Prosodic Characteristics of Yeah in Korean Speakers Collaborative English Dialogues

Lee, Yongeun. 2014. Prosodic Characteristics of Yeah in Korean Speakers'Collaborative English Dialogues. English Language and Linguistics 20.3, 1-18.Existing studies have shown that in dialogues involving native speakers of English,yeah serves multifunctional roles and thus, from its word information alone, isin principle ambiguous. In this regard, a substantial body of research efforts has investigated the role of prosody of yeah in potentially disambiguating its diverse conversational meanings. Little is known, however, about nonnative English speakers' use of yeah, in particular the prosodic characteristics of yeah as a function of their conversational meanings in nonnative-nonnative interactions. The primary goal of this study is thus to examine the prosodic aspects of yeah in spontaneous speech of Korean learners of English. To this end, data are drawn from collaborative English dialogues performed by multiple dyads of Korean learners of English, paired according to their general English proficiency. Three broad types of yeah were observed from the current participants' English dialogues and measurements of their mean F0, Max F0, mean duration and intensity indicate the potential role of Max F0. Other than this, conversational meanings of yeah seem not to be prosodically marked differently among each other in the current nonnatives'conversations, suggesting a potentially markedly different prosodic pattern of yeah in native vs. nonnative English dialogues