Autosegmental analysis of intonation

Autosegmental analysis of intonation is a term that is used for the descriptive model of intonation.

Comments
Gussenhoven's autosegmental description of intonation was originally developed for British English (1984, 1985). However, his description, which recognises a phonetic level and a morphological level, can also be applied to Dutch intonation (Gussenhoven 1988). Gussenhoven's analysis is closely related to the phonological descriptions of intonation by, amongst others, Pierrehumbert (1980) and Ladd (1983).

In Gussenhoven's analysis, the intonation of British English and Dutch can be described in terms of the same phonological units. Moreover, the morpheme inventories for the two languages are the same: there are three morphemes (or 'tones'): H*L, H*LH, and L*H. There is a one-to-one correspondence between accents on the tonal tier and accents on the segmental tier (both indicated by *). All other contours of Dutch are derived from these tones by phonological operations, such as downstep.

ToBI and ToDI are frameworks to transcribe intonation, both based on the autosegmental description.

Link
Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics