Publications

Publication details [#31772]

Tench, Paul. 2003. Processes of semogenesis in English intonation. Functions of Language 10 (2) : 211–236.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
ISBN
0929-998X
Journal DOI
10.1075/fol

Annotation

Semogenesis, the creation of meaning, has been promoted by Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) as a ‘guiding principle’ in their presentation of a systemic functional theory of language, holding that language has within itself the resources by which people can create new meanings. They illustrated three processes of semogenesis and used an example of English intonation to illustrate one of the processes, deconstruction. This paper proposes two other processes, blending and reconstitution, to account for three other developments in English intonation: the falling-rising tone, the so-called high rising terminal/tone (HRT) and the mid level tone for routine listing.