Paratones

Spoken discourse exhibits the kinds of structure that written discourse is seen to have: sentences, paragraphs, sections and sub-sections, chapters and the sense of a whole ‘document’ or book. A paragraph is something written; the equivalent in speech has been termed a ‘paratone’ – a phonological paragraph. Paratones tend to be shorter than paragraphs and may often be more equivalent to extended sentences. Paratones also extend over sequences of speaker turns in conversations.