English Intonation Research Articles

An Analysis of Prosodic Features of Chinese EFL Majors’ English Questions

Drawing on the Auto-segmental Metrical theory in intonational phonology, this paper reveals the phonological structure of English interrogatives between Chinese EFL majors and native speakers from a syntactic pragmatic perspective, based on reading documents of eight English majors with Praat being its research tool. Findings show that the prosodic characteristics of interrogatives of English majors are obviously different from those of native speakers, which are mainly reflected in the segmentation of tone groups, boundary tone, intonation nucleus, and stress distribution. It purports to help English majors clarify the important pragmatic functions of intonation in information transmission and interpersonal communication, and foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses so as to better develop "Chinglish pronunciation" with Chinese characteristics; meanwhile, to bring enlightenment to English intonation teaching.

Achieving Self-Imitation for English Intonation Learning: The Role of Corrective Feedback

AbstractCorrective feedback is crucial for pronunciation teaching. However, in current pronunciation teaching practice, the corrective feedback provided usually fails to locate pronunciation problems and inform learners of the differences between their mispronunciations and the correct form. Based on the motor theory, this study attempted to explore a new way of corrective feedback for pronunciation teaching. Specifically, the learners’ speech output was modified and then was played back to them as an input model for learning. In this way, the learners can imitate the pronunciation model of their own voices, achieving self-imitation. This study included two experiments. The first explored the viability of obtaining one’s self-perceived voice through delayed feedback paradigm. The second experiment examined the effectiveness of self-imitation for English intonation learning. Results showed that imitating the pronunciation model of one’s own voice can reduce the learners’ phonological memory load, assist critical listening and facilitate accurate phonetic realizations of the target intonation.

TEACHING EMOTIONAL ENGLISH INTONATION

This experimental research focuses on teaching emotional English intonation with video at university as this issue is not presented in scientific literature. The article aims to show a practical approach to teaching English intonation with ICT tools confirmed experimentally and in practice while conducting an English Phonetics course at university. The article is based on the author’s dissertation «Teaching emotional intonation with video (2-nd year students at Linguistic University)» (2009). Reaviling linguistic and psychological features of emotional intonation the article shows that emotional intonation teaching is a complex phenomenon including a system of interdependent features – linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic. This approach to teaching intonation provides equal conditions for students with the visual and auditory types of speech information perception to perceive and recognise emotional intonation patterns in communication. Educational video courses are considered beneficial to demonstrate verbal and non-verbal features of emotional intonation in a communicative environment. Besides, the article presents step-by-step teaching of emotional intonation based on carefully designed exercises: pre-communicative (receptive: recognition, differentiation and reproductive: imitation, imitation with a key, substitution, transformation, sounding) and communicative (productive: sounding and dramatisation); paused and synchronous. The examples of exercises with detailed descriptions of activities are displayed as well. Furthermore, a model of teaching emotional intonation shows stages of using video and performing communicative activities. After experimental learning, all 60 (100%) students achieved proficiency levels, primarily «proficient», and «advanced». The research has demonstrated that the proposed method of training can result in better recognition and more accurate production of emotional intonation in speaking.

ENGLISH INTONATION IN READING ALOUD PRODUCED BY THE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AT UNISMUH MAKASSAR

This research is aimed to determine the kinds of English Intonation used by students when reading aloud. This research was descriptive qualitative. The population were 20 students at the third semester students of English Education Department in UNISMUH Makassar. The instrument used reading text and recording.The result showed that the English intonation used by students when reading aloud a text was very different and varied and the intonation they used was not only rising and falling intonation but also rising falling intonation in some word. Good and correct intonation is very influential on the comfort and for hearing easy to get the meaning of a text.

Simulation of English Linguistic Phonetic and Lexical Variation Based on Sociology Perspective

Objectives: From the perspective of sociology, the speech and vocabulary variation simulation of English linguistics is discussed in depth. Firstly, the background of the research object and the significance of the research are elaborated, and then the research theory related to the English phonetic and lexical variation simulation is analyzed. Methods: Through the design of the English phonetic intonation network teaching system, the design ideas that conform to the development of each function of the platform are proposed. Results: Furthermore, the English linguistic speech and lexical variation simulation model algorithm based on sociological perspective is used to design and verify the function of the teaching system, and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by empirical analysis. Conclusion: The final results of the experiment show that by using the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to develop a system tool that conforms to the teaching method and put it into specific teaching work can improve students’ English linguistics pronunciation and vocabulary learning ability.

