An Acoustic Study of the Pre-nuclear Intonation Pattern in Korean

국어 머리 억양의 음향 음성학적 연구

This paper aims to investigate the internal structure of the pre-nuclear intonation pattern and to discuss the inventory and usage of the phrasal tone in Korean based on the acoustic analysis of 80 test sentences. CSL Model 4300 was used for recording and filing, and Multi-speech Model 3700 for analysis. It is shown that the pre-nuclear intonation pattern is composed of one or more phrasal tones, the intonation pattern of the rhythm nit. It is observed that the second phrasal tone begins with a higher pitch than the first one and that the phrasal tones following the second one begins with a lower pitch than the preceding phrasal tone unless a certain word is emphasized. In addition to Level, Rising, Falling, and Rise-Fall phrasal tones already established in Lee (1990, 1991, 1996), Pall-Rise and Rise-Fall-Rise phrasal tones are newly established in this paper. It is observed that Rising and Rise-Fall-Rise phrasal tones are most frequently used as the first phrasal tone of a pre-nuclear intonation pattern and the falling tone as the last phrasal tone, and that Fall-Rise and level tones appear most frequently in the middle of a pre-nuclear intonation pattern.