I believe I've spoken before on the discontents of using ToBI before and briefly mentioned some of the alternatives (the British school, Bolinger, Rhythm & Pitch or RaP, etc.)
I personally think it's challenge lies partly in its presentation; if you could condense it into punctuation and diacritics people might like it more and it would be easier to use (not to forget, punctuation in English seems to focus mainly on the "cesura" or breaks, much as the Break Index part of ToBI does, but people have been using it forever, and its not conventionalized but it serves its purpose well enough for the times and the fashions…but I digress. Another time).
ToBI is tricky too because of the lack of audio recordings and quality presentation. So can you imagine my surprise when I found this website? It's absolutely fantastic because for the first time ToBI is presented succinctly and with a clear sense. I can finally hear what's behind it, and its not so bad after all. It seems fairly well-organized albeit focusing on rather pronounced and unusual distinctions, but I like it. I also notice that there are several correlations with the British tradition, in that there are low falling, low rising, high rising, etc. patterns, though in ToBI they represent phrasal interactions. One remarkable thing is that the British "Mid" seems to match the "High flat" and that there isn't a corresponding category to the British "High fall" (reference: John Maidment's NEWTON program, online; though it must be noted that the British tradition doesn't have a distinction between, for the most part, between the boundary tones that I just mentioned, and pitch accents.)
On the other hand, there are pitch accents which more nearly correspond to the idea of "nuclear tones" in British. There is one final stressed syllable in every intonational phrase (but what is an intonational phrase? other researchers have suggested that we focus on breaks, continuation patterns, and cesura to better understand that, but again that's for another time); this bears the stress that truly matters. That's what the British tradition says, and that may well be true—for the British. However, the appeal of ToBI lies in being able to distinguish between say, for example, a "peaking"pattern that can spread left, and one that can spread right. The stress falls on a specific syllable, and the syllable aligns on its left or right side—this is remarkable, and compelling moreover. (Certain words, like 'America', generally have boundary tones on both sides of the pitch accent; they're special, but ToBI can still work for them.)
It surprises me that there are only 22 combination tones (or is the page mistaken? I am not an expert anyway). It's almost like we can just have 22 punctuation symbols. Awhile ago, a Frenchman tried to introduce extra punctuation, for instance a symbol (in place of a period) for endearment, another for sarcasm, and so on. (Entertainingly the romantic pronouncement mark looked like a little heart.) I don't think it's a bad idea at all, though it would mean people would have to do one more thing to read well—maybe it would catch on, if people could be educated as to its systematic use. It would be brilliant for texting.
The problem with intonation, though, is that there seems to be no end. It's apparently bottomless. The distinctions made in ToBI in one paper were found to be gradient rather than categorical, meaning that they bleed into one another with wide overlap. They compared them to the vowelspace where they all bleed into one another, and that may be true, but…I feel there is a lot more. The quality of the peaks and valleys, their acceleration , gradation, etc. do not fall under the purview of ToBI; I think a resynthesis and integration of the kind of insights I saw in Bolinger, with the appeal of ToBI, would work wonders.
Whenever I read the British schools' works I can't help but read it in that dramatic, over-accented Downton Abbey-esque bombast that the actors over the pond seem so fond of.
I read that there were attempts at integrating the British and ToBI but it cannot have been too successful, they split hairs differently. I'll still have to go look for them again though.
P.S. I should be able to potentially use ToBI to pick out tunes to use in role playing. This should be especially useful for making plausible scenarios happen during Where Are Your Keys? gameplay, which currently vary amongst "game masters" as to the communicative goal of various interactions. These vary from language to language and are tricky, but I think just focusing on them will bring the right focus to gameplay, and what it should be about—in other words, functionl, pragmatic use of intonation to make small distinctions and split hairs in the ways natural languages do (split hairs, that is.)
P.P.S. I can finally get started on my Intonation Wiki that I've wanted to work on for so long! The ToBI examples are great, and I can easily think of scenes from movies that they pop up in.
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