The phonological determinants of tone in English loanwords in Mandarin

This paper presents the results of a corpus study and an online loanword adaptation experiment examining the tonal adaptation of English loanwords in Mandarin. Using maximum entropy models, I control for the substantial influences of lexical tone distributions and standardisation, and uncover phonological determinants of tone beyond these lexical and conventional factors. The most important phonological determinant of tone in the corpus was English voicing, while in the experiment it was English stress-aligned pitch contours. I argue that these distinct tonal adaptation patterns constitute two different perceptual mappings, one from F0 perturbations to tone and the other from English intonation to tone, both arising due to particular borrowing contexts. I suggest that increasingly close contact between English and Mandarin may lead to more intonation-driven tonal adaptation in the latest wave of borrowing. The maximum entropy approach holds promise for the analysis of complex cases of tonal adaptation in other languages.

Exploring the Complexity of the L2 Intonation System: An Acoustic and Eye-Tracking Study

Phonological research has demonstrated that English intonation, variably referred to as prosody, is a multidimensional and multilayered system situated at the interface of information structure, morphosyntactic structure, phonological phenomena, and pragmatic functions. The structural and functional complexity of the intonational system, however, is largely under-addressed in L2 pronunciation teaching, leading to a lack of spontaneous use of intonation despite successful imitation in classrooms. Focusing on contrastive and implicational sentence stress, this study explored the complexity of the English intonation system by investigating how L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers use multiple acoustic features (i.e., pitch range, pitch level, duration, and intensity) in signaling contrastive and implicational information and how one acoustic feature (maximum pitch level) is affected by information structure (contrast), morphosyntactic structure (phrasal boundary), and a phonological phenomenon (declination) in L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' speech. Using eye-tracking technology, we also investigated (1) L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' real-time processing of lexical items that carry information structure (i.e., contrast) and typically receive stress in L1 speakers' speech; (2) the influence of visual enhancement (italics and bold) on L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' processing of contrastive information; and (3) L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' processing of pictures with contrastive information. Statistical analysis using linear mixed-effects models showed that L1 English speakers and Mandarin-English L2 speakers differed in their use of acoustic cues in signaling contrastive and implicational information. They also differed in the use of maximum pitch level in signaling sentence stress influenced by contrast, phrasal boundary, and declination. We did not find differences in L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' processing of contrastive and implicational information at the sentence level, but the two groups of participants differ in their processing of contrastive information in passages and pictures. These results suggest that processing limitations may be the reason why L2 speakers did not use English intonation spontaneously. The findings of this study also suggest that Complexity Theory (CT), which emphasizes the complex and dynamic nature of intonation, is a theoretical framework that has the potential of bridging the gap between L2 phonology and L2 pronunciation teaching.

Role of f0 alignment in distinguishing intonation categories: evidence from American english

Under the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory of intonation, the temporal alignment of fundamental frequency (F0) patterns with respect to syllables has been claimed to distinguish pitch accent categories. Several experiments test whether differences in F0 peak or valley alignment in American English phrases would produce evidence consistent with a change from (1) a H* to a H+L* pitch accent, and (2) a L* to a L+H* pitch accent. Four stimulus series were constructed in which F0 peak or valley alignment was shifted across portions of short phrases with varying stress. In Experiment 1, participants discriminated pairs of stimuli in an AX task. In Experiment 2, participants classified stimuli as category exemplars using an AXB task. In Experiment 3, participants imitated stimuli; the alignment of F0 peaks and valleys in their productions was measured. Finally, in Experiment 4, participants judged the relative prominence of initial and final syllables in stimuli to determine whether alignment differences generated a stress shift. The results support the distinctions between H* and H+L* and between L+H* and L*. Moreover, evidence consistent with an additional category not currently predicted by most AM theories was obtained, which is proposed here to be H*+H. The results have implications for understanding phonological contrasts, phonetic interpolation in English intonation, and the transcription of prosodic contrasts in corpus-based analysis.

Effects of recasts, clarification requests on suprasegment development of English intonation

A total of 102 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners participated in the present study, which aimed to test how different types of corrective feedback-recasts and clarification requests-can differentially affect the suprasegment development of English intonation. All participants received 5 treatment sessions designed to encourage them to notice and practice the target feature in meaningful discourse; recasts or clarification requests were provided to the participants’ untargetlike production, except those in the control group (n=34), who received comparable instruction but without corrective feedback. Acoustic analyses were conducted on 7 intonation features including words/IP, pause, anacrusis, lengthing, pitch reset, improper tonicity and tone selection elicited via pretest and posttest measures targeting trained instances and untrained instances. The results showed that 1) recasts are more effective than clarification requests on EFL learners’ suprasegment development of English intonation; 2) recasts may not only lead learners to establish, reinforce and generalize their new phonological knowledge of English intonation that they had practiced during the treatments, but also help them transmit their attention from trained to untrained learning of foreign language input at a suprasegmental level.

