• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.203-217
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• 2000

In spoken language, the characteristics of prosodic realization are related to the meaning of utterance. The pitch pattern of an interrogative sentence which differs from that of declarative sentences can be considered in this respect.. If we consider the question-answer pair, we can find that the most important variation comes from the intended meaning of asking. In this paper, we experiment with four kinds of interrogative sentences and show that the difference in pitch patterns of interrogative sentences can be explained in relation to the focus phenomena that is, the differences of the boundary tones in interrogative sentences are due to the differences in the prosodic domain of focus. For a relevant explanation with the focus phenomena, we divided focus into the categories: emphatic focus, which plays a role in delivering the speaker's intended meaning for the sentence interpretation, and informational focus, delivers the central intended meaning of the utterance. The results can be summarized in three points. First, High boundary tone delivers the meaning of asking. Second, the realization of different boundary tones that are found in wh-question and alternative question are just phonetic variations caused by focusing. Third, the high rise boundary tone in echo questions is related to the meaning of surprise or incredulity, and this relation is a consensus of existing opinion, that is, the speaker's attitude of surprise can raise the pitch range. From these results we can distinguish between boundary type and phonetic variation, and we can also give appropriate meaning to the different boundary tones in interrogative sentences that have been regarded as merely a part of sentence type.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.21-44
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• 2012

This paper aims to discuss the effects of learning how to write English interrogative sentences. 122 students who participated in the study learned basic structural components of English questions and practiced writing questions by inversing the subject and the verb in a given declarative sentence. The participants were divided into two groups: Group 1 which was given a brief explanation of interrogative structures and practices, and Group 2 which was given the same explanation and practices in addition to an assignment for which they had to make one or two comprehension questions based on reading a passage. For the pre-tests and the post-tests, they took a TOEIC reading test with 40 questions and a structure test with 25 questions. The results of the tests show that both groups improved significantly in the two post-tests, benefiting from this learning method. However, the additional treatment for Group 2 did not seem to be highly effective. In the questionnaire survey, the participants think that the method of learning English questions has helped them better understand English grammar as well as interrogative structures. The participants were also divided into three different levels: high, intermediate, and low. The intermediate level group students benefited most from learning writing questions as the results of the post-test of the 25-questions test and the final exam of the course show.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.311-320
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• 2007

Interrogative sentences are generally used to perform speech acts of directly asking a question or making a request, but they are also used to convey such speech acts indirectly. In the utterances, such indirect uses of interrogative sentences usually carry speaker's emotion with a negative attitude, which is close to an expression of anger. The identification of such negative emotion is known as a difficult problem that requires relevant information in syntax, semantics, discourse, pragmatics, and speech signals. In this paper, we argue that the interrogatives used for indirect speech acts could serve as a dominant marker for identifying the emotional attitudes, such as anger, as compared to other emotion-related markers, such as discourse markers, adverbial words, and syntactic markers. To support such an argument, we analyze the dialogues collected from the Korean soap operas, and examine individual or cooperative influences of the emotion-related markers on emotional realization. The user study shows that the interrogatives could be utilized as a promising device for emotion identification.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.576-582
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• 2022

