A pragmatically-oriented study of intonation and focus

억양과 초점에 관한 화용론적 연구

There is an indisputable connection between prosody and focus. The focal prominence in Korean, a prosodic realization of pitch prominence in an utterance, defines a focused constituent, the domain of which is identified by the Focus Identification Principle. To this is added the Basic Focus Rule which makes it possible to capture and interpret the focal domain, which can then be tested against the available context. The focal domain can be contextually made available by setting it off with information structure boundaries(I/S) identified by the Information Structure Identification Principle. The fragment of the utterance enclosed within the IS boundaries can be recognized as 'new' information with the help of the Focus Domain Identification Rule. Since information structures are pragmatically tied to semantic levels of grammatical systems, the Basic Focus Rule is now replaced by the Focal Prominence Principle ensuring the focal prominence within the focal domain. Close relationships exist between patterns of intonation and their expressiveness in terms of giving a pragmatically-oriented description of focus. This is particularly manifested in Korean sentences containing contrastiveness.