Keeping a Critical Eye on Majority Language Influence: The Case of Uptalk in Heritage Spanish

The goal of this study is to highlight the importance of taking into account variations in monolingual grammars before discussing majority language influence as a possible source of heritage speakers’ divergent grammars. In this study, we examine the production of uptalk in Spanish by heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish in Southern California. Uptalk (i.e., rising intonation contour at the end of a non-question utterance) is frequently associated with California English. Thus, heritage speakers’ use of uptalk is often considered to be influenced from English intonation (i.e., the majority language). Although uptalk in Spanish is not well understood, it has been observed in Mexican Spanish, which calls attention to the importance of investigating uptalk in monolingual Spanish. Using a dyadic interaction task, we obtained spontaneous speech data of 16 heritage speakers and 16 monolingual speakers of Mexican Spanish and compared the phonological and phonetic properties of uptalks produced by the two groups. Our results demonstrated that the heritage speakers and the monolingual speakers produced uptalks with similar frequencies and mainly used L+H* HH% and L* HH% contours. However, the two groups had more differences than similarities. Specifically, heritage speakers’ uptalks presented less dynamic contours and were produced with flatter rises than monolinguals’ uptalks. Heritage speakers’ divergent patterns showed close resemblance with patterns in English, suggesting majority language influence as a valid source of divergence. We discuss possible avenues for future research for a better understanding of the role of majority language influence on heritage Spanish uptalk.

Perception of English Intonation Patterns by Japanese Learners of English

Perception of English Intonation Patterns by Japanese Learners of English

THE INFLUENCE BETWEEN STUDENTS’ LANGUAGE POTENTIAL WITH THEIR OWN DIALECT

This study was conducted to obtain information about dialect in student's potential whether it could be decided to speak fluently or not. Taken from one of institute which appear the idea to analyze the problem, the main instrument to collect the data was questionnaire and transform it to be narrative which aimed this research use qualitative method. From 4 dialects were used by the students namely Bataknese, Minangnese, Javanese and Sundanese which they use when speaking, especially the dialect’s intonation usage within English speaking. This will be impact on the learning method that might be constant rather than variable within English intonation usage. The questionnaire result will prove about the problem that occur in amid of the classroom. Moreover, this research has been supported from more than 10 theories instead. It contains many different topics related dialect and student's potential in speaking. From finding, the researcher obtained the data that talking with person who have strong dialect was not such a big problem to understand what does the person mean. The result is not change the dialect the person used, the only thing is practice English intonation to be better and develop the person's language potential to adjust the language the person speaks. Keywords: Dialect, English intonation, Student’s Potential

Exploring the Articulation of Sentence-Stress among Teachers of English in Selected Nigerian Secondary Schools

A number of studies on Nigerian English intonation, of which sentence stress is a part, reveal that Nigerian English is devoid of accentuation; it is generally spoken with tone. Even at that, none of these studies has analyzed how teachers of English in Nigeria articulate or utilize sentence stress in speech, whether consciously or unconsciously. This present study focuses, therefore, on the performance of secondary school English teachers in the use of sentence stress for effective communication. Analysis of 24 (12 short and 12 long) elicited English sentences uttered by 32 secondary school English teachers in Lagos State of Nigeria reveal a performance of only 27% correct accentuation and 73% incorrect accentuation. The study concludes that secondary school teachers of English in Nigeria have not adequately mastered the art of accenting the right words in sentences to accurately generate the intended meaning. Finally, the study recommends that intensive trainings be organized for teachers of English, thereby creating awareness of the need to treat sentence stress not only as a mere English Language classroom topic, but also as an effective tool of oral communication beyond the shores of Nigeria.

