Falls

A.

In a falling nuclear tone the pitch of the voice starts relatively high and then moves downwards. The starting point may be anywhere from mid to high. The endpoint is low. There may be some upward movement before the pitch moves downwards (discussed further in

)

In the simplest cases the fall takes place on a single syllable. We see this in cases where the nuclear syllable is the only syllable in the IP, or where the nuclear is the last syllable in the IP. The fall then happens on that syllable.

In identifying the nuclear tone we must disregard all the pitch levels and possible pitch movements that are found earlier in the intonation phrase, i.e. before the nucleus. (We shall analyze these prenuclear patterns in chapter 5.)

In both these examples the pitch movement on the nucleus is a fall. The preceding pitch patterns are irrelevant in determining the nuclear tone.

B.

Often there are syllables after the nucleus, i.e. a tail. After a falling nucleus, the tail is always _low. The fall (= the downward pitch movement) happens on or from the syllable that bears the nucleus (the lexically stressed syllable). The syllable(s) after the nucleus are low pitched.

If the vowel in the nucleus syllable is short, of if this vowel is followed by a voiceless consonant, there may be insufficient time for the fall to be heard on the nuclear syllable itself. The effect is then one of a jump from a higher-pitched syllable (the nucleus) to one or more low-pitched syllable (the tail). The overall pitch pattern is still a fall.

Again, in identifying a nuclear tone (in these cases as falling) we disregard any prenuclear pitch pattern:

For a discussion of a different varieties of falling tone, see