Identifying tone-unit boundaries

It is a generally accepted principle in the study of grammar that utterances may contain one or more sentences, and that one can identify on grammatical grounds the places where one sentence ends and another begins. In a similar way, in suprasegmental phonology it is claimed that utterances may be divided up into tone-units, and that one can identify on phonetic or phonological grounds the places where one tone-unit ends and another tone-unit begins. However, giving rules for identifying where the boundaries are placed is not easy, except in cases where a clear pause separates tone-units. Two principles are usually mentioned: one is that it is possible in most cases to detect some sudden change from the pitch level at the end of one tone-unit to the pitch level that starts the following tone-unit, and recognition of the start of the following tone-unit is made easier by the fact that speakers tend to "return home" to a particular pitch level at the beginning of a tone-unit. The second principle used in tone-unit boundary identification is a rhythmical one: it is claimed that within the tone-unit, speech has a regular rhythm, but that rhythm is broken or interrupted at the tone-unit boundary. Both the above principles are useful guides, but one regularly finds, in analyzing natural speech, cases where it remains difficult or impossible to make a clear decision; the principles may well be factually correct, but it should be emphasized that at present there is no conclusive evidence from instrumental study in the laboratory that they are.