The Perception of Macro-rhythm in Jewish English Intonation

This article investigates intonation’s place in what Sarah Bunin Benor calls the American Jewish English repertoire, a collection of features that speakers can use to index Jewish identity. Results from a perceptual experiment show variation in which intonational contours listeners associate with Jewishness. Jewish listeners, particularly those with connections with Yiddish speakers, pick out a phonetically distinct rise-fall as indicating Jewishness; however, non-Jewish listeners hear a different set of contours—a less phonetically distinct rise-fall and a rise—as sounding Jewish. The author proposes that there is a unifying feature being perceived as “Jewish”: specifically, more macro-rhythmic contours (with regular alternations of high and low pitch) are heard as more Jewish. For Jewish speakers, only the contour with the greatest degree of macro-rhythm (the rise-fall with higher peaks) is heard as Jewish; for non-Jewish speakers, a lower degree of macro-rhythm suffices. Intonation thus behaves much like other parts of the sound system in that the social meaning of a particular linguistic feature is highly dependent on an individual’s linguistic and social history.

AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS' DIFFICULTIES IN USING ENGLISH INTONATION AT GRADE EIGHT OF SMP NEGERI 2 PEMATANGSIANTAR

This research is about the students’ difficulties in using English intonation. Since English is a foreign language, students always face problems especially in pronouncing the words. Pronouncing also refers to the intonation in conversation. Problem stated in this research as follow: What are the students’ difficulties in using English intonation? It focuses on the students’ intonation in a conversation, which consists of rising tone, falling tone and level tone. To answer the problem above, this research follows some theories, namely: Allen (1954), Hay craft (1971), Jones (1979), and Roach (2000). The research design is qualitative research. The subjects of this study are the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Pematangsiantar, and the object is the student’s intonation. The technique of collecting data follows audio method or what is called recorded voice data. The data is analyzed by drawing the terminal contour of students’ intonation. The result of this research was there are three difficulties of students in using English intonation, namely: (1). Difficulty in using level tone, (2). Difficulty in using rising intonation (3). Difficulty in using falling intonation. This research finding recommends both teacher and students to take responsibility in overcoming those difficulties. An English teacher should teach his beginner students the using of intonation and its function in every kinds of sentence. Since there is an imitation process in learning intonation, a teacher should be able to detect a falling intonation from a rising intonation in his own voice as well as in a student’s. The success of learning does not only depend on the teacher but also involves the students’ awareness to learn English.

영어 억양에 대한 예비 영어교사들의 인식

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pre-service English teachers’ overall cognition about English intonation and teaching it, and to examine whether there is any significant difference in cognition between the group of pre-service English teachers who took an English phonetics and phonology course and the other group not taking it. The results indicated that a large number of pre-service English teachers have positive thinking, knowledge, and beliefs about English intonation, earning a higher mean score of 15 items (above 3.59) of all 20 questionnaire items. It was also shown that the group of pre-service teachers who took English phonetics and phonology course has much knowledge of English intonation than those who did not take it, showing a higher mean score of 16 items. Statistic differences in pre-service teachers’ cognition in English intonation were especially found in 5 items, depending on their taking a course in English phonetics and phonology.

Learning English Intonation Through Exposure to Resynthesized Self-produced Stimuli

EFL learners are prone to having problems in pronunciation, while their problems in intonation are more salient. The Chinese EFL pronunciation classroom has long been criticized for teacher-centered, “one-size-fits-all” teaching, which is inefficient and ineffective for solving individual student’s specific pronunciation problems. This study conducted an experiment to examine the effectiveness of exposure to resynthesized self-produced stimuli for intonation learning. The participants were 66 first year English majors studying at a university in China. The treatment was a form of English intonation training wherein the students in the experimental group used their resynthesized self-produced stimuli (their own voices) as the pronunciation model for learning while the control group used a model produced by a native speaker. After the training, the results of the intonation production test showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in eight intonation patterns. The students’ problems in intonation support Mennen’s (2007) claim that intonation learning involves a first stage of acquiring the phonological representations of intonation patterns and a second stage of acquiring the phonetic realizations of those patterns. The results of this study revealed that exposure to resynthesized self-produced stimuli for intonation learning was as effective as the native speaker model for helping the students form the phonological representations of intonation patterns, while it was more effective than the native speaker model for facilitating the students to produce more accurate phonetic realizations of those patterns.

