again in 1980 in another PhD thesis on English intonation by [Janet Pierrehumbert](/source/Janet_Pierrehumbert).[2] In Pierrehumbert's model, which later developed into the [ToBI](/source/ToBI) system of intonational transcription, every [intonational phrase](/source/Prosodic_unit) 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.[3]

## 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− L%.[4] Here the asterisk (*) indicates a **[pitch accent](/source/Pitch_accent_(intonation))**, the hyphen (−) 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.[5]

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− H%.[6]

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%.[7] (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[8] and has been successfully adapted to several other languages, for example [Persian](/source/Persian_language),[9] [German](/source/German_language),[10] and [Dutch](/source/Dutch_language).[11] Some analyses use a larger number of boundary tones than L% and H%; for example for Dutch, [Gussenhoven](/source/Carlos_Gussenhoven) uses L%, H%, and % (no boundary tone) at the end of an utterance, and %L, %H, and %HL at the beginning;[11] while for [Italian](/source/Italian_language) Frota and Prieto posit six boundary tones, written L%, H%, LH%, HL%, L!H%, and H!H% (where !H represents a [downstepped](/source/Downstep) high tone, i.e. one slightly lower in pitch than the previous one).[12]

## Internal boundary tones

A rising boundary tone can often be heard internally in a sentence in some languages, for example, to mark a topic,[13] to mark off items in a list, or following the [subordinate clause](/source/Dependent_clause) in a sentence such as "If you like it, please buy it".[14] (See further: [Chichewa tones#Boundary tones](/source/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](/source/Yes%E2%80%93no_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?").[15] In [Luganda](/source/Luganda), a related language spoken in [Uganda](/source/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?').[16] (See [Chichewa tones](/source/Chichewa_tones) and [Luganda tones](/source/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.[17] 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%.[18]

## See also

- [Intonation (linguistics)](/source/Intonation_(linguistics))

- [ToBI](/source/ToBI)

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Liberman (1975), p. 286.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 26.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Cruttenden (1986), pp. 45f.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 266.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Port, R. [ToBI Intonation Transcription Summary](https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/306/tobi.summary.html).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** Pierrehumbert (1980), pp. 47, 266, 315.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** Pierrehumbert (1980), p. 258.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** Cruttenden (1986), p. 67f.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** Sadat-Tehrani (2007).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-10)** Grice et al (2005)

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-Guss_11-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-Guss_11-1) Gussenhoven (2010).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-12)** Frota & Prieto (2015), p. 412.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-13)** Myers (1996), p. 34.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-14)** Kanerva, Jonni M. (1990). *Focus and Phrasing in Chichewa Phonology*. New York, Garland, p. 147.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-15)** Myers (1996), p. 35; Hullquist, C.G. (1988), *Simply Chichewa*, p. 145.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-16)** Kamoga, F.K. & Stevick, E.W. (1968), *Luganda Basic Course*, p. 242.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-17)** Hedberg et al (2014), p. 10.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-18)** Hedberg et al, p. 13.

## 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) ["German Intonation in Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology"](http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/publikationen/softcopies/Grice%3A19xx%3AGIA.pdf). Sun-Ah Jun *Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing*. Oxford University Press, pp. 55–83.

- Gussenhoven, Carlos (2010). ["Transcription of Dutch Intonation"](http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249633.001.0001/acprof-9780199249633-chapter-5) in Sun-Ah Jun *Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing*. Oxford Scholarship Online, chapter 5. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249633.001.0001](https://doi.org/10.1093%2Facprof%3Aoso%2F9780199249633.001.0001).

- Hedberg, Nancy, Juan M. Sosa, Emrah Görgülü (2014) ["The Meaning of Intonation in Yes-No Questions in American English: A Corpus Study"](https://www.sfu.ca/~hedberg/Hedberg_Sosa_Gorgulu_2014.pdf). Published in *Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory*, 13,2. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2014-0020)

- Liberman, Mark Y. (1975) ["The Intonational System of English"](http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/theses/liberman75.pdf) 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) ["The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation"](https://web.archive.org/web/20151213155827/http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jbp/publications/Pierrehumbert_PhD.pdf) Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

- Port, R. [ToBI Intonation Transcription Summary](https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/306/tobi.summary.html), Indiana University Introduction to Phonetics course.

- Sadat-Tehrani, Nima, (2007). ["The Intonational Grammar of Persian"](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.667&rep=rep1&type=pdf). Ph.D. Thesis, University of Manitoba.

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