• MALSORI
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• no.47
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• pp.15-29
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• 2003

When intonation in French is analysed in terms of a multi-dimentional and hierarchical structure, each of the prosodic units such as accent phrases(having different combinations of the basic tonemes L and H), pre-sentencial and post-sentencial long pauses, intonation phrases(containing boundary intonation), as well as intermediate phrases can be considered being realized on a separate tier. Unlike on the tiers where accent phrases and intonation phrases occur, an intonation rhythm consisting of plateaus is realised on that of intermediate phrases. This intonation rhythm consisting of plateaus is one of the significant factors that lead a basic French metrical rhythm. This paper first shows the types of combinations of the basic tonemes L and H found in French accent phrases. Secondly, this paper examines the roles intermediate phrases and plateaus play in French. Finally, this paper argues that intermediate phrases are the metrical units actually adopted as real utterance units in French.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-39
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• 2023

Recent research in usage-based Second Language Acquisition has provided new insights into second language (L2) learners' development of formulaic language (Wulff, 2019). The current study examines the use of phrase-frames, which are recurring sequences of words including one or more variable slots (e.g., it is * that), in written and oral production data from Asian learners of English across four proficiency levels (beginner, low-intermediate, high-intermediate, advanced) and native English speakers. The variability, predictability, and discourse functions of the most frequent 4-word phrase-frames from the written essay and spoken dialogue sub-corpora of the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE) were analyzed and then compared across groups and modes. The results revealed that while learners' phrase-frames in writing became more variable and unpredictable as proficiency increased, no clear developmental patterns were found in speaking, although all groups used more fixed and predictable phrase-frames than the reference group. Further, no developmental trajectories in the functions of the most frequent phrase-frames were found in both modes. Additionally, lower-level learners and the reference group used more variable phrase-frames in speaking, whereas advanced-level learners showed more variability in writing. This study contributes to a better understanding of the development of L2 phraseological competence.

• MALSORI
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• no.40
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• pp.13-27
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• 2000

It is generally accepted that there appears the rising tone at the end of the intermediate phrase in standard Korean. There have been discussions about whether the syllable with the rising tone, even if it is a particle or an ending, might be accented or not. The accented syllable is the most prominent one in the given phonological strings. It is determined by the nondistinctive stress which is located on the first or second syllable of lexical word according to vowel length and syllable weight. So pitch does not have any close relationship with accent. The intermediate phrase-final rising tone, therefore, is not associated with accent, but used to convey other pragmatic meanings, that is, i) speech style is more friendly, ii) the speaker tries to send the information for the hearer to hear more clearly, and iii) the speaker wants the hearer to keep on listening to him or her because the speaker's utterance is not complete.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.163-167
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• 2003

Intonation as suprasegmental phonetic features conveys meanings on the postlexical or utterance level in a linguistically structured way. It includes three aspects: tunes, relative prominence, and intonational phrasing. In this article, I will treat how prosodic phrasing is functionally related to the listening comprehension of English by analysing the students' errors of listening comprehension. When utterance meaning is conveyed, it is realized to be divided into intonational phrases. The small intonational phrase is regarded as an intermediate phrase which has a primary accent and a phrase tone or audible break. Most students' errors of listening occurred with linking pronunciation in the intermediate phrases of the fast speech. Thus through the smallest unit with tune we can help students improve their pronunciation and listening ability of English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.47-55
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• 2020

The current study was designed to investigate which type of phrase boundary tones high-intermediate Korean learners of English used in their spontaneous speech. These boundary tones were compared to those used in native speakers' spontaneous speech to examine whether the learners successfully acquired the use of boundary tones. To achieve this purpose, 10 Korean learners of English and four native speakers of English participated in the current study. The participants were asked to summarize the stories of short videos, and the tonal and the phrasing patterns of the obtained spontaneous speech were analyzed using Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that both the native speakers and the Korean learners frequently marked their intonational phrase boundaries with high boundary tones. However, regarding the prosodic phrase positions within a sentence, Korean learners frequently used steep rising tones (i.e., H-H%) while native speakers used gradual rising tones (i.e., L-H%) for sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the findings suggested that high-intermediate Korean learners understood the forward-looking function of the high boundary tones and that they were able to make use of these tones to mark intonational phrases in their spontaneous speech.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.141-152
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• 2005

