Blurb:

In this chapter the onset pitch of the initial tone unit in each clause of a news commentary will be examined to check whether it is also used by the newsreader to indicate a change of topic. The news commentary under discussion in this chapter, ‘China’s economic boom’, was downloaded from the website of BBC World Service at www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ newsenglish/witn/archive_2005.shtml. The news commentary was published at 12:45 GMT on 18 February 2005.