Article Title：Intonation and evaluation in oral narratives
Abstract：
This paper explores the distribution of pitch maxima in the texts of oral narratives solicited from native speakers of standard North American English and second language speakers of English from Japan. Based on the hypothesis that intonational high points associate with emotionally prioritized text, the highest pitch maxima for each story were identified using computerized speech technology. The main finding for both native and nonnative speaker narratives was that intonation peaks were associated with evaluative language as conceived of by Labov (1972). This is consistent with Wolfson's (1982) notion that 'performance features' in story-telling, among which shifts in pitch range can arguably be included, are a mechanism for encouraging the audience to view the situation through the teller's eyes and to thereby support his or her value judgments, This finding lends support to the view that the emotional function of intonation is not language-specific, but can instead be a resource in cross-cultural communication. A second finding was that, especially for native speakers, changes in pitch range accompanied structural shifts in the progression of the narratives. This included transitions from one narrative component to another as well as other episodic shifts and is consistent with prior research on the relationship between pitch range and the topic structure of discourse. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: intonation; English; Japanese; oral narrative; emotion; pitch; native vs. nonnative speaker
DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00061-8
Source：JOURNAL OF PRAGMATICS
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