An Analysis of Intonation Patterns of English Interrogative Sentences Produced by Undergraduate Students in District Mansehra

Abstract

This research intends to discover the tonal configurations of English Interrogative sentences used by undergraduate students of English in District Mansehra. The intonation patterns of English interrogative sentences used by undergraduate students were compared with those of native speakers of English. An experimental design was used to collect data from a sample of eighteen students (nine female and nine male) in the form of recordings and was run on PRAAT software to identify the intonation configuration of the recorded utterances. The analysis showed that non-native speakers used a variety of intonation patterns in the utterances of English language. In the comparison with the results of utterances by native speakers, it was observed that in yes/no questions, there was a slight difference between the percentages. Contrastively, in wh-questions, a significant difference was observed, as native speakers used a High-Low pattern whereas non-native speakers used the opposite one.