Reporting clauses

...(unfinished)

When reporting clauses (= words such as he said, she asks) follow quoted words, they are usually out of focus. The nucleus goes on the appropriate item among the quoted words, and the reporting clause forms a tail to the IP:

There is often a rhythmic break between the quoted words and the reporting clause. This means that reporting clauses present a certain problem of analysis. Do we have two IPs in each of these examples, or just one? Rhythmically, the reporting clause may indeed be separated from the preceding reported matter, so that it seems to be like a separate IP. But tonally it is part of the same IP: in its pitch pattern it is indeed like a tail. So if we were to treat reporting clause as separate IP, we would have to say that the IP was anomalous in having no nuclear tone.

The rhythmic difference may involve a stress (beat) on *Bill* when it is the subject of the reporting clause, but not when it is a vocative. There is also a break in the rhythm at the boundary point, show below. There may also be a silent beat (^) at this point, in addition to the usual expected rhythmic beats on lexical stressed syllables (shown by ' and ^);