Bruce,
   I was thinking myself how little attention has been given to 
intonation and punctuation. Sometimes I think linguists become 
interested in something in inverse proportion to its usefulness, but 
that may be a writing teacher's perspective.
    The reason why Christensen sets off free modifiers with commas is 
because they are not bound up within the core sentence groups that they 
modify. He is opposed to "loading the patterns", which gives a single 
intonation group with a lot of modifiers embedded. He writes on a number 
of occasions about "the eloquence of speech", in part because speech 
tends to portion meaning out in right branching ways. It's interesting 
to see him argue against a T-group analysis which includes these 
structures as part of a core clause and not as independent. It has, as 
he points out, a big influence on readability. Here's a response to 
Hunt's argument for density inside the clause: "We should not in our 
grammar and composition courses focus on tying syntactic knots that we 
must add courses in reading to untie." ("The Problem of Defining a 
Mature Style").
   Restrictive and nonrestrictive modification depends on intonation in 
speech, and only punctuation can help us finesse those nuances in writing.
   "He dislikes politicians who put election ahead of the truth."  "He 
dislikes politicians, who put election ahead of the truth." The first 
narrows the category down and leaves hope that some politicians might 
rise above it. The second condemns all politicians and then gives the 
reason why. They would be intoned as a single group or as two groups if 
we were speaking them.
   "Sentences can vary widely in the amount of information they contain 
and in the way that information is organized." (I'm quoting myself 
here.) A "free modifier" portions information out in its own intonation 
group. Within the group, of course, you have places of tonal prominence 
(a peak in the sound wave.) The default position is the end of the unit. 
You can tie this in with given and new.
   Halliday has much to contribute in a number of places; publication of 
his book on intonation keeps getting shuffled back, though I'm told it's 
in final production stages.
   Intonation is a grammar system in speech. We need more attention to 
how to harness it in writing, in how to carry it over.

Craig


Bruce D. Despain wrote:
> The site looks great, I'll look into it.
> I think there are a number of issues we don't spend much time on in 
> grammar that have to do with intonation.  This does not seem to relate 
> to the sentence, as much as to the utterance.  Consider such words 
> usually classed as exclamatives or interjections, that are sometimes 
> not even covered by phonology.  There are usage problems: mispelling 
> "O" as "Oh" and the British are forever spelling "uh" as "er"  Tsk, 
> tsk! and oh uh! about that.  There is no syntax here to speak of, just 
> prosody.  I suppose punctuation should be mentioned as well.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Edmond Wright" 
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:41 AM
> Subject: Re: Right- and left-branching sentences and intonation
>
>
>>> Herb,
>>
>> The Policeman sentence is an excellent example -- one that you can still
>> just say with understanding.  Again one has to gabble 'the dog bit' at a
>> very low level of pitch, and pause momentarily after 'called'.  The 
>> 'House
>> that Jack built' example is made more difficult at every level when the
>> repetition of 'ate' kicks in.
>>
>> Bruce is clearly right over the part played by intonation here.  I don't
>> know of any studies -- they are obviously called for.  Whether 
>> intonation
>> can be neatly quantified is another matter -- for one thing, consider 
>> how to
>> invest what you are saying with an ironic tone, or one of disbelief, 
>> or of
>> boredom, etc. -- or perhaps you have to leave moods on one side and 
>> stick
>> with grammatical effects.
>>
>> Edmond
>>
>>
>> Dr. Edmond Wright
>> 3 Boathouse Court
>> Trafalgar Road
>> Cambridge
>> CB4 1DU
>> England
>>
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>> Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
>> Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I wish I were still teaching so I could use that one.  My favorite had
>>> been "The policeman the boy the dog bit called came," but Jack's
>>> left-branching house beats that one hands down.
>>>
>>> Herb
>>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
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