High rising terminal

The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as upspeak, uptalk, rising inflection, or high rising intonation (HRI), is a feature of some variants of English where declarative sentence clauses end with a rising-pitch intonation, until the end of the sentence where a falling-pitch is applied.

Empirically, one report proposes that HRT in American English and Australian English is marked by a high tone (high pitch or high fundamental frequency) beginning on the final accented syllable near the end of the statement (the terminal), and continuing to increase in frequency (up to 40%) to the end of the intonational phrase. New research suggests that the actual rise can occur one or more syllables after the last accented syllable of the phrase, and its range is much more variable than previously thought.

The origins of HRT remain uncertain. Anecdotal evidence places the conception of the American English variety on the West Coast – anywhere from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest.

With respect to the southern hemisphere, it has been suggested that the feature may have originated in New Zealand.

It is unclear whether the American English varieties and the Oceanic varieties had any influence on each other regarding the spread of HRT.

In the United States, the phenomenon of HRT may be fairly recent but is an increasingly common characteristic of speech especially among younger speakers. However, serious scientific and linguistic inquiry on this topic has a much more extensive history in linguistic journals from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain where HRT seems to have been noted as early as World War II.

It has been noted in speech heard in areas of Canada, in Cape Town, the Falkland Islands, and in the United States where it is often associated with a particular sociolect that originated among affluent teenage girls in Southern California (see Valleyspeak and Valley girl). It was observed in Mississippi in 1963 (see Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes "Twirling at Ole Miss"). Elsewhere in the United States, this tonal pattern is characteristic of the speech heard in parts of the rural Upper Midwest that have come under the influence of Norwegian phonology through Norwegian migration to Minnesota and North Dakota.

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