1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An experimental study on the relationship between the utterance-level prosodic features and the paralinguistic meaning of utterance.
| Project/Area Number |
08451106
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
言語学・音声学
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| Research Institution | The National Language Research Institute |
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Principal Investigator |
MAEKAWA Kikuo National Language Research Inst., Dept.Language Behavior, Head of 2nd Res.Section, 言語行動研究部, 室長 (20173693)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KIRITANI Shigeru Univ.Tokyo, School of medicine, Professor, 医学系研究科, 教授 (90010032)
YOSHIOKA Yasuo National Language Research Inst., Dept.Language Change, Dept.Head, 言語変化研究部, 部長 (90200948)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1996 – 1997
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| Keywords | Politeness / Intonation / Kumamoto Japanese / Paired-comparison / Particle / ANOVA |
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| Research Abstract |
In this study, we attempted preliminary investigation on the relationship between the prosodic features of an utterance and the paralinguistic information conveyed by the utterance.
Kumamoto Japanese (KP) is known to have highly developed morphological system of honorific. KP is also known to have relatively 'free' intonation system among Japanese dialects, because KP is an accentless dialect, which, by definition, has no specification of pitch at the level of lexicon.
In KP,consequently, both the choice of intonation contours and the choice of phrase-final particles can influence the level of politeness of an utterance
A perception experiment was conducted in order to clarify the relationship between the morphological factors (particles) and the prosodic factors (intonation contours) in the expression of politeness in KP.Combination of three politeness-related particles and six different intonation contours resulted in eighteen speech stimuli. The relative politeness of the stimuli was measured by means of paired-comparison procedure by university students and middle-aged speakers of KP.
The results showed that morphology and prosody contributed, roughly speaking, in nearly the same level : morphologically expressed politeness could not overwhelm prosodically expressed politeness and vice versa. Also, two-way ANOVA revealed that there was no statistical interaction between particle and intonation. This means that the two linguistic devices functioned as independent information channels in the transmission of politeness at least in KP.
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