PITCH HEIGHT AND PITCH RANGE IN SERBIAN EFL STUDENTS’ READING AND SPEAKING TASKS
Keywords:
intonation, prosodic cues, F0, pitch range, key, pitch height, pitch movement, Serbian EFL studentsAbstract
The use of prosodic/intonational cues in spoken communication is attracting growing attention from both theoretical and research perspectives, which is particularly important for L2 teaching, where the appropriate use of prosodic cues is a vital communicative goal. In EFL study, the prosodic cues related to F0 and pitch range manipulation, used as markers of various intonation functions, are particularly important. In this paper, we present a study involving first-year English Department students and their use of F0-related prosodic cues – pitch range, pitch level, and movement – in reading and speaking tasks. The findings showed that EFL students used pitch-related cues appropriately to signal unit boundaries and prosodic prominence, while for interactional and illocutionary signals the use of both pitch range and pitch contours was much less appropriate. The pitch range used for reading dialogues was only slightly higher but not wider, and the participants neither expanded the pitch range for focused utterance parts, nor did they compress the pitch range for backgrounded and parenthesised parts. The reading task proved to be more challenging than speaking in some aspects, but the participants used a narrower, mid-level pitch range in speaking, as well as inappropriate, rising pitch contours.
References
Barth-Weingarten 2007: D. Barth-Weingarten, Intonation units and actions – evidence form everyday interaction, paper delivered at 10th International Pragmatics Conference, Goteborg: IPrA. ‹http://makino.linguist.jussieu.fr/idp09/docs/IDP_actes/Articles/szczepek-reed.pdf› 22.05.2013.
Brazil 1997: D. Brazil, The Communicative Value of Intonation in English, Cambridge: CUP.
Brown et al 1980: G. Brown, K. L. Currie, J. Kenworthy, Questions of Intonation, London: Helm.
Busà, Urbani 2011: M. G. Busà, M. Urbani, A cross linguistic analysis of pitch range in English L1 and L2, in: W.S. Lee and E. Zee (eds), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 380–383.
Chafe 1988: W. L. Chafe, Linking intonation units in spoken English, in: J. Haiman, S. Thompson (eds), Clause combining in grammar and discourse, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1–27.
Chelliah, de Reuse 2011: S. L. Chelliah, W. J. de Reuse, Phonetic and Phonological Fieldwork, in: S. Chelliah, W. J. de Reuse (eds), Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork, Heidelberg: Springer, 251–278.
Chun, 2002: D. M. Chun, Discourse Intonation in L2: From Theory and Research to Practice, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Couper-Kuhlen 1986: E. Couper-Kuhlen, An introduction to English prosody, London: Edward Arnold.
Cruttenden 1997: A. Cruttenden, Intonation, Cambridge: CUP.
Crystal 1969: D. Crystal, Prosodic systems and intonation in Egnlish, Cambridge: CUP.
Du Bois 1991: J. W. Du Bois, Transcription design principles for spoken discourse research, Pragmatics, 1, 71–106.
Du Bois et al 1993: J. W. Du Bois, S. Schuetze-Coburn, S. Cumming, D. Paolino, Outline of discourse transcription, in: J. A. Edwards, M. D. Lampert (eds), Talking Data: Transcription and coding in discourse research, eds. J. A. Edwards and M. D. Lampert, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 45–89.
Gimson 1970: A. C. Gimson, An introduction to the pronunciation of English (2nd ed.), London Edward Arnold.
Grice, Bauman 2007: M. Grice, S. Bauman, An introduction to intonation – functions and models, in: J. Trouvain, U. Gut (eds), Non-Native Prosody:Phonetic Description and Teaching Practice, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 25–51.
Gussenhoven 2004: C. Gussenhoven, The Phonology of Tone and Intonation, Cambridge: CUP.
Gut et al 2007: U. Gut, J. Trouvain, W. J. Barry, Bridging research on phonetic descriptions with knowledge from teaching practice – The case of prosody in non-native speech, in: J. Trouvain, U. Gut (eds), Non-Native Prosody: Phonetic Description and Teaching Practice, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 3–21.
Halliday 1967: M. A. K. Halliday, Intonation and Grammar in British English: The Hague: Mouton.
