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3rd International Symposium on Teaching English at Tertiary LevelHong Kong, 9-10 June 2007
Jointly organised by: Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Department of Foreign Languages, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Chris Greaves and Martin WarrenEnglish Department
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
A corpus-driven approach to learning and teaching the
communicative role of discourse intonation
The Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE)
The HKCSE consists approx. 2 million words made up of four sub-corpora:
Conversations Academic discourses Business discourses Public discourses
Each sub-corpus consists of 50 hrs of naturally occurring data (i.e. a total of 2 million words). Half of all of the sub-corpora have also been prosodically transcribed – approx. 1 million words.
Discourse intonation choices available to speakers
System Choice
Prominence: prominent/non-prominent syllables
Tone: rise-fall, fall, rise, fall-rise, level
Key: high, mid, low
Termination: high, mid, low
(Adapted from Hewings and Cauldwell 1997: vii, in Brazil 1997)
Example imPRESsive a: // SO much MORE // // than it REALly IS //
Example (computer readable)
a: { \ [ SO ] much MORE < ^ imPRESsive > } { \ than it [ REALly ] < IS > } (HKCSE, prosodic)
The prosodic notation system Tone group boundaries are marked with ‘{ }’ brackets. The referring and proclaiming tones are shown using combinations of
forward and back slashes: rise ‘/’, fall-rise ‘\/’, fall ‘\’, and rise-fall ‘/\’.
Level tones are marked ‘=’ and unclassifiable tones ‘?’.
Prominence is shown by means of UPPER CASE letters.
Key is marked with ‘[ ]’ brackets, high key and low key are indicated with ‘^’ and ‘_’ respectively, while mid key is not marked (i.e. it is the default).
Termination is marked with ‘< >’ brackets with high, mid, and low termination using the same forms of notation used for key choices.
What the textbooks say about intonation
Often the textbooks conflate intonation with pronunciation.
Intonation is portrayed as having fixed attitudinal meanings.
Intonation is usually portrayed as simply a means to sound ‘lively’ as opposed to speaking with a ‘flat and monotonous’ intonation that sounds ‘boring’.
Intonation patterns, if described at all, tend to oversimplify or are simply incorrect – for example, yes/no questions are spoken with a rise tone and wh-questions are spoken with a fall tone.
Discourse Intonation
Intonation does not convey fixed attitudinal meanings.
Intonation choices are not determined with reference to grammar.
Intonation choices are situation-specific decisions to add additional meaning to what is being said.
(Brazil, 1997)
Searching the corpus
Example of searches for discourse intonation using the iConc search engine written by Chris Greaves.
Topic Development
One way that a speaker can indicate to the
hearer(s) that she/he is about to develop the
topic in a new direction is by means of
discourse intonation.
The HKCSE (prosodic) can be used to
illustrate this with real world examples, along
with other functions of discourse intonation.
Implications
Need for a shared understanding of intonation and its communicative role.
Need to adopt a standard format for representing and interpreting intonation.
Students and teachers should be exposed to naturally occurring discourse to learn how English intonation functions.
The HKCSE (prosodic) provides a useful resource to explore the full contribution of intonation.
References
Brazil, D. 1997. The Communicative Value of
Intonation in English. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Sinclair, J. McH. 2004. Trust the Text.
London: Routledge.
Tones in wh-questions
Total
Academic Discourse
87(88.8%)
1(1%)
0 1(1%)
9(9.2%)
98(33.7%)
Business Discourse
40(66.7%)
0 2(3.2%)
8(13.3%)
10(16.8%)
60(20.6%)
Conversation 49(66.2%)
3(4.1%)
2(2.7%)
8(10.8%)
12(16.2%)
74(25.4%)
Public Discourse
51(86.3%)
0 1(1.7%)
0 7(12%)
59(20.3%)
Total 227(78%)
4(1.4%)
5(1.7%)
17(5.8%)
38(13.1%)
291(100%)
Tones in yes/no-questions
Discourse type
Total
Academic Discourse
31(38.8%)
0 1(1.3%)
31(38.8%)
17(22%)
80(20.1%)
Business Discourse
34(25.7%)
1(0.8%)
7(5.3%)
54(41%)
36(27.1%)
132(35.6%)
Conversation 23(28%)
0 2(2.4%)
36(44%)
21(25.6%)
82(21.5%)
Public Discourse
29(33.3%)
0 1(1.1%)
14(16.1%)
43(49.5%)
87(22.8%)
Total 117(30.7%)
1(0.26%)
11(2.9%)
135(35.4%)
117(30.7%)
381(100%)
NOUNS
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
people sector system person
Occ
urr
ence
sProminences
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
people sector system person
Per
cent
age
CONJUNCTIONS
0500
10001500200025003000350040004500500055006000
and but though
Occ
urre
nces
Prominences
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
and but though
Per
cen
tag
e
VERBS
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
think see try learn
Occ
urr
ence
sProminences
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
think see try learn
Per
cen
tag
e
PREPOSITIONS
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
in with through
Occ
urr
ence
sProminences
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
in with through
Per
cen
tag
e
MODAL VERBS
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
can may might
Occ
urr
ence
sProminences
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
can may might
Per
cen
tag
e
MODALS
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
will can would should must may could might shall
Oc
cu
rre
nc
es
Prominences
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
will can would should must may could might shall
Per
cen
tag
e
Possible explanations for the inverse relationship between word frequency and prominence
The more frequent the word, the more functions it typically performs and so the more likely it is that its meaning is determined from the wider context of interaction rather than by the word in isolation.
The notion of ‘phraseology’ (Sinclair, 2004) - that language is typified by extended collocations representing units of meaning rather than by individual words - further supports the inverse relationship we have found.
Many of the grammatical words are the sole occupant of the tone unit and are thus prominent. In this role they appear to have an organisational function linking propositional content.
Nouns that are modified are less likely to be made prominent.
Nouns such as people typically collocate with other items such as many, more, most and it is the latter which tend to be made prominent.
Other nouns such as proposal(s) are less likely to be modified and so more likely to be made prominent by the speaker.
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