This study examines the pitch patterns of questions in Mandarin that are produced by Korean speakers, in an effort to understand prosodic aspects of interlanguage phenomena. The F0 analysis of question intonation patterns of Korean speakers and those of native speakers of Mandarin shows that the global pitch range and top line manipulation, both of which are associated with pragmatic meanings and syntactic structures of questions, are conducted to a smaller degree in Korean speakers’ utterances. This results in perceptual confusion between statements and questions. However a direct negative transfer from H%, which marks yes-no questions in Korean, is seldom found in Korean speakers’ questions in Mandarin. Furthermore, Korean speakers appear to produce question intonation patterns in interaction with contextual meanings and information structures of questions. This suggests that the intonation patterns of Korean speakers need to be understood not as idiosyncratic and random errors but as part of the interlangauge system they develop in the process of second language acquisition.
This study examines the pitch patterns of questions in Mandarin that are produced by Korean speakers, in an effort to understand prosodic aspects of interlanguage phenomena. The F0 analysis of question intonation patterns of Korean speakers and those of native speakers of Mandarin shows that the global pitch range and top line manipulation, both of which are associated with pragmatic meanings and syntactic structures of questions, are conducted to a smaller degree in Korean speakers’ utterances. This results in perceptual confusion between statements and questions. However a direct negative transfer from H%, which marks yes-no questions in Korean, is seldom found in Korean speakers’ questions in Mandarin. Furthermore, Korean speakers appear to produce question intonation patterns in interaction with contextual meanings and information structures of questions. This suggests that the intonation patterns of Korean speakers need to be understood not as idiosyncratic and random errors but as part of the interlangauge system they develop in the process of second language acquisition.
(0)
(0)