This paper shows the tonal patterns of English conjunctive utterances produced by Korean speakers of English, presenting that Korean speakers realize either the H - phrase tone or the H% boundary tone at the phrase-final part of the conjunctive utterances. Based on Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg's (1990) claim that either H- or H% tone indicates that a phrase is related to the following one, Korean speakers seem to produce the satisfactory patterns of edge tones in conjunctive sentences. In the experiment, we made up conjunctive sentences including both coordinate conjunctions such as and, but, or, and so and subordinate conjunctions like if, when and though. We varied the stimuli according to the existence of a comma and the lengths of connecting words and phrases. We also divided the subjects into two levels of English proficiency based on their English written test scores to see if Korean speakers' performance ability of edge tones is related with their general competence of English. Results show that Korean speakers produced 84% of the H- phrase tone in intermediate phrases and H-L% and L-H% boundary tones in intonational phrases. Also, coordinate and subordinate conjunctions show little difference in their tonal contours, and the existence of a comma or the lengths of connecting words and phrases do not affect Korean speakers' production of the H- phrasal tone and the H% boundary tone. This may suggest that pitch accents, rather than edge tones, should be put more focus on in teaching English intonation in Korea as much work has already shown that Korean speakers have serious problem with producing pitch accents in speaking English.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.89-110
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• 2002

Intonation is very difficult to describe and it is furthermore difficult to compare intonation between different languages because of their differences of intonation systems. This paper aims to compare some intonation phenomena between Korean, French and English. In this paper I will refer to ToBI (the Tone and Break Indices) which is a prosodic transcription model proposed originally by Pierrehumbert (1980) as a description tool. In the first part, I will summarize different ToBI systems, namely, K-ToBI (Korean ToBI), F-ToBI (French ToBI) and ToBI itself (English ToBI) in order to compare the differences of three languages within prosody. In the second part, I will analyze some tokens registered by Korean, French and American in different languages to show the difficulties of learning other languages and to find the prosodic cues to pronounce correctly other languages. The point of comparison in this study is the Accentual Phrase (AP) in Korean and in French and the intermediate phrase (ip) in English, which I will call ' subject phrase ' in this study for convenience.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.117-130
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• 2004

This paper investigates the English intonation of Korean speakers of English as a second language and compares it to that of English native speakers. The speech data of ten Korean speakers and three native speaker controls were tape recorded in an oral reading task in which the subjects were asked to read aloud the given text which was used in the study of Wennerstrom (1994). Following Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990) who distinguishes the discrete units of meaning in intonation, pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones were measured. It was found that Korean speakers' use of phrase accents and boundary tones were relatively good compared to their use of pitch accents. That is, Korean speakers conform to native speakers' use of phrase or boundary tones for the purpose of marking the relationship between intermediate or intonational phrases. In contrast, the main difference of Korean speakers' use of intonation from that of native speakers was the use of pitch accents. That is, Korean speakers tend to have difficulty in assigning an appropriate pitch accent to signal relationships between new or contrastive information and that which is assumed to be understood or contributes little to the meaning of the utterance.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.31-38
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• 2016

The purpose of the current study was to examine the acquisition of the second language prosody by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study investigated Korean learners' patterns of prosodic phrasing and their use of edge tones (i.e., phrase accents and boundary tones) in English, and then compared the patterns with those of native English speakers. Eight Korean learners and 8 native speakers of English read 5 different English passages. Both groups' patterns of tones and prosodic phrasing were analyzed using the Mainstream American English Tones and Break Indices (MAE_ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that the Korean learners chunked their speech into prosodic phrases more frequently than the native speakers did. This frequent prosodic phrasing pattern was especially noticeable in sentence-internal prosodic phrases, often where there was no punctuation mark. Tonal analyses revealed that the Korean learners put significantly more High phrase accents (H-) on their sentence-internal intermediate phrase boundaries than the native speakers of English. In addition, compared with the native speakers, the Korean learners used significantly more High boundary tones (both H-H% and L-H%) for the sentence-internal intonational phrases, while they used similar proportion of High boundary tones for the sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the results suggested that Korean learners of English successfully acquired the meanings and functions of prosodic phrasing and edge tones in English as well as that they are able to efficiently use these prosodic features to convey their own discourse intention.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.149-163
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• 2001

This paper investigates the manner in which various. syntactic structures with a single meaning implement a consistent intonational pattern by examining English conditional clauses. In the phonetic experiment, we explore the edge tones in three different syntactic clauses which are semantically interpreted as a single conditional meaning (an if-clause, a clause with no if. and a clause with no if but followed by and) and compare them with the edge tone realized in a clause which is not interpreted as a conditional meaning. We also investigate the tonal differences resulting from the semantic difference between conditional and non-conditional meanings. That is, the conditional clauses expressed in three different syntactic structures show a consistent intonational pattern in their clausefinal boundaries; a rising contour (H- or H%) is realized at the edge of the intermediate phrases (ip) or intonational phrases (IP) in 89% of the if-clauses, 72% of the clauses with no if, and 79% of the clauses with no if but followed by and. On the other hand, 82% of the non-conditional clauses have a falling contour (L- or L-L%) in their final edge. Statistically, Chi-Square tests show that these percentages are all significantly higher, which suggests that a conditional meaning implements a consistent intonational pattern though it is expressed through different syntactic structures. Therefore, the result supports Bolinger's (1989) claim that intonation makes an important contribution to discourse interpretation.