Hart et al 1990: J. t’Hart, R. Collier, A. Cohen, A Perceptual Study of Intonation: An Experimental-Phonetic Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hirschberg 2002: J. Hirschberg, The Pragmatics of Intonational Meaning, in: B. Bel and I. Marlien (eds), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2002, Aix-en-Provence Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Université de Provence, 65–68.
Johns-Lewis (ed) 1986: C. Johns-Lewis, Intonation in Discourse, San Diego: College Hill.
Kašić 2000: Z. N. Kašić, The function of suprasegmental elements in speech expression, Beogradska defektološka škola, 2–3, 113-124.
Komar 2005: S. Komar, The impact of tones and pitch range on the expression of attitudes in Slovene speakers of English, in: J. A. Naidment (ed), PTLC 2005 Proceedings, London: University College London. ‹http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/ptlc2005/pdf/ptlcp31.pdf› 16.10.2009.
Ladefoged 2001: P. Ladefoged, A Course in Phonetics (4th ed.), Boston: Heinle & Heinle, Thomson Learning.
Lehiste 1979: I. Lehiste, Sentence boundaries and paragraph boundaries – perceptual evidence, in: P. R. Clyne, W. F. Hanks and C. L. Hofbauer (eds), The Elements: A parasession on linguistic units and levels, Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 99–109.
Lehiste 1970: I. Lehiste, Suprasegmentals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lehiste, Ivić 1986: I. Lehiste, P. Ivić, Word and Sentence prosody in Serbocroatian, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Markham, Hazan 2002: D. Markham, V. Hazan, Speech, Hearing and Language: Work in progress, in: D. Markham, V. Hazan (eds), UCL Speaker database (Vol. 14), London: UCL, 1-17.
Mennen 2007: I. Mennen, Phonological and phonetic influences in non-native intonation, in: J. Trouvain, U. Gut (eds), Non-Native Prosody: Phonetic Description and Teaching Practice, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 53–76.
Mennen 2006: I. Mennen, Phonetic and phonological influences in non-native intonation: an overview for language teachers, QMUC Speech Science Research Centre Working Papers, WP-9, ‹http://www.qmu.ac.uk/ssrc/pubs/Mennen_WP9_NonNative_Intonation.pdf› 16.10.2009.
Mennen et al 2012: I. Mennen, F. Schaeffler, G. Docherty, Cross-language difference in f0 range: a comparative study of English and German, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 131(3), 2249-2260.
Mennen et al 2008: I. Mennen, F. Schaeffler, G. Docherty, A methodological study into the linguistic dimensions of pitch range differences between German and English, in Initial. Surname (ed), Proceedings of the 4th Speech Prosody Conference, Campinas: Publisher, 527–530.
Mennen et al 2007: I. Mennen, F. Schaeffler, G. Docherty, Pitching it differently: a comparison of the pitch ranges of German and English speakers, in: W. S. Lee and Y.Y. Zee (eds), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic
Sciences (ICPhS), Saarbrücken: University of Hong Kong, 1769–1772.
Munro et al 2006: M. J. Munro, T. Derwing, S. L. Morton, The mutual intelligibility of L2 speech, SSLA, 28, 111–131.
Nakajima, Allen 1993: S. Nakajima, J. F. Allen, A study on prosody and discourse structure in cooperative dialogues, Phonetica, 50, 197–210
Nolan 2003: F. Nolan, Intonational equivalence: an experimental evaluation of pitch scales, in: Initial. Surname (ed), Proceedings of the 15th ICPhS conference, Barcelona: UAB, 771–774.
Nooteboom 1997: S. G. Nooteboom, The prosody of speech: Melody and rhythm, in: W. J. Hardcastle, J. Laver (eds), The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, Oxford: Blackwell, 640–673.
Ohala 1984: J. J. Ohala, An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice, Phonetica, 41, 1–16.
Ohala 1983: J. J. Ohala, Cross-language use of pitch: An ethological view, Phonetica,40, 1–18.
Patterson 2000: D. Patterson, A Linguistic Approach to Pitch Range Modelling (Ph.D. dissertation), Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Paunovic 2013: T. Paunovic, Beginnings, endings, and the in-betweens: Prosodic signals of discourse topic in English and Serbian, in: B. Čubrović, T. Paunović (eds), Focus on English Phonetics, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 191–214.
Paunovic, Savic 2008: T. Paunovic, M. Savić, Discourse Intonation - Making it Work, in: S. Komar, U. Mozetic (eds), ELOPE V, 1-2, As You Write It: Issues in Literature, Language, and Translation in the Context of Europe in the 21st Century (special issue), Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana, 57–75.
