Traditional models and the British school

The British School of intonation includes contributions made as far back as Palmer [344]. Other major contributions in this school have come from O Coimor and Arnold [333], Crystal [117], and Halliday [193]. All these variants on Palmer s original theme use dynamic features sueh as rise and fall to describe intonation. 

In the account given by Crystal, the most important part of the contour is the nucleus which is the only mandatory part of an intonation phrase. The nuclear accent can take one of several configurations, e.g. fall, fall-rise, low rise. Other parts of the contour are termed the tail (T) which follows the nucleus, the head (H) which starts at the first accented syllable of the intonation phrase and continues to the nucleus, and the pre-head (P) which precedes the head. The intonation phrase has a grammar of (P) (H) N (T), where the brackets denote optional elements. 

The relationship between the form and acoustics of this school is the most loosely defined of all the models described here this is hardly surprising, however, since none 

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