Transcription of Dutch intonation

'Scathing' intonation

Nuclear low level pitch is sometimes used by speakers when repeating a statement made by the listener. This contour is used to indicate that the statement is not to be taken seriously, and hence may be termed 'scathing' intonation. If there are prenuclear accents, these too are low pitched, and if there are three accents, the transcription would be L* L* L* %. Understandably, the accents in this type of contour are very hard to distinguish, since the entire contour is low pitched, but since it is always a word-by-word repetition of another utterance, the accent positions are given by that model utterance. Currently, we have no example of this contour.