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I have a question about a certain type of intonation. Let's use the following sentence as an example:

"What would you like for dinner?" asked mom as I entered the kitchen.

When I read this sentence, I would read the "What would you like for dinner?" portion with normal pitch, but would read the "asked mom as I entered the kitchen" in a lower pitch.

I'm wondering if there is a designation/name for this specific type of intonation.

mellis481
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    I'm a syntactician, so I don't know what a phonologist would say, but I call it "flatting" and it seems to be associated with backgrounded constituents, often presupposed, like restrictive relative clauses. – jlawler Mar 10 '22 at 22:08
  • Oh, and flatting is not limited to the end of the sentence; presupposed material can occur anywhere in a sentence. – jlawler Mar 10 '22 at 23:07

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