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A corpus-driven approach to learning and teaching the communicative role of discourse intonation

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A corpus-driven approach to learning and teaching the communicative role of discourse intonation

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  1. 3rd International Symposium on Teaching English at Tertiary LevelHong Kong, 9-10 June 2007Jointly organised by: Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityDepartment of Foreign Languages, Tsinghua University, Beijing, ChinaChris Greaves and Martin WarrenEnglish Department The Hong Kong Polytechnic University A corpus-driven approach to learning and teaching the communicative role of discourse intonation

  2. 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.

  3. 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)

  4. ExampleimPRESsivea: //  SO much MORE // //  than it REALly IS// Example (computer readable) a: { \ [ SO ] much MORE < ^ imPRESsive > } { \ than it [ REALly ] < IS > }(HKCSE, prosodic)

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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)

  8. Searching the corpus Example of searches for discourse intonation using the iConc search engine written by Chris Greaves.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. References Brazil, D. 1997. The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sinclair, J. McH. 2004. Trust the Text. London: Routledge.

  12. Tones in wh-questions

  13. Tones in yes/no-questions

  14. 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.

  15. 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) areless likely to be modified and so more likely to be made prominent by the speaker.

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