ПРОСОДІЯ ГЕНДЕРУ НА БРИТАНСЬКИХ ОСТРОВАХ

Gender research is a new area of humanities that is now in the making. It focuses on the cultural and social factors that determine society’s attitudes towards men and women, the behavior of individuals in connection with belonging to gender, stereotypical perceptions of male and female qualities – all that transforms gender issues from the field of biology into the field of social life and culture. The article deals with the difference between male and female voices within frequency, dynamic and temporal characteristics of various regional types of British pronunciation. Intonation appears as a multicomponent system formation in which social and regional peculiarities within individual groups of speakers are refracted in a complex, indirect way, being in constant dialectic unity. The author suggests that frequency of the main tone is one of the main factors which stipulates male and female voices’ specifics. The conducted experiment convinced us that for an objective reflection of the contemporary variation of English intonation on the British Isles, it is necessary to take into account the factors of social and situational variability of speech. A significant difference between male and female voices is observed in the frequency of the descending tones. Both men and women tend to increase descending tones, but women are ahead of men in this direction, increasing the frequency by 22% vs 13%. Accordingly, the frequency of ascending tones decreases, and this trend is largely manifested by women. Consequently, women are particularly sensitive to current trends in the use of tones and become agents of innovation.

The Effects of the Eastern Gyeongnam Dialect on Students’ English Intonation: Focusing on the Learnability

본 연구의 목적은 동부 경남 방언이 학생의 영어 억양에 미치는 영향을 알아보는 데 있다. 실험 목적은 다음과 같이 두 가지다. 첫째, 동부 경남방언이 영어의 문두 및 문미 억양, 피치 범위, 단어 강세, 핵강세 주변 음의 높낮이에 유의미한 영향이 있는지 파악한다. 둘째, 방언의 영향에서 중학생과 고등학생 사이에 차이가 있는지 확인한다. 중학생 열 명, 고등학생 열 명, 원어민 두 명이 연구에 참여하였으며 모두 여성이었다. 원어민은 영어 문장 여덟 개를, 경남 학생은 구어체인 동부 경남 방언 문장 일곱개와 영어 문장 여덟 개를 읽고 녹음하였다. 녹음자료는 음향분석프로그램인 Praat와 IBM SPSS로 분석하였다. 영어녹음자료를 바탕으로 문두 및 문미 억양 곡선, 피치의 범위, 단어 강세 패턴, 핵강세 주변 음의 높낮이를 분석한 결과는 다음과 같다. 문두 억양 곡선에서, 대부분 학생이 동부 경남 방언의 영향을 받은 것으로 보이는 곡선을 보였다. 문두 억양은 처음에 높은 음조로 시작해서 평조를 유지하거나 하강조를 보였다. 반면, 원어민은 대부분 문장에서 상승조의 곡선을 보였다. 한 가지 특이한 점은 문장의 첫 단어가 관사나 조동사일 때는 학생이 하강조를 보이지 않았다는 것이다. 문미 억양 곡선에서는 원어민과 경남 학생 사이에 뚜렷한 차이를 관찰할 수 없었다. 단어 강세에서도 방언의 특성이 드러났다. 학생은 익숙한 단어의 경우 강세 오류를 범하지 않았지만 낯설거나 외래어로 쓰이는 단어에서는 방언의 강세 규칙을 따라 많은 강세 오류를 범했다. 오류 개수에서 학년 간 차이를 보이지 않았다. 우리말과 영어를 발화할 때 모두 학생이 원어민에 비해 좁은 피치 범위를 보였다. 핵강세와 핵강세주변 음절의 F0값의 차이를 살펴본 결과 원어민과 중학생이 비슷했으며 고등학생이 적은 F0값의 차이를 보였다. 이는 중학생이 고등학생보다 강세 음절과 비강세 음절을 피치로 잘 구분한다는 것이다. 본 연구는 방언이 영어 억양에 전이될 수 있는 가능성에 초점을 두고 실험과 분석을 진행하였다. 연구 결과는 동부 경남 방언이 여러 영역에서 영어 억양에 영향을 미칠 수 있으며 이 영향은 학년과 관계없이 비슷한 정도로 나타난다는 것을 보여준다.

Acquisition of English Pitch Contours in Serbian Speakers of English

This paper deals with the production of English intonation phrases (IPs) and the common deviations in pitch contours in a group of sixty-eight L2 speakers of English. Five English nuclear types with varying prenuclear patterns are explored (High-Fall (HF), Low-Fall (LF), Low-Rise (LR), Fall-Rise (FR) and Rise-Fall (RF)) and evaluated auditorily. Acoustic analysis identified the common errors in L2 English intonation contours and accounted for some of the underlying reasons. Serbian speakers of English devoid English intonation phrases of their characteristic extensive pitch modulations that define the L1 English intonation. This is manifested as the following: flattening of the high head or high prehead (LF, LR), levelling of the rising tail (LR, FR), and difficulty producing multiple pitch dives and pitch climbs in a single intonation phrase. Pitch modulations are easier to produce on a single syllable than on a string of syllables (FR).