A Study on the Focus Realization in Intransitive Verb Sentences

영어 자동사 문장에서의 초점 실현 양상에 관한 연구: 영어원어민화자와 한국인화자 비교

This paper aims to compare and analyse the pattern of the pitch accent realization between the English native speakers and the .Korean speakers, using the sentences by the scope of focus including intransitive verbs; unaccusative, unergative, and passive, based on the previous studies. The results show that the English native speakers produce the intonational patterns similar to the previous study (Hoskins, 1996), which showed that English native speakers deaccented after the focused word for unaccusative and passive verbs in broad focus. Korean speakers, however, have a tendency not to deaccent after the focused word for both verbs. In the narrow subject focus condition, Koreans do not deaccent the verbs after the focused subject. In the narrow verb focus condition, they produce the pitch accent on verbs as the English native speakers do, but they tend to produce the pitch accent on subjects that should not be given any pitch accent. Therefore, unlike the English native speakers, the Korean speakers have a tendency not only that they do not produce three types of intransitive verbs with proper intonation, but also that they do not realize the focus structure itself properly.