In this paper, we discuss the relative positioning of Wh-related English prepositions in a Wh-interrogative construction within the Optimality Theory [1-2]. By employing the two key constraints such as ^*Prep-Str and Align which are developed for the positioning of Wh-related prepositions from Romance languages such as French and Italian [3] and for the positioning of Wh-related prepositions from the middle English prose from 1500 to 1900 [4-6], and by slightly modifying the constraint hierarchy of ^*Prep-STR >>Align into ^**PrepSTR <<>>Align, Choi argues that his new theory can properly explain the unique behaviors of English Whrelated prepositions being able to take two 'optional' operations such as pied-piping and stranding to find legitimate landing sites in a Wh-interrogative construction [7]. However, this new analysis again reveals the following critical problems: (1) Unlike the 'light' English Wh-related prepositions which can two optional operations for legitimate landing sites in a Wh-interrogative construction, 'heavy' Wh-related English prepositions are not allowed to have such two options: they take just one option of pied-piping only. Thus, (2) his argumentation based on the existing constraints and the modified constraint hierarchy is neither general enough nor proper to explain the issue of the relative positioning for all English Wh-related preposition cases. To include such exceptional syntactic property of the 'heavy' preposition cases within the Optimality Theory, we suggest a new constraint of ^*HPrep-STR ranked at the highest position of the constraint hierarchy to disallow a 'heavy' or multi-syllabic Wh-related English preposition to stay alone at the end of a sentence. The new final hierarchy of constraints we suggest to explain the exceptional positioning of 'heavy' Wh-related prepositions together with the other 'light' Wh-related prepositions in English Wh-interrogative construction will be as follows: ^*HPrep-STR>>Align<<>>^*Prep-STR.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 1992.02a
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• pp.64-76
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• 1992

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 1996.02a
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• pp.257-266
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• 1996

• Language and Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.51-66
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• 2013

Korean is a wh-in-situ language where the wh-expression stays in situ with an obligatory Q-particle marking its interrogative scope. This paper briefly reviews some basic properties of the wh-question construction in Korean and shows how a typed feature structure grammar, HPSG (Pollard and Sag 1994, Sag et al. 2003), together with the notions of 'type hierarchy' and 'constructions', can provide a robust basis for parsing the wh-construction in the language. We show that this system induces robust syntactic structures as well as enriched semantic representations for real-time applications such as machine translation, which require deep processing of the phenomena concerned.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.125-127
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• 2003

The aim of the paper is to analyze prosodic characteristics in apraxia of speech and establish the fundamental sources in diagnosis of motor speech disorders. The sentences consist of two different types (declarative and interrogative) with different numbers of constituents which are one to three. The stimuli were constructed to assess apraxics speech with articulation and humming skills. The features of speech patterns were examined such as utterance duration, boundary tones, and etc. The results of the analysis are as follow: 1) In the interrogative sentences, the rising boundary tones appeared only in the humming tasks 2) the utterance duration is relatively shorter in the humming tasks than the speech with articulation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.37-45
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• 2014

Korean wh-questions and yes-no questions have morphologically the same structure. In speech, however, two types of questions are distinguished by prosodic difference. In this study, we examined if Korean native speakers can distinguish wh-question and yes-no questions produced by Chinese Korean leaners based on the prosodic information contained in the sentences. For this purpose, we performed perception analysis, and 15 Korean native speakers participated in the perception test. The results show that two types of interrogative sentences produced by Chinese Korean leaners were not distinguished by constant pitch contours. These results reveal that Chinese Korean leaners cannot match prosodic meaning and prosodic form. The most saliant prosodic feature used perceptually by native speakers to discriminate two types of interrogative sentences is pitch difference between the F0 pick of wh-word and boundary tone.

• Iberoamérica
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.111-148
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• 2020

One way for phatic communication to be linguistically realized involves ritual activities, such as greetings and leave-takings. These conventionalized acts in medical contexts can significantly influence both transactional and interpersonal goals. The analysis in this paper confirms that exchanging rituals such as greeting and leave-taking between doctors and patients is not a simple exchange of conventionalized linguistic symbols. In addition, the use of discursive strategies means that to determine whether an expression is phatic or not, it is necessary to analyze it from the multidimensional perspective. The phaticity is established based on the negotiation between the participants during the interaction. We have found that the interrogative form of greeting like "¿Qué tal?" (How are you?) becomes a versatile resource in the medical context. Thus, professionals need to be attentive to the discourse progress, because the phaticity of the interrogative greetings (illocutionary force) is linked, in the vast majority, with the reaction of the patients. Also, the data confirms that when participants coordinate closings, the exchange of turns lengthens and the intervention of various discursive strategies for phatic communion becomes more prominent.