Focal Parts of Utterance in Busan Korean

Focal parts of utterance can be determined by new/contrastive information, a focus particle, a contrastive topic marker, or a nominative case marker in Busan Korean. Among these factors, new or contrastive information is the most important element in determining the intonational nucleus of an utterance. However, unlike Seoul Korean, when a focus particle, a topic marker, or a case marker contributes to the placement of the most prominent peak of an utterance, the peak is on the noun to which they are attached. Moreover, the case marker-ga shows more prominent pitch on the preceding noun than the noun followed by the topic marker-nun when-ga is used as emphatic or contrastive. This is one of the major problems for Busan Korean users in commanding natural and fluent Seoul Korean intonation even if they use standard written form of Seoul Korean in their speech.