  Phonology typically describes speech in terms of discrete signs like
features. The field of intonational phonology uses discrete accents to describe
intonation and prosody. But, are such representations useful? The results of
mimicry experiments indicate that discrete signs are not a useful
representation of the shape of intonation contours. Human behaviour seems to be
better represented by a attractors where memory retains substantial fine detail
about an utterance. There is no evidence that discrete abstract representations
that might be formed that have an effect on the speech that is subsequently
produced. This paper also discusses conditions under which a discrete phonology
can arise from an attractor model and why - for intonation - attractors can be
inferred without the implying a discrete phonology.
