• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.109-125
• /
• 2000

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the intonational meaning of various sentences based on the English Intonational Phonology, and to show the superiority of Intonational Phonology in explaining the intonational meanings in comparison with the other existing intonational theories. The American structuralists and British schools which attempt to describe the intonation in terms of 'levels' and 'configurations' respectively, analyze intonational meaning from a holistic perspective in which an utterance cannot be divided into smaller parts. On the other hand, Intonational Phonology considers English intonation as composed of a series of High and Low tones, and as a result, intonational meaning is interpreted compositionally as sets of H and L. In this paper, the phonological relations between intonation and its meaning from the compositions of pitch accents, phrase accents, and boundary tones which consist of an intonational tune are discussed.

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

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.97-112
• /
• 2000

This study examines how both English native speakers and Korean speakers realize the intonational tunes of English sentences when a sentence has two different meanings, through comparison of the utterances of the two groups of speakers. The results indicate that the English native speakers realize the difference in the meanings of given sentences in terms of differences in the boundary tones, as predicted in Pierrehumbert(1980) and Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg(l990), according to whom intonation is composed of a series of pitch accents, phrase tones, and boundary tones, and the meaning of a given sentence is delivered by the composition of the individual meanings of each component. The Korean speakers, however, fail to realize the difference in meaning with its boundary tones. Rather, they realize it by the number or positions of pitch accents and paralinguistic cues such as emotions and gestures. The Korean speakers, unlike the Americans, emphasize subject in sentences.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.275-288
• /
• 2001

The sentences with the same surface word order may be realized with the pragmatically different meanings, depending on the contexts under which they could appear. Semantically, their meaning differences have been explained in terms of the different information structures (Steedman 2000), whereas prosodically, they can be explained in terms of the different compositions of intonational components which make their own semantic contributions (Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg 1990). In other words, the different intonation realizations of the sentences with the same word order reflect the different information structures. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the information structure and the intonational meaning by way of analysing the production of the sentences with ambiguous scopes of the English focus particle 'only'. In contrast to the previous quantitative approaches to the scopes of the focus particle 'only', two independent levels of information structure (Steedman 2000)-theme/rheme, and focus/ background-make it possible to consistently explain the intonational phenomena.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.23 no.1E
• /
• pp.10-15
• /
• 2004

In performing speech conversion from a source speaker to a target speaker, it is important that the pitch contour of the source speakers utterance be converted into that of the target speaker, because pitch contour of a speech utterance plays an important role in expressing speaker's individuality and meaning of the utterance. This paper describes statistical algorithms of pitch contour conversion for Korean language. Pitch contour conversions are investigated at two 1 evels of prosodic phrases: intonational phrase and accentual phrase. The basic algorithm is a Gaussian normalization [7] in intonational phrase. The first presented algorithm is combined with a declination-line of pitch contour in an intonational phrase. The second one is Gaussian normalization within accentual phrases to compensate for local pitch variations. Experimental results show that the algorithm of Gaussian normalization within accentual phrases is significantly more accurate than the other two algorithms in intonational phrase.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.319-338
• /
• 2003

The aim of this paper is to examine the sentence final tonal patterns of English wh-questions through phonetic experiments, based on Intonational Phonology, and to explain the meaning of the final phrase tones of English wh-questions. Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990) suggested that it is pitch accents rather than boundary tones which play a crucial role in the meaning of a sentence, and that most of the general questions have H-H% tonal patterns in the sentence final. However, they could not explain why wh-questions had final falling tonal patterns (L-L%). While Bartels (1999) suggested that L phrase tone has the meaning of 'ASSERTION' and it could be applied to the explanation of the meaning of wh-questions' final tonal patterns. However, her suggestions are only theoretical explanation without any experimental support. In this paper, based on Bartels (1999), the data was classified into the following three classes: 1) echo wh-questions, 2) reference questions, and 3) common wh-questions. Using this data, a production test by three English native speakers was conducted. The results show that reference questions and common wh-questions have L phrase tones in the sentence final at a high rate, and echo wh-questions have H phrase tones in the sentence final at a high rate.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2003.05a
• /
• pp.163-167
• /
• 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
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.119-128
• /
• 2009

Many researchers have argued about the relationship between information structure and intonation. Their results can be summarized in three main points: the intonation of topic and focus in English information structures is implemented as i) a pitch accent, ii) a tune (a pitch accent + (an) edge tone(s)), or iii) a boundary tone. The purpose of this paper is to study various intonational patterns of topic and focus in English information structures, using natural conversations. In this paper, the types of topics and foci are divided, based on contrastiveness. The topics are classified as five non-contrastive and four contrastive topics. The foci are classified as neutral focus, informational focus, and contrastive focus. The results show that the intonation of the topic in English information structures is mainly implemented as a pitch accent, except for the type of the pronoun topic (Lp) which is not implemented as a pitch accent or a tune. However, the intonation of the focus is implemented as a tune in the neutral focus (Fn) and as a pitch accent or a tune in the informational focus (Fi) and the contrastive focus (Fe). In our discussion and conclusion, we suggest that it is not always true that for the meaning of contrast, the topic or the focus is represented as a $L+H^{\ast}$ pitch accent, which has been the main contrastive intonation from earlier studies.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.107-119
• /
• 2005

The current study considers that the distinctive acoustic properties and variations in the closed plateau are realized by four different pitch accents(/Hi*_ H*/ or /Hi*_$h*_f$ for an emphatic phrase and /hi*_ H*/ for a neutral phrase) in an intermediate phrase in the French intonational structure. Thus, an attempt is made to define the acoustic property of the CP in the ip according to the duration time and pitch range, while different combinations of the four pitch accents of the CP are used to explain the way a speaker will highlight. The duration time of the CP was measured at about 0.67 sec. for males and 0.75 sec. for females. The duration properties of the plateau in the CP were found to control the pitch range based on two different prominent pitch accents, which appeared in more than two APs. Therefore, the ip was identified as having a hierarchical level in the French intonational structure, along with the AP and IP. In addition, the CP in the ip was used as a specific location to explain the pragmatic meaning of the rhythm using the two acoustic factors and different combinations of the four pitch accents.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.6
• /
• pp.55-82
• /
• 1999

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acoustic characteristics of the Korean accusative marker {-lil} which functions as a discourse marker in discourse. Generally, in written texts or read speeches, it is seldom omitted and it certainly seems to serve a grammatical function. But in ordinary discourse, speakers do not use it in many cases. That is, the environments speakers use {-lil} differ from those they do not. According to the semantic interpretations, {-lil} functions as a pragmatic factor and adds to the meaning of the object in an utterance. In this paper, by comparing the acoustic characteristics of the utterances that contain the marker {-lil} with those of utterances that do not, especially based on Korean Intonational Phonology, we will demonstrate that the Korean accusative marker {-lil} shows clearly the acoustic characteristics related to the pragmatic factors which reflect speakers' special intention.