Reaction to C. Gussenhoven and A. C. M. Rietveld: “Fundamental frequency declination in Dutch: testing three hypotheses”

Gussenhoven and Rietveld [Journal of Phonetics (1988) 16, 355–369] presented evidence from production and perception experiments on the issue of peak-by-peak lowering versus time-dependent topline declination. They interpret the evidence in terms of a time-dependent model, with final lowering of the last peak. The present reaction criticizes the setup and computations on which the main conclusions are based, and concludes that the issue of peak-by-peak lowering vs. time dependency is still open, and that the data do not justify the inclusion of final lowering into the phonological description of Dutch intonation.