In every language of the world, in addition to speaking with consonants and vowels, we also vary the loudness, rhythm and musical pitch of our speech to transmit information. Many languages use these suprasegmental mechanisms as stress, "accent", or tone, but those uses are lexical or morphological, part of the words themselves. In contrast, when they're applied to larger grammatical units, like entire phrases or clauses, we call them prosody. The most important element of prosody is pitch variation - melody - which we call intonation.

In written language, we try to indicate prosody with punctuation - the period, comma, question mark, exclamation point and so on - and also with typography : boldface, underlining or small caps. These mechanisms are all relatively new; even the space between words was only invented in the 7th century! And now we are inventing new punctuation at a rapid pace: not just the interrobang ‽, sarcmark , irony mark ⸮ and the like, but also emoticons like ☺ and abbreviations like lol.

Instead of these meaning-based symbols, Musa offers a sound-based system of punctuation using the six accent marks without accompanying vowels. In other words, written Musa communicates the suprasegmental features of language the same way that speech does: by indicating the intonation. For example, instead of using a ? question mark to indicate a question, Musa writes the rising intonation of most questions. And in fact, that's more accurate: there are many exclamations that are phrased as questions ("What the heck are you doing?"), and many questions that are phrased as statements ("I bet you'd like some more tea."). In addition, intonation allows us to express much subtler shades of meaning: surprise, skepticism, displeasure.

Elements of Intonation

The Musa notation follows the presentation in English Intonation: An Introduction [J. C. Wells, Cambridge 2006]. The two Level accents, High and Low, are used to mark the end of intonation groups (also called tone groups, intonation units or intonation phrases), which correspond to information groups: each departs from information already known to the listener (the given) to add new information. An intonation group often, but not always, corresponds to a grammatical clause. As you speak or listen, an intonation group is a phrase that's pronounced in one rhythm; they're separated by "pauses" that are sometimes not much of a pause at all, just a break in the rhythm. The High Level accent is used for intonation groups that end on a rising tone, while Low Level is used when the group ends on a falling tone. They are written as suffixes attached to the final word in the group.

Within each intonation group is a tonic (or nucleus), which carries the most prominent pitch change. It's often, but not always, the last stressed syllable in the group, and it always represents the end of the new information - if anything follows, it's given. If it's not the last syllable, the pitch change is spread across the whole word from the nucleus to the end of the intonation group; it becomes a word melody - effectively, the whole word is the tonic.

In Musa, tonics are marked with slanted accents: High Rising, Low Rising, High Falling or Low Falling, always attached to the end of the word, even if the pitched syllable is earlier in the word. The High Rising accent is used for high rising tones, and so forth in a straightforward manner: the accent is interpreted as a small diagram of the pitch contour.

Did you see that?	I saw it!
	

There are also tones with more complex patterns, and these are written with complex accents. A rise falling tone is an exaggerated rise followed by a lesser fall, as if to mollify the rise. It's written with a complex accent that has a High Rising Accent on top and a Low Falling accent on the bottom. Likewise, a fall rising tone is an exaggerated fall followed by a lesser rise, as if to mollify the fall. It's written with a complex accent that has a High Falling Accent on top and a Low Rising accent on the bottom. The first, dominant, accent is always on top.

You should do it.	Why did they?
	

Sometimes, there is a second pitched element at the end of an intonation group, where there is a rise instead of the expected fall after a falling tonic. These compound tones are written in Musa with only one slanted accent - the compound element is shown by the unexpected High Level accent at the end.

In other cases, there are other pitched elements before the tonic, and these pretonic heads can also be marked with slanted accents. Since the intonation group only ends with a Level accent, there's no ambiguity.

Much of the time, the tonic falls at the end of the intonation group, and Musa makes this a little easier to write using final accents that combine the tonic accent with the intonation group accent, as follows :

Tone	Tonic Accent	Separate Final	Combined Final	Sound
Low Falling			
High Falling			
Rise Falling			
Low Rising			
High Rising			
Fall Rising			

Note that the most common intonations, Low Falling and Low Rising, the combined final is the same as the separate final. The others maintain the correct position for the level accent, and put the first accent in the other position.

To recap, Musa marks tonality (the division into intonation groups) using Level accents, tonicity (the position of the tonic) using slanted accents, and tone (the pitch contour) by choice of accent shape. To illustrate it, let's take a look at how this system can be used to punctuate English.

English Intonation

There are five nuclear tones in English, as described in Intonation in the Grammar of English [M.A.K. Halliday & William S. Greaves, 2008] :

1. A Fall, usually written in Musa with a Low Falling accent .
   However, there is a strong variant which is written with a High Falling accent .
2. A Rise, written with a High Rising accent .
3. A Level Rising, written with a Low Rising accent .
4. A Fall Rising, written with a High Falling accent over a Low Rising accent .
5. A Rise Falling, written with a High Rising accent over a Low Falling accent .

The second, third and fourth are followed by a High Level accent at the end of the intonation group. The first and fifth are normally followed by a Low Level accent at the end of the intonation group, but as mentioned above, there are also two compound tones :

13. Fall + Level Rising, written in Musa as a Low Falling accent on the tonic, with a High Level accent at the end of the intonation group: , then .
53. Rise Falling + Level Rising, written in Musa as a High Rising accent over a Low Falling accent on the tonic, with a High Level accent at the end of the intonation group: , then .

These tones amplify the meanings of English sentences, adding information about the flow of the discourse or the speaker's feelings about the content. For example, an unmarked declarative statement - one that carries no meaning beyond the meaning of its words - is spoken with tone 1. When spoken with tone 4, the tone adds a feature of reservation, as if there were a but involved somewhere. With tone 5, the additional meaning is one of surprise that the sentence is true. With tone 2, the sentence functions as a query, a challenge, or a response. With tone 3, the sentence is uncommitted: tentative, mildly agreeing, or simply incomplete, with the rest to follow. Tones 13 and 53 indicate a secondary focus.

Likewise, different tones add different shades of meaning to questions, queries (yes/no questions), responses, commands, offers, exclamations and vocatives. Intonation also plays an important role in amalgamating items into larger logical units, like conjunctions and lists. For instance, the sentence I thank my parents, the Pope and Sinéad O'Connor has two very different meanings depending on how it's pronounced. Halliday & Greaves go into great depth in describing how these tones are used to convey meaning, and I recommend you read the book to learn more. But to learn to punctuate Musa, all you need is to be able to hear the different tones as you pronounce them, silently or out loud, and write what you hear.

Rules of Thumb

For those who don't know, "rules of thumb" are guidelines to follow that get you pretty close to where you want to be most of the time, without necessarily being correct all the time. In the case of Musa punctuation, as in many other cases, they're a good first draft that you can then adjust to fit the text at hand. A linguist would call them the unmarked case.

1. Replace every period (.) and every exclamation point (!) with a Low Level accent .
2. Replace every comma (,) and question mark (?) with a High Level accent .
3. If the text is expository prose, like most written text, put a Low Falling accent  after every word with a pitch drop unless it's the end of a tone group.

Examples

Here are three examples. The first is a monologue (from Voice of America's As It Is podcast) along with the audio and the image. It's in the Roman alphabet, so you can focus on the punctuation. The narrator starts by breaking up each sentence to make it easier for learners to follow. But then he speeds it up...

The second is a (staged) dialogue. You can listen to it on YouTube.

The third is an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.

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