Possible antedating of uptalk

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

While listening to SiriusXM radio's 50's channel this morning they played the novelty song 'Alley Oop' (the older members will undoubtedly recall the exceedingly silly song).
In any case, much of it is 'talked' rather than sung, and I noticed that a number of the lines appeared (mind you I'm listening in my car, not recording and measuring with PRAAT) to be declaratives with at least suspensive, and perhaps rising contours. I have neither the time nor the patience to actually measure these, but it's publicly available data (lyrics here: http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/lyrics2/nov_alleyoop.html )
so I throw this out as a hypothesis that someone who'd like to could run with.


Geoff

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

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