The Communicative Functions of Final Rises in Finnish Intonation

This paper considers the communicative function of final rises in Finnishconversational talk between pairs of teenage girls. Final rises are fairly common,occurring approximately twice a minute, predominantly on declaratives and in nar-rativesequences. We briefly consider the interplay between voice quality (known tobe a marker of transition relevance) and rising intonation in Finnish. We argue that innarrative sequences, rising terminals manage two main interactional tasks: they pro-videa place for a coparticipant to mark recipiency, and they project more talk by thecurrent speaker. Using a methodology which combines phonetic observation withconversation analysis, we demonstrate participants’ orientation to these functions.

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