Pitch and tense)

On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 09:10:16 -0700 Matt Pearson <mpearson@...>
writes:
>Raising the voice at the end of statements is common among teenagers
>all over the US and Canada, and seems to have a very specific
>discourse
>function - namely to signal something like "it's still my turn to
>speak,
>I'm just pausing for a second".  I think this is a relatively recent
>innovation in American English, and I'd be very interested to know
>where it comes from.
>------------------------------------
>Matt Pearson
I always thought of raising my voice at the end of statements as the same
thing as "like" and "right?" - a way to make it less sure of a statement,
less empirically objectively "true".  A bit like languages which mark
things like hearsay, observation, etc.


-Stephen (Steg)

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