Ramírez Verdugo 2006: D. Ramírez Verdugo, Prosodic realization of focus in the discourse of Spanish learners and English native speakers, Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 14, 9-32.
Ramírez Verdugo 2005: D. Ramirez Verdugo, The nature of patterning of native and non-native intonation in the expression of certainty and uncertainty: Pragmatic effects, Journal of Pragmatics, 37(12), 2086–2115.
Ramírez-Verdugo, Trillo 2005: D. Ramírez-Verdugo, J. R. Trillo, The pragmatic function of intonation in L2 discourse: English tag questions used by Spanish speakers, Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(2), 151–168.
Roach 1991: P. Roach, English Phonetics and Phonology, Cambridge: CUP.
Rocca 2007: P. D. A. Rocca, New Trends on the Teaching of Intonation of Foreign Languages, in: A. S. Rauber and M.A. Watkins (eds), New Sounds 2007: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, Florianópolis: Federal University of Santa Catarina, 420–428.
Savic 2014: M. Savic, Politeness through the Prism of Requests, Apologies and Refusals: A Case of Advanced Serbian EFL Learners, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Smiljanić 2007: R. Smiljanić, Lexical and pragmatic effects on pitch range and low tone alignment in two dialects of Serbian and Croatian, Proceedings of the 39th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 39 (1), 520–539.
Smiljanić 2006, R. Smiljanić, Early vs. late focus: pitch-peak alignment in two dialects of Serbian and Croatian, in L. Goldstein, D. H. Whalen, C. T. Best (eds), Laboratory Phonology 8, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 495–518.
Smiljanić 2004: R. Smiljanić, Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian: An Acoustic Study, New York: Routledge.
Smiljanić 2003a: R. Smiljanić, Lexical and pragmatic effects on pitch range and low tone alignment in two dialects of Serbian and Croatian, Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 39(1), 520–539.
Smiljanić 2003b: R. Smiljanić, Prosodic Variation and the Expression of Pragmatic Narrow Focus in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian, in: A. Mettouchi, G. Ferré (eds), Proceedings of the Prosodic Interfaces 2003 Conference, Nantes, France, 185–190.
Sweet 1890: H. Sweet, A Primer of Spoken English, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Szczepek Reed 2010: B. Szczepek Reed, Intonation phrases in natural conversation: A participants’ category?, in: D. Barth Weoingarten, E. Reber, M. Selting (eds), Prosody in interaction, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 191–212.
Toivanen 2003: J. Toivanen, Tone choice in the English intonation of proficient nonnative speakers Phonum 9: 165–68.
Toivanen, Waaramaa 2005: J. Toivanen, T. Waaramaa, Tone choice and voice quality of dispreferred turns in the English of Finns, Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 30(3-4), 181–184.
Vaissière 2004: J. Vaissière, The Perception of Intonation, in: D. B. Pisoni, R. E. Remez (eds), Handbook of Speech Perception, Oxford: Blackwell, 236–263.
Watson, Schlauch 2008: P. J. Watson, R. S. Schlauch, The effect of F0 on the intelligibility of speech with flattened intonation contours. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 17, 348–355.
Wells 2006: J. Wells, English Intonation: An introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wennerstrom 2003: A. Wennerstrom, Keeping the Floor in Multiparty Conversations: Intonation, Syntax, and Pause, Discourse Processes 36(2), 77–107.
Wennerstrom 2001: A. Wennerstrom, The music of everyday speech: Prosody and discourse analysis, New York: Oxford University Press.
Wennerstrom 1994: A. Wennerstrom, Intonational meaning in English discourse: A study of non-native speakers, Applied Linguistics, 15(4), 399–420.
Wichmann 2002: A. Wichmann, Attitudinal intonation and the inferential process, in: B. Bel and I. Marlien (eds), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2002, Aix-enProvence: Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Université de Provence, 11–15. ‹http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/sp2002/pdf/wichmann.pdf› 11.11.2009.
Wichmann 2000: A. Wichmann, Intonation in Text and Discourse, London: Longman.
Xu, Xu 2005: Y. Xu, C. X. Xu, Phonetic realization of focus in English declarative intonation, Journal of Phonetics, 33(2), 159-197.
