Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
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ToBI and beyond: Phonetic intonation of Seoul Korean ani in Korean Intonation Corpus (KICo)

  • Ji-eun Kim (Department of Korean Language and Literature, Duksung Women's University)
  • Received : 2024.01.31
  • Accepted : 2024.03.06
  • Published : 2024.03.31
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Abstract

This study investigated the variation in the intonation of Seoul Korean interjection ani across different meanings ("no" and "really?") and speech levels (Intimate and Polite) using data from Korean Intonation Corpus (KICo). The investigation was conducted in two stages. First, IP-final tones in the dataset were categorized according to the K-ToBI convention (Jun, 2000). While significant relationships were observed between the meaning of ani and its IP-final tones, substantial overlap between groups was notable. Second, the F0 characteristics of the final syllable of ani were analyzed to elucidate the apparent many-to-many relationships between intonation and meaning/speech level. Results indicated that these seemingly overlapping relationships could be significantly distinguished. Overall, this study advocates for a deeper analysis of phonetic intonation beyond ToBI-based categorical labels. By examining the F0 characteristics of the IP-final syllable, previously unclear connections between meaning/speech level and intonation become more comprehensible. Although ToBI remains a valuable tool and framework for studying intonation, it is imperative to explore beyond these categories to grasp the "distinctiveness" of intonation, thereby enriching our understanding of prosody.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank our research assistants, Ayeon Sim and Min-yeong Oh, from the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Duksung Women's University, for diligently assisting with the establishment of the KICo data since 2022. Additionally, we extend our gratitude to the students from the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Duksung Women's University for their help in recruiting participants for the KICo-N data. Lastly, but not least, we are grateful to all participants who were willing to invest their valuable time to travel to the recording site and participate in the sessions. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022S1A5A8050526).

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