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KMID : 0917520000070040203
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Journal of Speech Sciences
2000 Volume.7 No. 4 p.203 ~ p.217
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Pitch Patterns of Interrogative Sentences in relation to the Focus
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Abstract
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In spoken language, the characteristics of prosodic realiation are related to the meaning of utterance. The pitch pattern of an interogative sentence which differs from that of declarative sentences can be considered in this respect. If we consider the question-answer pair, we can find that the most important variation comes from the intened meaning of asking. In this paper, we experiment with four kinds of iterrogative sentences and show that the difference in pitch patterns of interrogative sentences can be explained in relation to the focus phenomena that is, the differences of the boundary tones in interrogative sentences are due to the differences in the prosodic domain of focus. For a relevant explanation with the focus phenomena, we divided focus into the categories: emphatic focus, which plays a role in delivering the speaker´s intended meaning for the sentence interpretation, and informational focus, delivers the central intended meaning of the utterance.
The results can be summarized in three points First, High boundary tone delivers the meaning of asking. Second, the realization of different boundary tones that are found in wh-question and alternative question are just phonetic variations caused by focusing. Third, the high rise boundary tone in echo questions is related to the meaning of suprise or incredulity, and this relation is a consensus of existing opinion, that is, the speaker´s attitude of surprise can raise the pitch range. From these results we can distinguish between boundary type and phonetic variation, and we can also give appropriate meaning to the different boundary tones in interrogative sentences that have been regarded as merely a part of sentence type.
Key words : focus,interrogative
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