Grammaticality and Pragmatics of Interrogative Ending In Spoken Language : Through Analysis of Intonation in Women’s Spontaneous Speech

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to reconsider both grammaticality and pragmatics of interrogative ending in spoken language. We analyzed the intonation of 35 women’s spontaneous speech with a length of 300minutes and drew the following conclusions freom the analysis. First, Most endings that realized interrogative sentence in spoken language were found evenly in declarative sentence and interrogative sentence and showed difference only in functions and degree of meaning. Second, intonation had lower extent of contribution as the functional strength of interrogative sentence was higher. By contrast, intonation had higher extent of contribution as the functional strength of interrogative sentence was lower. Grammaticality and pragmatics were inter-complementary. Third, intonation was combined with morphological elements and involved in pragmatic functions. Non-assertive endings were combined with ‘L:’, ‘LH’, and ‘LHL’ to be used in soft and polite expressions. Confirmative and assertive endings were combined with ‘H’, ‘HL:’, and ‘LHL’ to be used in assertive expressions. Fourth, As the higher, use of flexible intonation and forms revealing confidence was more common, and furthermore, politeness strategy based on prosody elements was used more commonly.