With a yes/no question move, the polarity is at issue – that is what a yes/no question is all about! Hence, the unmarked, or congruent co-selection in mood and tone for a yes/no question is polar interrogative with rising pitch tone 2.So when I say that the tone 1 imperative mood is the unmarked, or congruent choice for a command, I mean that these co-selections in clause and tone group are congruent with what a command is trying to get done with language – the issue of polarity is not at stake, hence we expect a command to have a falling tone 1 pitch contour. The marked, or metaphorical choices in the examples in the previous slide (e.g polar interrogative + falling tone 1 for a polite command) are based on our understanding of what the congruent choices are, using such unconscious knowledge to motivate the use of language in non-congruent, or metaphorical ways.The marked, or metaphorical choices in the examples in the previous slide illustrate what happens when more complex contextual aspects are operating that make more demands of the language – and, in fact, such complexity is more common than not in social interactions!
This confuses markedness with incongruence. Markedness is 'intra-system': whether a choice is the default/neutral one (unmarked) or not (marked). Congruence is 'inter-stratal' within content: whether the meaning and wording agree (congruent) or not (metaphorical). Importantly, the congruent vs metaphorical distinction only applies to the realisation relation between strata of the content plane, semantics and lexicogrammar, and is only made possible by the natural relation between them.
That is, the congruent vs metaphorical distinction does not apply to the realisation relation between lexicogrammar and phonology — there is no "phonological metaphor". For example, in realising declarative mood, the relation between unmarked tone 1 and marked tone 2 is not metaphorical, since 'protesting statement' (tone 2) is not a metaphor for 'statement' (tone 1).
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