Phonetics or phonology? The case of falling contours in County Galway English

This paper examines the cases where a given sentence type is not uniquely associated with a given pragmatic function. A given sentence can have more than one communicative function depending on intonation. In this paper, I have focused to the function of intonation in changing the meaning of sentence types. I suggest that the intonation feature [+R, -R] should be employed in C in addition to [+Q, -Q] to explain the difference in meaning between the typical use and the non-typical use of a particular sentence type. The mismatch of these features will explain the difference in meaning between declarative questions from declaratives or inverted exclamatives from yes-no questions.

The melodic structure of an interrogative utterance frequently depends on the grammatical structure of the sentence in question. In addition to the enunciative sentence of the kindvous venez?which bears a particular acoustic mark of interrogation, a rise in fundamental frequency in sentence-final position, there exist also interrogative utterances signalled by inversion of word order and still others marked by lexical means, the WH-questions. It is the intonation of this latter type of sentence which we intend to examine in the Canadian-French spoken in Ontario.The intonation of interrogative sentences has for some years been the object of important research in different languages. Wells (1945) and Trager and Smith (1951) note in English an intonation curve at the following levels: 2 - 3 - 1 - without any tonal prominence on the interrogative word. Armstrong and Ward (1926), Jones (1932) and Faure (1948) also find that this type of interrogative sentence has a descending intonation. Fries (1964) finds no specific intonation pattern in a spontaneous corpus from which he studiedyes-noquestions. For German, Von Essen (1956) notes two intonation patterns: one rising (question intonation) and one falling (interrogative intonation).

Korean wh-questions and yes-no questions have morphologically the same structure. In speech, however, two types of questions are distinguished by prosodic difference. In this study, we examined if Korean native speakers can distinguish wh-question and yes-no questions produced by Chinese Korean leaners based on the prosodic information contained in the sentences. For this purpose, we performed perception analysis, and 15 Korean native speakers participated in the perception test. The results show that two types of interrogative sentences produced by Chinese Korean leaners were not distinguished by constant pitch contours. These results reveal that Chinese Korean leaners cannot match prosodic meaning and prosodic form. The most saliant prosodic feature used perceptually by native speakers to discriminate two types of interrogative sentences is pitch difference between the F0 pick of wh-word and boundary tone.

Varieties of ‘Contact Irish English’ (CIE), i.e. English spoken by native Irish speakers, are often thought to display significant phonological influence from Irish (Hickey, 1986, 2007; Ó hÚrdail, 1997). However, modern systematic acoustic descriptions of CIE speech data are scarce, relative to other Irish English (IrE) varieties. This study investigates a phonological phenomenon often attributed to an Irish influence, that of epenthesis in words with liquid+sonorant coda clusters (LSCCs) e.g., in film [ˈfɪləm], in CIE spoken in the Connemara Gaeltacht, an Irish speaking region in the west of Ireland. We examine (i) the extent of LSCC epenthesis and effects of sociolinguistic factors and (ii) whether prosodic contours for epenthesized words are realized similarly to other disyllabic words in Connemara English. 314 LSCC token from sentences produced by 12 L1-Irish bilinguals and 12 English monolinguals were acoustically analysed using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2023) and IViE prosodic annotation (Grabe et al., 1998). Statistical findings indicate significantly higher epenthesis rates among bilinguals, with age, Language Profile Score (LPS) and cluster type affecting variation. Prosodically, epenthetic tokens predominantly portray low target tones L*_% (54%), particularly among women, irrespective of age. These results do not align with previous findings for prosodic realization of disyllabic words in Connemara English (Théveniaut & Herment, 2023). By providing empirical evidence, this study enhances our understanding of CIE phonology as well as the role of language contact in shaping phonetic and prosodic variation in bilingual communities.

In addition to segmental level contrast, Mandarin Chinese uses two levels of prosodic contrast, tone at word level and intonation at utterance level, to convey linguistic meaning. Mandarin speakers need to adjust fundamental frequency (f0) to maintain intelligibility at both word- and utterance-level. For English speakers, f0 changes at utterance level for intonation were not confined by word-level tonal requirements. The present study investigated the acoustic characteristics of English intonation produced by Mandarin-English bilinguals at different developmental stages. Six- and nine-year-old Mandarin-English bilingual children and adults (seven per group) completed the speech production tasks. Stimuli were three types of carrying sentences (statement, question with and without inversion) in English. Carrying sentences end with monosyllabic target words that are phonetically similar in Mandarin (e.g., [di], 帝 Dee). Average f0 and magnitude of f0 change were measured within word and over the entire utterance, and compared among age groups. Results indicated (1) average f0 was the highest in questions without inversion, followed by questions with inversion. Statements showed the lowest average f0. (2) Magnitude of f0 change was larger in speakers with more English exposure and in older children. Sentence type, language experience, and developmental age appear to influenced average f0 and magnitude of f0 change.

It is well documented that in English falling contours are associated with final statements and rising contours with yes-no questions and continuation. Our analyses of the speech of native speakers show that falls dominate in read speech and are widely used non-finally. This has important pedagogical implications for EFL teaching. To help French learners avoid pronouncing too many rises, a visualisation technique is promoted to show the difference between the French and English intonation systems. We also show how relevant a map task can be for the practising and learning of intonation contours. Hopefully this chapter will provide learners with clues to gain greater competence as listeners and speakers, and teachers with tools useful and adaptable in the language class.