Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of fall–rise intonation

An analysis of naturally occurring data reveals that the FALL–RISE intonational contour makes a context-independent contribution to utterance interpretation: the conveyance of speaker UNCERTAINTY. Two necessary conditions are proposed for the felicitous use of fall–rise: (a) some item referenced in an utterance must be perceived as linked by a scalar relationship with its context; and (b) speaker uncertainty with respect to the scale or scalar value evoked must be plausible. The conveyance of uncertainty constitutes a pragmatic contribution to utterance interpretation, which we analyse in Gricean terms as a case of conventional implicature. Other effects, such as irony or politeness, may be conveyed via this implicature.