Intonation and Indian English

 However I'd like to mention an interesting usage that is common among Indian English speakers (those from the Asian subcontinent, not Native Americans)… the use of a rising inflection followed by a pause on the word (usually an article) just before the key word of the sentence.

Could it derive from a habit of schoolteachers testing students' knowledge or memory with just such an intonation: "it's aaaa ….. RABBIT!" (or whatever). Students from another language background, taught in English-only schools, would have been exposed to frequent use of this intonation and might have concluded this was normal for declarative speech in English. 

 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=864