한국인 중국어 학습자의 음향적 초점 발화에 관한 소고

Acoustic Realization of Focus in Korean Speakers' Mandarin Chinese

The present study discusses how pitch range is manipulated to manifest focus structure, namely, broad focus and narrow focus in Mandarin Chinese, and examines how F0 contours are produced to cue focus structure by Korean learners of the language. The findings of the study show that, as native speakers of Mandarin do, Korean learners tend to manifest local prominence on a narrow-focused element by drastically expanded pitch range. However, significant differences between the two groups of speakers are also found: a) While native speakers of Mandarin tend to compress and lower pitch range in post-focal position within the same prosodic domain (e.g., intonational phrase) to maximize the effect of pitch range expansion on the narrow-focused element, such a tendency does not occur in the corresponding utterances produced by Korean learners. This suggests that Korean learners tend not to compress pitch range to a large extent so that lexical tones can be fully realized. b) While pitch range is least likely manipulated in relation to focus structure in native speakers' utterances, some Korean learners tend to raise F0 contours in pre-focal position probably due to the effort to expand pitch range on the following narrow-focused element.